Report for America, Investigative Editing Corps launch pilot project

  • March 22, 2021

Published 9/17/2020 | Updated 3/22/2021

Report for America has joined forces with Investigative Editing Corps to pilot a program that will pair experienced editors with emerging journalists to do investigative and watchdog reporting for local newsrooms

“Newsrooms across the country tell us that the lack of editors is just as bad as the lack of reporters,” said Kim Kleman, national director of Report for America. “We’re grateful that these two newsrooms and the Investigative Editing Corps are helping us test a model for our corps members’ ambitious enterprise work.”

The program recognizes that communities value investigative reporting but rounds of staff cuts have left many local news organizations without the editors needed to bring such successful investigative work to fruition. Report for America and IEC will share the cost of the editors’ stipend. There is no cost to the newsroom. 

“This pilot project is another way that journalists are banding together to help local news thrive,” said Rose Ciotta, executive director and founder of Investigative Editing Corps. “The goals of Report for America and Investigative Editing Corps are perfectly aligned. We both value local investigative reporting and the need to help struggling local news organizations.”

Investigative Editing Corps was launched last fall with funding from the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation and now has editors working with six local news groups from North Carolina to California. It was founded in 2017 with support from the Jim Bettinger News Innovation Fund at the John S. Knight Journalism Fellowships at Stanford University. A veteran journalist, Ciotta is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative editor who co-edited “Assault on Learning,” an investigation into violence in the Philadelphia schools that won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize Gold Medal for Public Service for The Philadelphia Inquirer. She is the investigations and projects editor at EdSource, an education news web site based in Oakland, Ca.  

Report for America, an initiative of The GroundTruth Project, is a national service program that places journalists into local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues including education, local government, poverty, criminal justice, environment and health. Here is a list of supporters.

To learn more about Report for America and its efforts to strengthen communities through public service journalism, please visit www.reportforamerica.org. If you are interested in partnering with Report for America, please write to info@reportforamerica.org.

About Report for America: Report for America is a national service program that places talented emerging journalists in local news rooms to report on under-covered topics and communities. Launched in 2017 and donor-financed, Report for America is creating a new, sustainable system that provides Americans with the information they need to improve their communities, hold powerful institutions accountable, and rebuild trust in the media. Report for America is an initiative of The GroundTruth Project, a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. GroundTruth is an award-winning nonprofit media organization with an established track record of training and supporting teams of emerging journalists around the world and in the US.