How Our Journalism Creators Program is Taking Flight
By: Jeremy Caplan
Tags: Passion Economy, Journalism Education, Journalism Innovation, Entrepreneurship, Journalism

How Our Journalism Creators Program is Taking Flight

Launching our 100-day online-only pilot program

I’m excited to share that today we’ve invited 20 journalism innovators to join us from around the world, selected from a stellar application pool for the first iteration of our new Journalism Creators Program. We received 163 applications from 56 distinct countries. Here’s our official announcement with the participant bios.

Our cohort includes a Marine Corps Veteran, a former NPR Executive Producer, an LA Times Arts Reporter, a former NYC Media Lab director, a restorative justice pioneer, two TEDx speakers, an anthropologist and others developing niche independent projects. Many are focused on market gaps ignored by larger media organizations.

65% of the accepted cohort is female

60% are people of color

The accepted candidates come from all over the world:

7 from the US including three from New York City

the including three from New York City 5 from Europe including Germany, Switzerland and Turkey

including Germany, Switzerland and Turkey 4 from Asia including Hong Kong, Singapore and India

including Hong Kong, Singapore and India Plus Brazil, Mexico, Qatar and Tanzania

An emerging ecosystem

Our new Journalism Creators program is part of a burgeoning ecosystem made up of creators themselves, supportive journalism organizations, and emerging platforms that provide publishing infrastructure for independents. Funders supporting nascent efforts also play a crucial role—providing room for experimentation.

Anchored by a new generation of creators opting out of larger organizations, the ecosystem is strengthened by institutions like the Local Independent Online News Publishers network (LION), the Institute for Nonprofit News (INN), the new News Product Alliance, and so many other journalism institutions now making a habit of sharing toolkits, best practices, case studies and other practical resources.

Emerging platforms are another key element empowering creators to focus on serving communities directly. Substack, Pico, Patreon, Kickstarter, Steady, Anchor, Glow, Supercast, Memberful, Medium, Subtext and many others enable creators to set up direct financial relationships with readers, listeners, viewers, and members.

This word cloud illustrates terms that frequently appeared in application responses

Whereas in 2010 many of the applicants to our then in-person entrepreneurial program expressed a sense of curiosity and excitement about journalism innovation, our 2020 pool exhibited a clear passion for overhauling career trajectories.

This fall’s applicant pool was so strong that we could have accepted a full second cohort of outstanding professionals. We’re starting with a small initial group for this pilot as we experiment with creative new approaches to flexible remote learning. We’ll invite applications in January for a second cohort, followed by a third next fall. Our founding objective, as outlined in my post about planting the seeds for a new era of entrepreneurial journalism, remains to support independent journalists in creating new products and services, in particular those reaching underserved communities.

If you’d like to follow along with the 100-day program that begins October 13, join our newsletter list for periodic updates. Or follow this Twitter list of the participants. And if you have ideas for collaborating on this effort to strengthen the new journalism creators ecosystem, please be in touch: jeremy.caplan@journalism.cuny.edu. We’d love to continue expanding our network of partners.