Accept the Challenge to Build Vibrant, Community-Centered Journalism
Journalism is a cornerstone of democracy and essential to an informed citizenry. As local news outlets across the U.S. and in the Great Lakes region have disappeared, communities have lost access to reliable information, weakening civic engagement and trust.
Responding to this urgent need, Wallace House Center for Journalists launched the Great Lakes Local News Fellowship in 2024 with a $1 million challenge grant from the Michigan-based Song Foundation and a $280,000 matching grant from the Illinois-based Joyce Foundation. This challenge is a call to others who believe in the power of local journalism to join us in sustaining and expanding this work. Together, we are collaborating with philanthropic partners across the Great Lakes region to establish a $5 million fund within the next five years — an investment in the future of local news.
“We believe that collective investments are urgently needed to preserve local journalism and ensure residents of the Great Lakes region have access to credible information to help guide their engagement and advocacy.” –Khalilah Burt Gaston, Executive Director of the Song Foundation
About the Great Lakes Local News Fellowship
This specialized Knight-Wallace Fellowship supports journalists working to launch or rebuild local news in Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin. Through access to the professional schools, faculty and resources at the University of Michigan, Great Lakes Local News Fellows pursue ambitious journalism projects and receive hands-on guidance in entrepreneurship, business, law and organizational development. Fellows also receive a $90,000 stipend, health insurance for the academic year and post-fellowship support to help bring their entrepreneurial journalism projects to life.
Meet the 2025-2026 Inaugural Fellows
Elizabeth Jensen Press Forward Northern Michigan Jensen consults on journalism ethics and standards and serves as the co-chair of Press Forward Northern Michigan, an organization dedicated to supporting local journalism in the region. She will focus on developing strategies to bring together new and existing newsrooms across 23 mostly rural counties in Northern Michigan.
Irene Romulo Cicero Independiente Romulo is co-founder of Cicero Independiente, a bilingual newsroom that reports with and for the majority immigrant community of Cicero, Illinois. Her fellowship work will explore how to grow and sustain community-owned, community-powered newsrooms.
Help Build the Future of Local News
If you believe in the necessity of local journalism to strengthen communities, we invite you to join the Song Foundation, The Joyce Foundation and Wallace House in rising to this challenge. Together, we can build a future where vibrant, community-centered journalism thrives across the Great Lakes.
Contact Wallace House Director Lynette Clemetson to learn how your partnership can help sustain and grow this vital work.
About The Song Foundation
The Song Foundation, inspired by Southeast Michigan’s spirit of progress and creative risk-taking, supports ideas, people, and organizations that further its shared vision of an equitable, thriving community. It embraces disruptors and amplifies the signal of people already working, every day to create opportunities for neighbors in need and to foster economic, social, environmental, and cultural wealth—community wealth—for a more free, prosperous, and joyful future. song.foundation
About The Joyce Foundation
The Joyce Foundation is a private, nonpartisan philanthropy that invests in public policies and strategies to advance racial equity and economic mobility for the next generation in the Great Lakes region. joycefdn.org
About Wallace House Center for Journalists
Wallace Center for Journalists at the University of Michigan is committed to fostering excellence in journalism. We are home to programs that recognize, sustain and elevate the careers of journalists to address the challenges of journalism today, foster civic engagement and uphold the role of a free press in a democratic society. We believe in the fundamental mission of journalism to document, interpret, analyze and investigate the forces shaping society.
Wallace House Center for Journalists and the University of Michigan today announced the Knight-Wallace Journalism Fellows for the 2025-2026 academic year. This incoming cohort of 18 accomplished journalists — from eight countries and across the United States — represents the 52nd class of Fellows in our program’s history.
Over the course of the academic year, the Knight-Wallace Journalism Fellows will pursue ambitious projects exploring pressing issues including climate change and migration; political and institutional mistrust; equity and access in housing and healthcare; and community-engaged journalism. In addition to their individual research, they will work collaboratively in regular seminars and workshops with scholars, innovators, journalism leaders, and social changemakers.
