J-School Opens Competition for Investigative Reporting Fellowships

The Investigative Reporting Program (IRP) at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism is accepting entries for its prestigious yearlong fellowships.

The Investigative Reporting Program has hosted the nation’s leading post-graduate fellowships in investigative reporting since 2007. The one-of-a-kind program, founded by Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Lowell Bergman, is open to all working journalists, with preference given to J-School alums.

Up to three fellows will be selected for the 2016-17 program. The fellowships provide a year’s salary of $56,000 plus $10,000 in reporting and travel expenses to enable journalists to report on complex stories in the public interest. The IRP provides logistical support and editorial guidance, and helps facilitate wide exposure for finished stories.

This year’s fellowships are made possible by a core grant from the Sandler Foundation, along with donations from Margaret and Will Hearst, George Zimmer, Peter Wiley and Valerie Barth, Scott and Jennifer Fearon, and Glenn Simpson.

“The resources news organizations make available to identify and train the next generation of reporters have disappeared. That’s why our fellowship program is so important to the public interest,” said Professor Bergman, who holds the Reva and David Logan Distinguished Chair in Investigative Journalism. “The donors to this program provide the resources for our fellows to pursue stories without fear or favor.”

The fellowship program has helped launch the careers of more than a dozen investigative reporters, among them J-School alum Jonathan Jones (’05), who used his 2008-09 fellowship to investigate Firestone Tire and Rubber Co.’s history in Liberia. The story became the basis of a documentary produced with PBS Frontline and ProPublica, which aired on PBS and won a handful of prestigious awards including two Emmy awards, a Robert F. Kennedy Award, an IRE Award, an Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism and an Overseas Press Club citation.

The catalogue of distinguished work that the fellowships have made possible is extensive:

Filmmaker Caitlin McNally (’13-14) won an Online Journalism Award for her PBS Frontline documentary “Stickup Kid,” while author Daniel AlarcÌ_n (’12-13) received the Pen Center USA Award in the journalism category for “The Contestant,” which was published in The California Sunday Magazine.

Filmmaker Katie Galloway, another former fellow, produced a film titled “Better This World” about two young men from Midland, Texas, charged with domestic terrorism and their relationship with a radical mentor and undercover FBI informant. Galloway’s film won the Writers Guild of America’s Best Documentary Screenplay Award, Best Documentary at the Gotham Independent Film Awards, and an International Documentary Association Creative Recognition Award.

An IRP investigation with NBC News and The Virginian-Pilot, reported by 2015-16 IRP fellows Jason Paladino and Mike Hixenbaugh, revealed serious mechanical problems with an aging U.S. Navy helicopter. This report prompted the Navy to ground its Sea Dragon helicopters for seven months while crews scrambled to repair thousands of faulty wires and fuel lines.

An ongoing investigation by 2014-16 IRP fellows, Anabel HernÌÁndez and Steve Fisher (’14), challenged the Mexican government’s version of the disappearance, and presumed massacre of 43 students in Iguala. Contrary to the official version, which blamed the killings on a local mayor and a drug cartel, the IRP found that federal police and the military were involved. Their conclusion has been widely cited in Mexico and internationally.

Investigative reporter Trevor Aaronson (’10-11) authored “The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI’s Manufactured War on Terror,” an outgrowth of his award-winning cover story in Mother Jones magazine. His corresponding TED Talk, “How this FBI strategy is actually creating US-based terrorists,” has been viewed more than one million times.

Ryan Gabrielson (’09-10) used his fellowship to produce a multimedia, multi-outlet project, with a print story in The New York Times and an accompanying video “Police Checkpoints: Safety or Profit?” on the Times website. The Center for Investigative Reporting’s “California Watch” edited versions of the story for the Sacramento Bee, the Orange County Register, Mother Jones, the Bakersfield Californian, the Stockton Record, Alternet, New America Media and in La Opinion. The PBS NewsHour aired the broadcast version of Gabrielson’s investigation, “DUI Checkpoints Meet Rising Skepticism.”

In 2011, Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill intended to reduce the number of vehicles police seize at sobriety checkpoints. The law was prompted by Gabrielson’s investigation that examined how these checkpoints have become a moneymaker for cities at the expense of undocumented immigrants.

Other IRP fellows’ work has appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, The Atlantic, Newsweek, NPR, the PBS NewsHour, The Wall Street Journal, The Nation, National Geographic, Wired and other outlets.

In addition to reporting their own investigative stories, IRP fellows mentor graduate students at the J-School and undergraduates working at the student newspaper The Daily Californian. Students are regularly recruited to work on fellows’ projects, conducting research and fact-checking.

“The longevity of this unique fellowship program–nearly a decade–is unusual all by itself,” said Ed Wasserman, dean of the Graduate School of Journalism. “On top of its duration, it has compiled an exceptional record of enabling top-notch journalists to deliver consistently great work.”

Two former fellows are now staff members of the IRP: 2010-11 fellow Tim McGirk is the IRP’s managing editor, and 2009-10 fellow Zachary Stauffer has stayed on as a producer/lecturer.

Those interested are invited to apply here by Feb. 19. The one-year appointments will begin in August.