Cincinnati Public Radio announces new three-year fellowship program

Cincinnati Public Radio is expanding, again. Barely a month after moving into a new, larger headquarters in Cincinnati’s Evanston neighborhood, the station announced a new program that will add two reporting fellows and a managing editor to its newsroom.

Funding for the fellowship program comes from the Adam R. Scripps Foundation, a new philanthropy organization connected to the Scripps family of philanthropists and business leaders. The family’s corporate empire — the E.W. Scripps Company — is also based in Cincinnati. 

Another member of the Scripps family, Marilyn Scripps, a local benefactor and business leader, contributed $5 million to the campaign to fund CPR’s new headquarters, which opened this spring with the name Scripps Family Center for Public Media. 

The Adam R. Scripps Foundation is making a long-term commitment to the fellowship program, “possibly up to 10 years,” said CPR President and CEO Richard Eiswerth. Each cohort of two fellows will work at CPR for three years before a new pair cycles in. 

During the program’s launch phase this summer, CPR will hire a managing editor to develop structure and protocols for the fellowship. In its second phase, the editor will recruit, hire and supervise the fellows. 

Eiswerth described the fellowship program as “a statement of optimism about the future of not only Cincinnati Public Radio in particular but, we hope, public broadcasting and certainly journalism in general.” 

With threats to public media’s federal funding and the loss of local newspapers, CPR looks to expand, not contract, its service to listeners in its coverage area, which includes southwest Ohio, northern Kentucky and southeastern Indiana. 

What will fellows do? 

VP of News Maryanne Zeleznik said CPR plans for the fellows to help extend the newsroom’s coverage to communities that have limited access to local news, including neighboring Warren, Clermont, and Butler counties in Ohio.  

“We hope to use their reporting on the air and on our website and to cover … issues that are undercovered right now,” Zeleznik said. “No matter how large a newsroom is, there are always stories that you can’t get to and communities that you can’t cover, and we hope to really expand our reach as we hire the fellows.” 

The fellows will also have opportunities to work with the Ohio Newsroom, whose reporters do more enterprise and long-form coverage, Zeleznik said. CPR’s newsroom focuses primarily on breaking news and daily reporting. 

“We hope to really be able to offer the fellows … a variety of experiences with reporters throughout our newsroom,” she said. 

The managing editor, a part-time position that CPR plans to bring onboard within the next two months, will help decide which beats to assign to the incoming fellows, Zeleznik said.  

The editor will oversee the hiring of the first fellow, who will join the newsroom this fall, Zeleznik said. The second fellow would likely sign on next year. 

CPR aims to offer fellowships to early-career journalists who either studied journalism in college or have some professional journalism experience. 

“We’re looking for somebody that has a little journalism knowledge, has had some training, knows the basics, but wants to just learn more and work actively at that role while getting guidance along the way,” Zeleznik said. 

Funding the fellowships 

CPR has a decades-long partnership with Cincinnati’s ABC affiliate WCPO 9, which is owned by E.W. Scripps Company. WCPO hosts CPR’s antennas on its broadcast tower, and members of the Scripps Communications management team have served on CPR’s board of directors, Eiswerth said.

That partnership gave CPR connections to build a relationship with the Scripps family’s philanthropy foundation, Eiswerth said. Through “a couple years of cultivation,” it secured Marilyn Scripps’ $5 million donation for the station’s new headquarters, Eiswerth said. CPR and the foundation began discussing the fellowship program last year, he said. 

“It was through that relationship that the head of the family foundation reached out to us and communicated … an interest in helping to fund a fellowship news program for Cincinnati Public Radio,” Eiswerth said. The Scripps family established the Adam R. Scripps Foundation in 2023, according to the family’s website. 

In a logistical sense, the fellowship program also wouldn’t have been possible without the new headquarters because CPR’s old building simply didn’t have the space to expand the newsroom, Zeleznik added. 

“We are hopeful that we can continue to grow our newsroom and continue to do more for our community, the greater Cincinnati community … in a way that perhaps we haven’t been able to do in the past,” she said.