“At a time when both journalism and higher education are facing unprecedented challenges, our mission to provide accomplished journalists the time and support to focus on in-depth inquiry is especially clear and vital,” said Lynette Clemetson, Director of Wallace House. “It can be difficult in moments of great tumult to pull up and seek perspective. And yet it is essential, alongside our more immediate responses. We are privileged to provide our Fellows with the resources to explore complex, broad-ranging issues. The benefits of their pursuits will extend long term to the communities and audiences they seek to reach.”
In addition to the academic and intellectual resources provided, Fellows receive a living stipend, health insurance and relocation and logistical support to enable them to participate in the residential program and prioritize their fellowship research for the academic year. Fellows will reside in the Ann Arbor area and enjoy collaborative workshops and bi-weekly seminars at Wallace House, a gift from the late newsman Mike Wallace and his wife Mary, and the program’s home base.
Among the 2025-2026 class are four journalists selected for newly created fellowships in areas critical to the future of journalism. These dedicated fellowships — an expansion of our long-standing program — are designed to revitalize local news in the Great Lakes region, strengthen reporting tied to data and social science research, and support arts journalism and criticism. The journalists awarded these fellowships are Tim Alberta of The Atlantic, the James S. House and Wendy Fisher House Social Science Fellow; Elizabeth Jensen of Press Forward Northern Michigan and Irene Romulo of Cicero Independiente, Great Lakes Local News Fellows; and Brittany Moseley of Signal, Akron, the Knight-Wallace Arts Journalism Fellow.
Wallace House’s Knight-Wallace Fellowship program is funded through endowment gifts from foundations, news organizations, individuals and ongoing contributions from funders committed to journalism’s role in fostering an informed and engaged public.
The 2025-2026 Knight-Wallace Fellows and Their Journalism Projects:
Tim Alberta is a journalist, author and staff writer for The Atlantic. As a joint Social Science Fellow with the university’s Institute for Social Research, he will examine how cynicism, misinformation, and populism have, over decades, combined to usher in a new, post-trust society.
David de Jong is a Middle East correspondent for Het Financieele Dagblad, the Netherlands’s premier business newspaper. He will investigate how Michigan’s Dutch-American business dynasties influence U.S. education policy.
Ismail Einashe is a journalist and author whose work on migration and refugee issues has appeared in numerous publications, including The Guardian, Foreign Policy and BBC News. He will examine migration reporting by studying the intersection of the science of trauma and the various creative forms journalists can use in their storytelling.
Heidi Groover is a real estate reporter for The Seattle Times, where her coverage of the region’s housing crisis spans market trends, land-use debates, eviction proceedings and more. She will study the ways that the vanishing American dream will change our communities for generations to come.
Katelyn Harrop is an independent multimedia journalist who most recently worked as a senior producer at WBUR, Boston’s NPR station. She will research how local newsrooms can sustainably leverage on-demand audio as a tool to reach new audiences and increase audience diversity.
Elizabeth Jensen is the co-chair of Press Forward Northern Michigan, an organization working to support local journalism in the region. As a Great Lakes Local News Fellow, Jensen will research strategies to support regional news networks, focusing on organizational structures, platforms and diversified business models.
Hyeonjun Lee is a reporter at Korea’s public broadcast network, KBS, with experience covering both the ruling and opposition parties. He will research U.S. media strategies for leveraging Artificial Intelligence, to deepen his understanding of the fast-changing landscape for broadcast media.
Ashish Malhotra is a producer for Al Jazeera English, where he has spent close to a decade in various roles for the channel’s television and digital departments. He will examine a variety of audio genres, particularly sports podcasts, to understand how they bring people together and make them feel part of a larger community.
Rosem Morton is a freelance documentary photographer, whose work has been featured in National Geographic, The Washington Post, NPR and CNN. She will expand an immersive online platform that uses collaborative multimedia storytelling to foster connection, healing and empowerment for survivors of gender-based violence.
Brittany Moseley is the culture and arts reporter for Signal Akron, a nonprofit newsroom in Northeast Ohio that fuses community building with local news reporting. As a joint fellow with the University of Michigan Arts Initiative, she will study the successes and shortcomings of public funding for the arts and the impact that well-funded art programs have on American cities.
