Frances Ellen Watkins Harper Fellowship

Job Description

About the program

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper Fellows will spend a year working in reporting, audience engagement, product or technology roles with full-time salaries and benefits, made possible by the generous support of Michelle Mercer and Bruce Golden. Fellows will receive on-the-job training, mentorship and professional development opportunities. We also provide career coaching to prepare fellows for their path after their fellowship.

 

Fellowship tracks

Our cohorts include three reporting fellows, one audience engagement fellow and one product & technology fellow.

Fellows in the reporting track should expect to gain more experience in:

• Covering issues deeply through original reporting, researched context and nuanced framing
• Pitching stories they want to follow through the lens of equity and representation
• Identifying and developing areas of expertise within their reporting
• Exploring storytelling across digital platforms and in-person events
• Centering the voices and experiences of people on the margins, who are often affected the most at the intersections of gender and policy

See stories reported on by our 2023-2024 and 2022-2023 fellows.

Fellows in the audience engagement track should expect to gain more experience in:

• Finding, pitching, producing and reporting out audience-centric stories that live first and foremost on off-platform channels like Instagram. For example, our callout for Black country music fans, or our roundup of Women’s History Month quotes from our current fellow cohort
• Optimizing and distributing journalism across platforms — such as on our site, via search, on social and in newsletters — to meet different audiences where they are
• Crafting accurate, compelling headlines, social and newsletter copy, and visuals on deadline
• Working with different roles across editorial, audio, event and product teams to execute on audience engagement projects
• Using key newsroom platforms and tools to draft and schedule social media posts, update our homepage, monitor real-time metrics and trending topics, and produce an article or newsletter

Fellows in the product and technology track should expect to gain more experience in:

• A specific engineering focus, building on existing skills in PHP and/or WordPress development, front-end engineering in HTML, CSS and JavaScript or data science quantitative analysis
• Testing product feasibility, writing technical requirements and estimating timelines
• Collaborating with engineers, product designers, researchers and managers to build, test and launch new features for products, like our website, republishing tools, apps like Apple News, and revenue and audience databases. For example, our current fellow built analytics dashboards for staff.
• Communicating about technical progress, roadblocks and tradeoffs in a way that is understandable for non-technical stakeholders
• Making technical decisions based on factors like ethics, security, performance and accessibility

Who can apply

Eligible candidates should be any one of the following:

• A recent graduate (within two years of graduation), early-career (three to four years’ experience) or mid-career alum (5-10 years’ experience) of a Historically Black College or University
• A graduating senior of a Historically Black College College or University with a graduation date prior to the anticipated fellowship start date of October 2024
• An individual who attended a Historically Black College or University for at least two years, and either transferred or did not graduate
• All applicants must be legally authorized to work in the United States. This can include conditional student/work visas, provided The 19th will not be required to take additional steps in sponsorship

Eligible candidates should also have the following:

• Some relevant experience in their chosen fellowship track
• A genuine interest in growing their career in journalism
• Alignment with The 19th’s values and community guidelines

How to apply

Click here to apply. Applications are due on May 31, 2024, at 5 p.m. CT.

When submitting an application, prospective fellows will need to submit the following:

• A cover letter explaining why you want to work at The 19th, and what impact this fellowship program would have on your career goals
• Your résumé
• Relevant samples of your work

Feel free to reach out to jobs@19thnews.org if you have any questions.

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