Deadline: January 31, 2024
Applications are open for the EJN Journalist Fellowship for Infrastructure Reporting in Lower Mekong 2024. The fellowship aims to equip mid-career journalists with training, mentoring, and story grants to report on infrastructural development and its impacts on the environment and human rights.
Participating journalists will also learn measures and strategies to mitigate potential physical and digital risks both they and the communities involved may face when reporting on this theme. Via a hybrid workshop (10 hours online and two days in-person) in March 2024 and subsequent story grants, the fellowship aims to strengthen journalists’ knowledge and skills to produce engaging and impactful stories on infrastructural development while ensuring a Do No Harm approach when engaging and reporting on individuals and communities.
Grant
- To equip journalists with the skills to not only investigate the environmental and human rights impacts of infrastructure development in their communities but also to do so safely, EJN’s STRIDES project is running a hybrid training program. EJN will select 15 journalists who will take part in a series of online training sessions (8-10 hours over five days) and a two-day in-person workshop in March 2024. EJN will cover the cost of travel, accommodation, and meals of selected participants.
- Participants who successfully complete the training will subsequently be eligible to apply to receive story grants (with an average budget of $2,000 each) and be closely mentored by experts as they research and investigate their stories. They expect the stories to be completed by September 2024.
- Each selected journalist will be paired with an EJN senior journalist who will act as a mentor throughout the story development process. Participants will also receive support through the resources and tools made available via the STRIDES online knowledge portal.
Eligibility
Participants can be from Thailand, Laos PDR, Myanmar, Cambodia, or Vietnam. They especially encourage early- and mid-career journalists, as well as women and Indigenous journalists, to apply.
Applicants must:
- Commit to attending all days of both the online and in-person workshops.
- Have at least two years of experience reporting on infrastructure and/or environmental topics in any medium (online, print, television, radio) from all types of media organizations – international, national, local and community-based.
- Understand and be able to communicate in English. For the purposes of this training opportunity, we will only be accepting applications in English. Unfortunately, we do not have the capacity to consider applications in other languages at this time. Applicants must either have a working understanding of English or have a translator available to assist with communication with Internews staff.
- Permit republication by EJN of any output as a result of participation in the fellowship.
Applicants are required to be transparent about the use of generative AI tools, if any, in the development of their proposals.
Expectations
- Fellows will be expected to dedicate the minimum equivalent of two days per week to fellowship activities, which may include but is not limited to story production, full attendance at the initial online and in-person workshops, and calls with mentors.
- Fellows are expected to produce at least one story during the course of the fellowship for their media outlet. Journalists can produce stories in local languages suitable for target communities, but all stories should also be made available in English.
- Each Fellow will be required to participate in monitoring and evaluation activities including completion of surveys and will be asked to submit a blog post at the end of their fellowship speaking about their experience.
Application
The application deadline is January 31, 2024 at 11:59 PM, Asia/Bangkok (UTC +07).
For more information, visit EJN Journalist Fellowship.