Tenzin Pema is the director of Radio Free Asia’s Tibetan service, where she oversees reporting on Tibet through various formats and platforms. She will investigate China’s multi-pronged strategy to suppress Tibet’s cultural, linguistic and historical identity.
Nidhi Prakash is a journalist focused on accountability, politics and the environment, who worked as an environment reporter for POLITICO and a White House reporter for BuzzFeed News. She will research stories of the impact of climate change on low-income areas, exploring economic and infrastructural issues, conflicts driven by resource scarcity and ground-level resilience.
Clavel Rangel Jimenez is a journalist covering labor unions, migration, human rights, climate, corruption and extractive industries in Venezuela and across the Americas, and co-founder of the Venezuelan Amazon Journalists Network. She will investigate how misinformation and partisan narratives have influenced the displacement and integration of Venezuelan migrants in the U.S.
Irene Romulo is the co-founder of Cicero Independiente, an award-winning, bilingual newsroom that reports with and for the majority immigrant community of Cicero, Illinois. As a Great Lakes Local News Fellow, she will explore how to build, expand and sustain a community-owned newsroom that serves as an information, teaching and gathering space for her community and beyond.
Simone Sebastian is a newsroom leader and founding editorial director of Capital B, a nonprofit news organization dedicated to uncovering important stories about how Black people experience America today. She will explore the gaps in postpartum medical care that have created a silent epidemic of pain, discomfort and life-threatening complications among women in the United States.
Jędrzej Slodkowski is a reporter, editor and deputy head of the culture section for Gazeta Wyborcza, Poland’s largest newspaper. He will explore approaches to journalistic coverage of migration that minimize prejudices yet honestly address the problems and challenges.
Sarah Souli is an independent journalist reporting across the Mediterranean whose work has appeared in The Atavist, The Economist, POLITICO, The Guardian, Vice Magazine, Condé Nast Traveler and others. Focusing on migrant movement across the Mediterranean, Souli will research narrative structures and historic methodologies that can contribute to more holistic reporting about migration in the region.
Nina Weingrill is the co-founder and former director of Énos, one of Brazil’s first civic media organizations. She will explore sustainable models for building local information ecosystems, focusing on the role of civic actors—such as public health workers and grassroots organizations—in bridging gaps left by traditional media.
About Wallace House Center for Journalists Committed to fostering excellence in journalism, Wallace House at the University of Michigan is home to the Knight-Wallace Fellowships, the Livingston Awards and the Wallace House Presents event series, programs that recognize exceptional journalists for their work, leadership and potential. wallacehouse.umich.edu
In 1999, filmmaker Davy Rothbart gave nine-year-old Emmanual Sanford-Durant a camera. The boy and his family began filming their daily lives in America’s most dangerous neighborhood — just 17 blocks behind the U.S. Capitol. Together, Davy and the Sanfords kept filming and collaborating for 20 years. This critically acclaimed documentary illuminates a nation’s ongoing crisis through one family’s raw, stirring and deeply personal saga.
A native of Ann Arbor, Davy Rothbart is a 2024-25 Knight-Wallace Fellow, Emmy Award-winning filmmaker, bestselling author, journalist, creator of Found Magazine and frequent contributor to public radio’s “This American Life.”
His previous documentary “Medora,” about a resilient high-school basketball team in a dwindling Indiana town, based on The New York Times story by Pulitzer Prize winner John Branch, was executive produced by Steve Buscemi and Stanley Tucci, and premiered at the 2013 SXSW Film Festival.
Rothbart’s work has appeared in The New York Times, New York Magazine, The California Sunday Magazine, GQ and Grantland, while his stories on “This American Life” have amassed more than 30 million listeners. Rothbart is the author of the bestselling essay collection “My Heart Is an Idiot,” and he contributed writing to the Oscar-winning short “The Neighbor’s Window.” He is also the founder of Washington To Washington, an annual hiking adventure for kids from underserved communities.
Learn More About the Knight-Wallace Fellowships and Hear from our Alumni.
