Deadline: 21 March 2025
The Rideau Hall Foundation is seeking applications for its Norman Webster Scholarship Program to amplify Canada’s small newsroom ecosystems, recognize their vital role in the social fabric of the country, enable them to maintain their journalistic autonomy, and support diversity of voices and opinions.
Designed to meet the needs of current Canadian journalism, the program will also provide opportunities for early-career journalists to innovate and gain experience. While the program themes may change from year to year in consultation with judges, stakeholders, past recipients and newsroom members, the overarching focus will remain on public service journalism.
They will offer them the opportunity to produce a unique story or series of stories, support emerging journalists, or even partner with a national media outlet to increase the impact of their work. All stories produced through the Norman Webster Fellowship program will be translated into French or English, as appropriate, to broaden their reach.
Funding Information
- Two grants of up to $125,000 (one for English-language media and one for French-language media) will be awarded every two years to local, independent Canadian newsrooms.
Selection Criteria
- Must be a local and independent written, audiovisual or digital media. All forms of reporting (text, photos, illustrations, video, audio) are permitted.
- The project must be investigative in nature, have a strong focus on public service journalism and aim to make a noticeable difference in the community.
- The application must include hiring at least one early-career journalist (with 2-6 years of experience) to lead or participate in an investigation, cover a new story, or perform day-to-day newsroom duties to allow an in-house journalist to do the proposed story. Newsrooms will be responsible for assigning/hiring this individual.
- The project may be new or already in preparation.
Eligibility Criteria
- To apply for the Norman Webster Fellowship Program, you must be a newsroom manager and have authority over the proposed journalism project.
- They will give preference to local, non-partisan media organizations that are based in Canada and serve small and medium-sized communities (grants will not be awarded to a national media outlet).
- They define local media organizations as news organizations that remain independent of the topics they cover, that pride themselves on being rigorous and transparent in their reporting, and that are primarily dedicated to covering communities within a specific geographic area.
- Preference will also be given to organizations that would not normally have access to the resources necessary to carry out the proposed journalism project.
For more information, visit Rideau Hall Foundation.
