Frances Ellen Watkins Harper Fellowship (US)

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper Fellows will spend a year working in reporting, audience engagement and product management roles with full-time salaries and benefits. Fellows are embedded in their respective teams and receive mentorship and professional development. They also provide career coaching to prepare fellows for their path after their fellowship.

The fellowship year kicks off in the fall with an opening retreat for new fellows, held in conjunction with a 19th event in a different city every year. Both new and outgoing fellows have the chance to connect and community build. New fellows have sessions that set them up for the year and beyond, like building influence and managing up, while outgoing fellows celebrate the end of their fellowship.

Tracks

• Their cohorts include three reporting fellows, one audience engagement fellow and one product management 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
  • 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, their callout for Black country music fans, or their roundup of Women’s History Month quotes from their current fellow cohort
    • Optimizing and distributing journalism across platforms — such as on their 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 their homepage, monitor real-time metrics and trending topics, and produce an article or newsletter
  • Fellows in the product management track should expect to gain more experience in:
    • Using design thinking to generate product ideas that meet audience needs, align with their mission and advance business goals
    • Defining new features and experiments to test on their products, including their website, newsletters and aggregation apps such as Apple News
    • Writing requirements and working with their technology team to test and ship products
    • Measuring and defining the impact of their features and experiments
    • Conducting user research and synthesizing learnings
    • Contribute to roadmapping and quarterly planning
    • Communicating goals and plans with stakeholders and triaging their feedback

Benefits

• $1,500 merit bonus midway through the fellowship
• $1,000 professional development stipend, which previous fellows have used to do online courses or attend journalism conferences
• $480 work-from-home stipend and $480 wellness stipend ($960 total) paid over the course of the year
• $100/month for coworking space membership (optional)
• Mac laptop, which fellows keep after the fellowship ($1,300-$1,500 value)
• Access to the fellowship’s hardship fund (up to $5,000 per fellow)
• Membership to the National Association of Black Journalists and attendance to their annual convention and career fair
• A mentor in their fellowship track through the Digital Women Leaders network

Eligibility Criteria

• 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 2025
  • 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

Application Requirements

• When submitting an application, prospective fellows will need to submit the following:
  • A cover letter explaining why you want to work at The 19th, how their mission aligns with your career goals and interests and what impact this fellowship program would have on your career goals
  • Your résumé
  • Relevant samples of your work

For more information, visit 19th News.