Advancing Democracy Fellowship
The Advancing Democracy Fellowship, offered in partnership with Hearken, Trusting News and Good Conflict. Participating journalists spend nine months learning and applying skills they need to adopt a community- and solutions-focused approach to coverage of politics and elections.
Many newsrooms cover politics, but few spend much time on democracy — the electoral and governmental systems that make our country what it is. The Advancing Democracy Fellowship is changing that.
Through a series of fellowships from 2021 to 2024, we’ve supported more than 500 journalists from 80 newsrooms that are moving away from covering politics like a sport — which research shows leads to distrust in candidates and the media — and instead employing skills to empower, include, inform and collaborate with the public. These newsrooms are using community-centered and solutions-focused practices that are helping them play a more constructive role in advancing and improving U.S. democracy.
The Solutions Journalism Network, Hearken and Trusting News jointly run the initiative.
The program includes training, coaching, peer support and a stipend to support innovative news coverage. The goal is for newsrooms to adopt practices that address our democracy’s challenges by helping news organizations build civic engagement, equity and healthy discourse.
Newsrooms participate in a curriculum that includes training in The Citizens Agenda approach, solutions journalism, Engaged Elections, Good Conflict and building trust with audiences.
How to Cover Policy Over Politics
Learn how newsrooms in the 2024 Advancing Democracy Fellowship transformed their political coverage through community engagement, solutions journalism, trust and transparency, and Good Conflict strategies.
The newsrooms participating in the 2024 Advancing Democracy Fellowship are:
- Canopy Atlanta – Georgia
- Capital B – National
- La Opinión – California
- Live 5 News – South Carolina
- Missoulian – Montana
- Northwest Public Broadcasting – Washington
- NotiVisión Georgia – Georgia
- Planeta Venus – Kansas
- Reckon – Alabama
- South Dakota News Watch – South Dakota
- The Minnesota Star Tribune – Minnesota
- The 19th – Texas
- The Austin Common – Texas
- The Journal – Kansas
- The Kansas City Defender – Kansas
- The Oklahoma Eagle – Oklahoma
- Tucson Sentinel – Arizona
- Vallejo Sun – California
- VNN Oklahoma – Oklahoma
- Yakima Herald-Republic/El Sol de Yakima – Washington
