Newsrooms - Report for America

Become a Host Newsroom

We help you bring accountability journalism to community news gaps you’ve long wanted to fill—but haven’t had the resources.

There are no upcoming newsroom information sessions. Sign up to stay in the loop.

Report for America newsroom applications are now closed.

How it Works

We pre-screen early career journalists who meet your needs, and you choose your hire. We pay half their salary, up to $25,000 (our cap is $30,000 for very experienced journalists) and provide them with ongoing training and support while they work for you. Meanwhile, we provide your newsroom with curriculum and coaching to help you fundraise for your share of the salary.

Why Report for America?

Hear more from Report for America’s current host newsrooms.

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We’ll recruit for you a slate of journalists passionate about the beat you’ve designated as a coverage need.
We’ll help show you new ways to raise money locally. Some of our host newsrooms have raised hundreds of thousands
of dollars in just a few years.
We pay half the journalist’s salary the first year, a third of the salary the second year and 20% the optional third year.
You gain access to a network of over 200 like-minded host newsrooms to collaborate with and use as a resource.
Through our partnership, your newsroom will ultimately expand and grow more sustainable.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you pick your host newsrooms?

These are the main criteria:

Is there an important need? (Are there under-covered topics, communities or geographic areas?)
What is the beat you’ll create to deploy RFA corps members to help fill your news gap?
Can you provide the local match? (see below)
Do you provide good editing and mentoring?

Other factors include having the following:

A way to distribute the content for maximum impact
A good plan for assessing success

What news organizations are eligible?

Any news organization that is committed to providing objective, civically important local journalism. That could include public radio and TV stations, newspapers, digital sites, commercial radio and TV stations, wire services, or journalism schools providing direct journalism. The organization can be nonprofit or commercial.

What are the application deadlines? When do corps members begin?

The window to apply for consideration as a host newsroom opens in July and closes in mid September. Report for America reviewers will assess applications through October and schedule virtual interviews via Zoom in October and November. We’ll announce winning newsrooms in December, and open the corps member application cycle. Host newsrooms will select among a slate of candidates we provide, and they’ll start in your newsroom in July.

What do you mean by local share?

This term refers to the money you raise in the community to support this reporting position. One of the goals of this program is to encourage local philanthropy to support journalism in a bigger way. We also believe that successful news organizations will have to build stronger community support in general whether its through membership, subscriptions, events or philanthropy. So we strongly encourage news organizations to involve the community to support the RFA corps member.

Our Newsroom Partners

Participating newsroom partners include nonprofit and for-profit organizations, daily and weekly newspapers, digital only newsrooms, TV and radio stations. They’ve been in every state, Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico and Guam.