Sulzberger Executive Leadership Programme 2023 at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism (Scholarship available)

Deadline: November 21, 2022

Applications are open for the Sulzberger Executive Leadership Programme 2023 at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. The Sulzberger Executive Leadership Programme trains leaders of the world’s most respected news organizations and promising media start-ups to lead innovation and solve strategic business challenges in a time of rapid transformation, uncertainty, and opportunity.

Fellows use the 21-week programme to launch, accelerate, and implement a real-world project that is critical to the mission of their organizations and integrated into their day-to-day work. The programme begins with a two-week intensive at Columbia Journalism School January 2-13, 2023. Fellows then return to their organizations to immediately implement what they learned and are supported through a weekly virtual cohort meeting and one-on-one coaching. The programme culminates back at Columbia for a final week-long intensive, including final project presentations, May 22-26, 2023.

Programme Details

• Week 1: The programme begins with a five-day immersive project-based Venture Design Bootcamp at their New York City campus. Over the course of the week, fellows form small teams and build a new venture from scratch, learning both the process of building a business as well as the elements that need to come together to make a venture successful. This experiential learning also begins to turn a group of strangers into a cohort built on trust and authenticity that extends well beyond the course.
• Week 2: The programme moves from the bootcamp model into workshops, case studies, and guest speaker events that dive deeper into concepts introduced in the first week. Led by Columbia Journalism and Business School faculty, topics include: Leadership, Interpersonal Dynamics, Marketing, Strategy, Negotiations, and Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion. Week Two ends with their first Design Review, where Fellows are able to fail fast and get feedback on their projects from the other members of the cohort.
• Weeks 3-20: Fellows return to their newsrooms and begin to apply the lessons learned. The fellows complete two-week sprints, in which they interrogate, test, and apply learnings to their own projects, using the same set of topics that they used in week one. Fellows have a weekly virtual meeting that rotates between getting feedback on their project deliverables and having intimate conversations with industry leaders. Fellows also have one-on-one coaching sessions with the Director.
• Week 21: The final week is back in New York City for final project presentations that prepare the fellows to seek support and resources from key stakeholders at their organizations. Fellows also visit with senior leaders at various NYC-based journalism institutions to see how the concepts they have learned throughout the course are applied in C-level roles.

Scholarship

• Tuition is $20,000 for the complete programme. Fees include course training, daily breakfast and lunches, and a few group dinners during the residency weeks.
• Google News Initiative is sponsoring four scholarships for leaders from groups typically underrepresented in journalism to attend the 2022 Sulzberger Executive Leadership Programme at Columbia Journalism School. Any leader in journalism across the world who self-identifies as being from a group typically underrepresented in journalism is eligible to apply. This scholarship covers tuition as well as travel costs to New York City for the residency weeks. 

Eligibility

• Open to senior and rising newsroom and business-of-news practitioners.
• Fellows come from a wide variety of news organizations, from the U.S. and internationally. They encourage organizations interested in fostering multidisciplinary collaboration to consider sending a team. 
• They strongly encourage nominations of rising leaders from groups typically underrepresented in journalism.

Application

Applications are now open and will be reviewed on a rolling basis. The final deadline is October 21, 2022. The cohort will be finalized no later than November 11, 2022. 

Click here to apply

For more information, visit Sulzberger Executive Leadership Programme.