Are you ready to take the next step in your journalism career with a Knight-Wallace Fellowship? Join our webinar with alumni Delece Smith-Barrow ‘17 and Bernice Yeung ‘16 and learn how the fellowship helped propel their careers. Hear about their application and fellowship experiences, ask them your questions, and discover what a year in Ann Arbor at the University of Michigan can do for your life and journalism career.
Noon – 1 p.m. ET | Thursday, December 14. RSVP here to receive the Zoom link.
About the Speakers
Delece Smith-Barrow (2016-2017) is an Education Editor at Politico. As a Knight-Wallace Fellow she examined underrepresented minority faculty recruitment in top universities. With ample resources and time, she conducted extensive research and interviews to shed light on diversity, equity, and inclusion challenges in higher education.
Bernice Yeung (2015-2016) is Managing Editor with the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley School of Journalism. Yeung’s fellowship project explored how journalists can employ social science research methods in their reporting. During her fellowship, she conducted research that informed her award-winning book, “In a Day’s Work,” which investigated the sexual assault of immigrant farmworkers and female janitors.
Knight-Wallace Journalism Fellowship applications for the 2024-2025 academic year are open.
The deadline for U.S. applicants is February 1, 2024.
The University of Michigan Arts Initiative and the Wallace House Center for Journalists jointly announce the creation of a Knight-Wallace Arts Journalism Fellowship for the 2024-2025 academic year. This specialized fellowship is designed to underscore the importance of arts reporting and criticism in American journalism.
The Knight-Wallace Arts Journalism Fellowship will provide professional development opportunities and engagement with leading scholars, creators and innovators in the arts. The inaugural fellow will be a member of the Knight-Wallace Fellowship, now celebrating its 50th year, and a member of the University of Michigan’s campus-wide Arts Initiative, which seeks to illuminate and expand human connections, inspire collaborative creativity, and build a more just and equitable world through the arts.
The Knight-Wallace Arts Journalism Fellowship emerges as a crucial lifeline for art journalists as arts reporting positions are disappearing nationwide.
“By adding this dedicated Arts Journalism Fellowship, Wallace House affirms the importance of coverage of artists and the work they create to enrich, reflect and challenge society,” said Lynette Clemetson, director of Wallace House. “We hope to foster new ways of approaching and sustaining arts journalism across a range of platforms.”
The Knight-Wallace Arts Journalism Fellow will pursue an ambitious journalism project related to the arts and will have access to university courses, research and art creation across various disciplines, including art history, performance, policy, business, technology and design.
The Fellow will receive an $85,000 living stipend, $5,000 relocation reimbursement, and health insurance coverage for the academic year. They will participate in weekly Wallace House seminars, cohort-based workshops and training, and engagement with leaders and changemakers in journalism and the arts.
Arts Journalism Engagement
“The mission of the Arts Initiative includes energizing and nurturing the arts on campus and in our state,” notes its Interim Executive Director, Mark Clague. “This not only means making art happen, but it means inspiring a robust critical dialogue about creative work and its meanings—its joy, humanity, and challenges to our beliefs and understandings. The new Knight-Wallace Arts Fellow will be a catalyst of such conversations, especially for U-M students, and amplify the impact of the arts for all.”
Now Accepting Applications
Applications for the Knight-Wallace Arts Journalism Fellowship are now open to arts journalists and critics with at least five years of professional experience. Coverage areas may include but are not limited to music, dance, theater and other performing arts, visual arts and museum culture, literature and poetry, film and new media, architecture and design.
The application deadline is February 1, 2024. Applicants must be U.S. citizens. The selected fellow will be expected to relocate to the Ann Arbor area for the 2024-2025 academic year to study on campus at the University of Michigan.
On the application form, applicants for this new fellowship must describe their arts journalism work experience in their personal statement and explain in their journalism project proposal how their fellowship project is related to coverage of the arts.
Wallace House Center for Journalists and the Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia at the University of Michigan vehemently condemn the brutal attack on Russian journalist Elena Milashina and lawyer Alexander Nemov on July 4th when she was reporting in Chechnya. Elena spent this last year with us in Ann Arbor and decided to forgo her second year of fellowship and return to Russia because, as she expressed, “there is work to do” there.
