CA Health Reporting Fellowship
Friday, November 15th 2013  5:00pm
Los Angeles, CA

http://www.reportingonhealth.org/content/how-apply-california-fellowship

The launch of Obamacare is likely to be one of the biggest stories for California news media in the coming year. We'd like to help you figure out how to tell it. For eight years, The California Endowment Health Journalism Fellowships program at USC's Annenberg School of Communication has been providing all-expenses-paid mini fellowships to help journalists understand how to cover complex health issues in a way that engages their audiences. We're writing to invite you to apply for our next competitively selected Fellowship for California journalists, which will focus heavily on Obamacare. The Fellowship will allow you to step away from your daily routine to spend five days in downtown Los Angeles learning about the complexities of the Obamacare roll-out in California, as well as exploring the role that factors such as race, ethnicity, pollution, violence, and transportation, land use, and food policy play in prospects for good health. You'll come away from the experience with a multitude of story ideas and sources, plus a thorough grounding in the principles and practice of good health journalism. Based at USC's Annenberg School of Journalism, the Fellowship is open to print, broadcast, and online journalists from California, or those based elsewhere who contribute to California media outlets. Both newsroom staffers and freelance contributors are encouraged to apply. And it's not just health reporters we're looking for. We welcome applications from any journalists with a serious interest in exploring community health. To encourage collaboration between mainstream and ethnic media, preference will be given to applicants who propose a joint project for use by both media outlets. The Fellowship week is jam-packed with field trips, workshops and seminars that will help you understand the relationship between a community's health and the health of the individuals who live there. Recent Fellowships featured field trips to the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports, where diesel pollution contributes to unhealthy living conditions in nearby communities, and to Los Angeles' Skid Row, where county public health officials are pioneering a health improvement strategy that makes providing homeless people with safe housing a priority. And from experts in various fields and prizewinning journalists, Fellows learned new ways of thinking about health issues -- and effective ways of explaining them to their audiences. Click here to read highlights of past Fellowship sessions. Besides attending all Fellowship sessions, each Fellow is expected to complete a substantive reporting project on an important health issue within six months of attending the Fellowship. Seasoned journalists serve as Senior Fellows to provide mentoring by phone and email to help bring these projects to fruition. Many Fellowship projects have garnered awards and helped Fellows advance their careers.

Location:
Annenberg School of Journalism
University of Southern California
Los Angeles, CA