Our Fellowship: how it started

Applications are now open for our Journalist Fellowships. But what’s the origin of the programme? The Thomson Reuters Foundation launched it back in 1983 and it has sponsored more than 200 Fellowships ever since.

Today, alongside other funders, TRF continues to support Journalist Fellows from across the world. Here are five they’ve sponsored recently and their impactful projects:

1. On discrediting journalists. Nigeria's Fisayo Soyombo worked on a project on how journalists around the world are facing coordinated discrediting campaigns. "Journalists play a critical role in holding powerful entities accountable. When discredited, the public loses a vital source of information," he wrote. | Read

2. On the coverage of missing people of colour. Britain's Charlie Brinkhurst-Cuff analysed journalists’ failures when covering missing people of colour and designed strategies to improve coverage. "Striving towards equitable coverage involves taking stock of the stories and individuals we are prone to cover excessively," she wrote. | Read

3. On philanthropy and journalism. Chile's Francisca Skoknic examined looming threat (and possible solutions) to foreign donor-funded journalism in Latin America. "The project explores new models for audience and university funding and the potential for funding aggregators to mitigate some recurring issues," she wrote. | Read

4. On strategic litigation. Poland's Patrycja Maciejewicz explored how newsrooms in Central and Eastern Europe can combat strategic litigation. Some of her takeaways are useful for journalists elsewhere. "Inform your audience once you get a SLAPP, report from the court, and make that story go global," she wrote. | Read

5. On citizen journalists. Myanmar's Thu Thu Aung exposed the challenges faced by citizen journalists in her country "Despite their critical role, they often work without adequate compensation, legal protection, or access to funding. Many rely on insufficient payments that do not reflect the risks", she wrote. | Read

_____

These are just five of the more than 200 Journalist Fellows sponsored by the Thomson Reuters Foundation since the launch of the programme in 1983. Back in 2023 we celebrated its 40th anniversary in an 3-day reunion we summarised in this piece.

Applications are now open for our Fellowships, with support from the Thomson Reuters Foundation and other funders. The deadline to apply is 13 Feb at midnight, UK time. Here are the key links:

• All you need to know on the programme
• How to apply