President, Alfred Friendly Press Partners
Alfred Friendly Press Partners Fellowship Opportunities are now open toearly-career professional journalists from developing countries with proficiency in English to apply for a six-month fellowship. It provides fellows with basic and advanced hands-on instruction at the Missouri School of Journalism and places them in leading U.S. newsrooms.
Eligible journalists are those who are between 25 and 35 years old and have at least three years of experience as a journalist at a print, online or broadcast media outlet. Fellows work as staff reporters in their host newsrooms and are required to develop training plans that they will implement when they return to their home newsrooms. The all-inclusive fellowship starts in mid-March and ends in early September. Deadline for submission of applications is August 31, 2021.
The Programme Goals of the Fellowship are: to provide the fellow with experience in reporting, writing, editing, producing and editorial decision-making that will enhance future professional performance; to expose the fellow to the technological changes that are occurring in the industry; to enable the fellow to gain a practical understanding of the function and significance of the free press in American society; to transfer knowledge gained on the program to colleagues at home; and to foster continuing ties between free press institutions and journalists in the United States and their counterparts in other countries.
The fellowship program begins with a three-week orientation and training seminar at the Missouri School of Journalism in Columbia,Missouri designed to prepare the fellows, both personally and professionally, for the challenges of living and working in the UnitedStates. At the middle of the program, fellows and staff come together to attend seminars focused on writing, editing, multimediareporting and investigative reporting/Computer Assisted Reporting. A final seminar in Washington allows them to compare and evaluatetheir experiences and discuss their impressions of the American media, and to learn and practice presentations to make in their homecountries to share what they’ve learned with colleagues.
The fellowship covers all costs of program-related international and domestic U.S. travel, health insurance and provides a monthlystipend to cover basic living expenses. It is highly recommended that fellows bring additional money
Interested journalists should download, fill and submit the Alfred Friendly Fellowship Application.
Convinced that a strong, free press is essential to the healthy functioning of a democracy, the late Alfred Friendly, a Pulitzer Prizewinningreporter and former managing editor of The Washington Post, conceived a fellowship programme that would both impart Americanjournalistic traditions and respond to worldwide interest in the dissemination of fair and accurate news. It was his beliefthat working side by side with reporters and editors is the best way to absorb the practical realities of journalism in America and theinstrumental role it plays in our society. Therefore, he created the programme that bears his name to immerse journalists in Americannewsrooms. Since 1984 the Alfred Friendly Press Partners has trained more than 300 journalists from 80+ countries.
For further information about the Fellowship, please visit https://presspartners.org/fellowship-applications/.
