Deadline: August 16, 2014
The Knight Foundation invites developer, technologist, civic hacker, or data cruncher who wants to help change the world of journalism to apply for the 2015 Knight-Mozilla Fellowship program and spend ten months embedded in one of the best newsrooms in the world, writing open code and becoming a leader in the international journalism tech community.
The fellowship program is designed to engage people who like to code and bring them—and their varied expertise—into the newsroom. Fellows’ work is rooted in developing open projects that help better understanding of our world via journalism.+
Fellowships begin in calendar year 2015 and last for 10 months. Each Fellow’s start date will be individualized for the needs of that Fellow and the news organization, but most Fellowships will begin in February or March of 2015.
Fellows are based, unless special circumstances dictate, in the town of their host news organization. In 2015, the Fellows will be based with:
- The Guardian in London, UK
- La Nacion in Buenos Aires, Argentina
- NPR in Washington, DC
- Vox Media in Austin, TX; Washington, DC; or New York, NY
- Center for Investigative Reporting in Emeryville, CA (just outside San Francisco)
- New York Times in New York, NY
- Washington Post in Washington, DC; or New York, NY
Stipend
- The standard Fellowship offers a stipend of $60,000, paid in 10 monthly installments. Fellows are responsible for remitting all applicable taxes and other government payments as required.
Benefits
- To help offset cost of living in the Fellowship Partner location cities, the Fellowship also provides supplements for housing, childcare, health insurance, moving expenses, and helps pay for research/equipment and books.
- The Fellowship also covers the costs of required travel for Fellowship activities.
Eligibility
- The Kinght-Mozilla Fellowship program is designed to engange people who like to code and bring them – and their varied expertise- into newsroom.
- There is no typical fellows and previous fellows have come from a variety of backgrounds including academia, softeware engineering, open source coding and newsroom development.
- Fellows who reflect the diversity of the communities they serve are strongly encouraged to apply.
Application process
- Initial review
- OpenNews staff review all of the applications and cull the batch to a manageable number for the news partners to review.
- The news partners review this shorter list and submit a list of the five people they are most interested in learning more about.
- These semifinalists are contacted for interviews. Applicants who are not moving forward in the selection process are notified.
- Semifinalists
- Dan and Erika conduct short, standardized interviews with the semifinalists, asking a few questions that are about vision and skills/practical considerations.
- The notes from these interviews are submitted back to the news partners for review, and the news partners are able to pick their top three finalists from the entire pool of semifinalists, not just the five they initially submitted. (Last year there was a lot of crossover at this stage.)
- The semifinalists who are not moving forward are notified of their application status.
- Finalists
- The news organization and OpenNews has a much longer interview with each of that news organization’s top three candidates. This interview is a chance for the news partner and the finalist to learn more about each other and what to expect from a Fellowship at that news organization.
- In consultation with OpenNews and the news partners, the final Fellow selection is made for each news organization.
Applicants can apply online here.
For more information, visit 2015 Knight-Mozilla Fellow.
