When you received your Wallace House Journal last month a small blue box on the lower half of page five may have caught your eye. It read DONATE. I hope it prompted you toward action. Journalists often approach charitable giving cautiously, lest an act of generosity at some point be construed as bias. It’s a wise caution. But one cause journalists can support without hesitation, of course, is journalism. And supporting Wallace House is a concrete way to bolster the careers and wellbeing of journalists.

At a time when our profession is being openly and regularly maligned, Wallace House is expanding its reach and standing up for the vital work of journalists.

• We’re convening more public events in an effort to increase media literacy and engage people in conversations with journalists on important issues.
• We’re increasing outreach for the Knight-Wallace Fellowships to ensure that we’re attracting the diverse multi-skilled range of talent needed to propel today’s newsrooms.
• We’re broadening our partnerships to provide our Fellows with access to the most relevant resources, experts and experiences related to their individual study and to the industry.
• We’re extending the platform of the Livingston Awards, creating opportunities for our local, national and international winners to share their stories beyond the original audiences and extend the impact of their work.

Your donation will help Wallace House create and sustain this work. With your help we can bring award-winning journalists to campus to talk about the biggest news stories of the moment; feature our Livingston Award winners at conferences to train young reporters in ambitious reporting projects; create workshops to help our Fellows develop new storytelling skills, present the Livingston Lectures to areas of the country where journalism is viewed skeptically; develop new international partnerships to expand our overseas news tours.

While our Fellowship program has a generous endowment, expanding our programs requires additional resources. At the same time, we are working to build an endowment for the Livingston Awards to secure the continuation of the prestigious prizes for years to come.  Your donation toward our operational costs – no matter the amount – demonstrates to foundations and individual donors of major gifts that the people who benefit from the work of Wallace House believe in the enduring value of its programs.

If you’ve been a Knight-Wallace Fellow or a Livingston Award winner, you know how life changing our programs can be. If you are not among our alumni, but you’ve encountered Wallace House through our programs and the journalists selected for them, you know the high caliber of the people and work we support and the intellectual and creative value they add at the University of Michigan and around the country.

Support the essential work of journalists by including Wallace House in your end-of-year giving. You can direct your gift to the Knight-Wallace Fellowships for Journalists, the Livingston Awards for Young Journalists or the Wallace House Annual Fund, which provides flexible support to both programs.

A gift to Wallace House is a show of support for truth, accountability and the vital role of a free and independent press in a democratic society.

Please, help us help journalists. Donate.

Lynette Clemetson is Director of Wallace House. She was a 2010 Knight-Wallace Fellow. You can reach her at [email protected] or [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @lclemetson