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.