As today marks the 100th day of Evan Gershkovich’s wrongful detainment in Moscow’s Lefortovo prison, we stand in solidarity with Elena, Evan, and all journalists and scholars whose freedom of speech is curtailed and whose life is threatened for bringing to light vital social and political issues. We hold dear and defend civil liberties and the rule of law, core principles of democratic societies. We wish Elena a full recovery and the ability to continue her work without harm or retribution. We will continue to uphold the vital work of journalists and scholars in uncovering, analyzing, and disseminating facts and truth. And we will continue to support those who spread knowledge about human rights abuses around the world.
Lynette Clemetson, Director, Wallace House Center for Journalists Geneviève Zubrzycki, Director, Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia and Professor of Sociology
Wallace House Center for Journalists is excited to welcome Ashley Bates as its Associate Director.
In this position, Bates will manage the daily operations of Wallace House and the Knight-Wallace Fellowship activities and support Wallace House director Lynette Clemetson in the strategic direction and running of all organizational programs and initiatives. Bates will also be responsible for alumni engagement, outreach activities across the journalism industry, and recruitment for the Knight-Wallace Fellowships, ensuring a diverse range of program participants.
“I am honored to join the Wallace House Center for Journalists team,” said Bates. “I look forward to getting to know this community, working in creative partnership with news organizations and alumni, and offering responsive programming and individualized support to Knight-Wallace Fellows.”
Bates comes to Wallace House with both organizational leadership and journalism experience. She has a demonstrated record of administering complex programs, nurturing alumni communities, leading professional development training, recruiting underrepresented voices, and executing imaginative programming that is tailored to the needs of organizations and their participants. For the past four years, she has served as the Program Manager for the University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers’ Program, a top-ranked MFA program for fiction authors and poets. Previously, Bates managed graduate student recruitment and career mentorship initiatives for the University of Michigan’s International Institute.
Bates worked as an investigative journalist in Gaza, the West Bank, Israel, and the United States, producing videos and long-form features for The Nation, Haaretz, Mother Jones, Huffington Post, Tikkun, Jerusalem Post Magazine, GlobalPost, and Columbia Journalism Review.
Fluent in Arabic, she served for eight years as the Program Director and then the Executive Director of an Israeli-Palestinian dialogue and social justice advocacy organization called Hands of Peace.
She earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from Amherst College and a master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University’s Medill School. Bates will start at Wallace House on May 1.
Wallace House Presents Fred de Sam Lazaro, executive director of Under-Told Stories and correspondent for the “PBS NewsHour,” as he takes a critical look at the world’s underreported events and awakens us to understand the daily concerns of faraway people whose lives and challenges intersect with our own. A 1989 Michigan Journalism Fellow (later named the Knight-Wallace Journalism Fellowship), de Sam Lazaro founded Under-Told Stories in 2006, a journalism project focused on the consequences of poverty and stories about the world’s biggest challenges, including climate, food and water, and human rights. In addition to producing content for news organizations, Under-Told Stories collaborates with educators to engage students on the pressing issues of our time.
The Eisendrath Symposium honors Charles R. Eisendrath, former director of Wallace House, and his lifelong commitment to international journalism.
About the speaker Fred de Sam Lazaro is the executive director of Under-Told Stories and has served as a “PBS NewsHour” correspondent since 1985. He was also a regular contributor and substitute anchor for PBS’ “Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly.” Fred also has directed films from India and the Democratic Republic of Congo for the acclaimed documentary series “Wide Angle.”
Fred has reported from 70 countries, focusing on the myriad issues underlying poverty and human suffering, which are underreported in the mainstream U.S. media. He founded the Under-Told Stories Project, now located at the University of St. Thomas, which is building a library of social innovation and entrepreneurship reports designed to use storytelling to enhance students’ understanding of the pressing global issues of our time.
An evening with scholar and journalist Jelani Cobb in conversation with Celeste Watkins-Hayes, Ford School interim dean
“The Half-Life of Freedom: Notes on Race, Media and Democracy”
6 PM | TUESDAY, JAN. 24, 2023
An in-person event at Rackham Auditorium 915 East Washington Street
Did you miss the in-person event or would you like to watch it again? Watch the video recording.
