Propose a Project
The Knight International Journalism Fellowships program sends top media experts to targeted countries around the world to lead projects that have a lasting and tangible impact on journalists, media organizations and societies as a whole.
The International Center for Journalists welcomes Knight Fellowship project ideas. While training journalists and media managers is part of what Knight Fellows do, it is not their only task. Project proposals must include plans for long-term, tangible changes beyond providing journalists with new information and skills.
Examples:
- The project will create an association of investigative journalists and a web site with tools and databases to help them generate more and better news in the public interest.
- The project will help rural community radio stations share stories on key issues such as health, environment and small businesses via a digital platform that builds capacity and expands coverage.
- The project will develop audience research techniques to help the country’s media organizations tailor content to citizens’ interests, sell more advertising and thereby increase financial sustainability.
Project proposals should answer the following questions:
- What are the short-term goals of the project? What do you expect to change while the project is under way on the level of individual journalists, the media, or society?
- What are the long-term goals of the project? What will be different in the country’s media or in society as a whole because the project took place?
- Is the project taking advantage of a new opportunity such as an election or a change in law in the target country, and if so what is that opportunity? How will the country’s legal, political and economic environment encourage or impede better journalism that can improve the way people live?
- How will the project take advantage of new technologies or new models designed to help citizens share information?
- What is the Knight Fellow’s role in the project? How much of a leadership role will the Knight Fellow take?
- What skills will the Knight Fellow need to lead the project? What languages must he or she speak?
- What other resources are needed to make the project happen? Who will provide those resources? What will you or your organization provide?
- How do you propose to measure whether the project has been successful?