Application Form (PDF)
Editor Story/Project Checklist (PDF)
What’s Included:
The California Endowment Health Journalism Fellowships will cover all expenses for travel, lodging, facilities, meals, educational and social activities, and course materials for participating fellows in the California Health Journalism Fellowships. The program also provides travel, lodging and meals for fellows' editors or news directors for the special Editor/Fellow Workshop October 25-26, 2008. (To learn more about costs for our joint conference with Investigative Reporters and Editors, click here.)
What’s Required:
The Fellowship program will only review completed applications endorsed by a sponsoring news organization. Freelance journalists must submit written confirmation of a news organization’s commitment to publish or air the work resulting from the fellowship. In choosing fellows, we consider each candidate’s professional accomplishments, individual and organizational commitment, and fellowship statement.
During the Editor/Fellow Workshop, journalists will discuss their works-in-progress with their assigning editor, producer or news director and other California Endowment Fellows. Fellows must agree to treat other fellows' works-in-progress as confidential.
Fellowship Terms:
All Fellows are expected to:
- Attend all required workshops.
- Participate in a "community of fellows" during workshop sessions.
- Join our evolving online community.
- Complete several health-related stories, or a health care reporting project that draws upon learning experiences in the program.
- Disseminate information from the seminars to colleagues.
- Serve as a mentor and resource to our program as we reach out to other journalists interested in improving multicultural health care reporting.
What to Submit:
Please submit
THREE COPIES of each of the following items:
- Completed application form
- Current resume
- Fellowship statement
- Letter from your sponsoring news organization
- Signed checklist from your supervising editor/producer
- Three samples of your professional work
Fellowship Statement
- Please summarize three ideas for individual stories or one idea for a major health care reporting project that you would pursue as part of the fellowship. Use 750 to 1000 words. Note that in making our decisions about participants, we will look for story descriptions that are in-depth and indicate that the applicant has already done some preliminary research and explored the topic with a supervisor (or, in the case of freelancers, an assigning editor or producer for the target publication or broadcast outlet.)
- Please explain why you are interested in attending the seminars (no more than 500 words.)
- Please tell us about the types of health care stories you currently cover or would like to cover, and assess the quality of health care coverage in your community (in no more than 500 words.)
Letter from your sponsoring news organization
Please supply a letter of reference from your editor or news director that discusses your abilities and potential as a journalist. Your news organization must also commit in writing to pay your salary for the time spent at our seminars. Your editor or news director should also inform us of whether he or she plans to attend our all expenses-paid Editor/Fellow Workshop, which will be held
October 25-26, 2008.
The letter should also confirm the following:
- That you have discussed your proposed fellowship story ideas with an assigning editor, and
- That the news outlet expects to publish or air fellowship stories that meet its standards and that are approved by an assigning editor.
Freelancers should submit a letter of reference from a news organization that will commit to publish or air fellowship stories that meet its standards.
Checklist from your assigning editor/producer
Please complete and present to your immediate editor/supervisor for his or her signature.
Three samples of your professional work
Submit three samples of your best work. Look for pieces that demonstrate your intellectual curiosity, your grasp of complex issues, and your writing skills. Samples of stories in languages other than English or Spanish do not have to be translated, although each story should be accompanied by a two-paragraph summary in English.
Print: Samples can be from archives and do not need to be original copies.
Editor Applicants: Please submit samples of projects you supervised and edited, along with an explanation of your role in shaping the stories.
Broadcasters: Please submit stories on VHS tape or DVD that run no more than 30 minutes in total time, with explanatory material as needed.
Online Journalists: Please submit printouts of work samples, along with the URLs and dates the stories appeared.
Send three copies of ALL application materials by June 27, 2008 to:
The California Endowment Health Journalism Fellowships
USC Annenberg School for Communication
One California Plaza
300 South Grand Avenue, Suite 3950
Los Angeles, CA 90071
For more information, please contact:Joyce Inouye
Phone: (213) 437-4419
Fax: (213) 437-4424
E-mail:
calendow@usc.edu