The early bird deadline for 
The 2025 Freelance Fellowship Recipients
Rachel Lenzi At the IRE Conference in Philadelphia, 2015 Knight Scholar Amber Johnson talked with attendee Rachel Lenzi, a sports writer at The Blade in Toledo, Ohio. The following Q&A has been edited for clarity. Q: What got you interested in journalism, and why sports? A: It was the simple fact that I love to write…
Read MoreA record number of journalists turned out at the annual IRE Conference in Philadelphia this year, so we thought it would be fun to get to know some of our 1,800 attendees. We asked a few of our 2015 IRE Conference Knight Scholars to talk to attendees and share portions of their conversations on this…
Read MoreJo Ciavaglia At the IRE Conference in Philadelphia, 2015 Knight Scholar Amber Johnson talked with attendee Jo Ciavaglia, a crime reporter for the Bucks County Courier Times in Levittown, Pennsylvania. The following Q&A has been edited for clarity. Q: What’s your favorite part of your job? A: I’m a crime reporter! My favorite part of…
Read MoreBy Andrea Gonzales Heroic, self-sacrificing with no personal gain or benefit. These are the words Academy Award-winning documentarian Laura Poitras used to describe the actions of Edward Snowden. Most people know Poitras from her recent film “Citizen Four,” which documented Snowden’s decision to leak classified NSA documents, revealing the agency’s mass surveillance program. Her other…
Read MoreIRE attendees learn how to effectively use data in their stories from a panel of award-winning journalists Photo by LaCrai Mitchell By LaCrai Mitchell “Just make sure if you fail, you did what you wanted to do.” At face value, this David Letterman quote is completely unrelated to telling a good data story. However, during…
Read MoreBy Taylor Bembery According to the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics, a journalist is required to seek and report the truth. At the Investigative Reporters and Editors Conference in Philadelphia, journalists discussed methods for making stories airtight. The panel was moderated by Shawn McIntosh of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and included panelists, Alleen Brown…
Read MoreBy Darian Muka Panelists David Bornstein, Greg Borowski, Tina Rosenberg and Claudia Rowe spoke about the power of solution journalism during a panel at the 2015 IRE Conference. Dubbed “solution journalism,” positive deviants frame an issue around improvements or best practices. “The idea is that you’re going to create a lot of awareness and outrage…
Read MoreBy Cynthia Ferraz Hailed by moderator Ellen Weiss of Scripps Washington Bureau as “champions of partnerships,” John Kelly of USA Today; Marina Walker Guevara of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ); and Richard Pienciak of The Associated Press offered tips and presented an overview of managing partnerships within a multi-newsroom project at the 2015…
Read MoreBy Amber Liu Trying to excel at covering diverse communities might include new techniques or resources, such as collaboratively developing a diverse source list and rethinking how to best use interpreters. Sherry Yu of Temple University, Michael Matza of The Philadelphia Inquirer and Sabrina Vourvoulias of AL DÍA News suggested these techniques and more at…
Read MoreBy Pietro Lombardi The number of enterprise stories covering climate change, illegal resource exploitation, food and water security and other environmental threats has increased in recent years. Deborah Nelson, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and freelance investigative reporter for Reuters; Robert S. Eshelman, Environment Editor at VICE News; Andrew Revkin, Pace University, and Josh Meyer, Medill National…
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