Wallace House Presents journalist and scholar Jelani Cobb,in conversation with Ford School interim dean Celeste Watkins-Hayes, as part of the continuing series: “Democracy in Crisis: Views from the Press.” Watch Cobb, dean of Columbia Journalism School and staff writer for The New Yorker, as he examines race, historic challenges to democracy, the impact of the media, and how these inform our current moment.
About Jelani Cobb
Jelani Cobb is the dean of Columbia Journalism School and a staff writer at The New Yorker, where he writes about race, politics, history and culture. He received a Peabody Award for his 2020 PBS Frontline film “Whose Vote Counts” and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Commentary in 2018. He has also been a political analyst for MSNBC since 2019.
He is the author of “The Substance of Hope: Barack Obama and the Paradox of Progress” and “To the Break of Dawn: A Freestyle on the Hip Hop Aesthetic.” He is the editor or co-editor of several volumes, including “The Matter of Black Lives,” a collection of The New Yorker’s writings on race, and “The Essential Kerner Commission Report.” He is the producer or co-producer on a number of documentaries, including “Lincoln’s Dilemma,” “Obama: In Pursuit of a More Perfect Union” and “Policing the Police.”
Dr. Cobb was educated at Jamaica High School in Queens, New York; Howard University, where he earned a B.A. in English; and Rutgers University, where he completed his M.A. and doctorate in American history in 2003. He received fellowships from the Ford Foundation, the Fulbright Foundation and the Shorenstein Center at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.
About Celeste Watkins-Hayes
Celeste Watkins-Hayes is the interim dean of the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy and founding director of the school’s Center for Racial Justice. She is also the Jean E. Fairfax Collegiate Professor of Public Policy, University Diversity and Social Transformation Professor, professor of sociology and an Anti-Racism Collaborative research and community impact fellow.
She is an internationally recognized scholar and expert widely credited for her research at the intersection of inequality, public policy, and institutions, with a special focus on urban poverty and race, class and gender studies. Dr. Watkins-Hayes has published two books, numerous articles in journals and edited volumes, and pieces in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Chronicle of Higher Education and Chicago Magazine. She has been widely quoted in the popular press as a national expert on social inequality, HIV/AIDS and societal safety nets.
Dr. Watkins-Hayes holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in sociology from Harvard University and a B.A. from Spelman College, where she graduated summa cum laude.
Research and writing about racial health disparities in the United States often focus on poverty and poor education as primary causes for disparate outcomes. Journalist and educator Linda Villarosa says those gaps don’t account for the fact that Black Americans “live sicker and die quicker” than their White counterparts regardless of income and education. They don’t explain why a Black woman with a college education is more likely to die or almost die in childbirth in the U.S. than a White woman with an eighth-grade education. The under-acknowledged effects of racism, Villarosa argues, have numerous devastating consequences on Black bodies, on the healthcare system, and on the health of our society as a whole.
Join us as we welcome Linda Villarosa in conversation with Lynette Clemetson, director of Wallace House Center for Journalists, with a special welcome by Celeste Watkins-Hayes, Interim Dean of the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy and Founding Director of the Ford School’s Center for Racial Justice.
About the speaker
Linda Villarosais a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine where she covers race, inequality and public health. Her book, “Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on American Lives and on the Health of Our Nation” was named one of the best books of 2022 by The Washington Post, Time Magazine, Publisher’s Weekly and NPR. A journalism professor and program director at the City University of New York, she is a former health editor for The New York Times and former executive editor of Essence magazine. Villarosa has written and led coverage for years on the intersection of race, medicine and social justice. Her work has won numerous awards and has prompted national conversations on topics including black infant and maternal mortality; medical myths tied to race; eugenics; and the disparate toll of pandemics on Black communities from HIV/AIDS to Covid-19.
About the moderator
Lynette Clemetson is the Charles R. Eisendrath Director of Wallace House Center for Journalists, home of the Knight-Wallace Fellowships for Journalists and the Livingston Awards for Young Journalists at the University of Michigan.
