Education/Youth|Journalism|Race/Ethnicity/Diversity|Workforce Development

Contact: Austin Frank
austin.frank@kcrw.org
Project Link: http://www.kcrw.com/about/careers-volunteers/kcrw-report-la-fellowship
Project Details

KCRW is an award winning, multi-platform news, arts, and culture organization that has been serving Southern California for nearly four decades.

Representing Los Angeles means representing an expansive number of identities drawn along many lines, including those of race, class, gender, and sexuality. As an organization, KCRW has a serious commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. Yet, like other public radio stations, when it’s time to hire journalists we often find ourselves seeking to fill positions with producers and editors who already have the skills and experience needed to hit the ground running. Often, we would dip into a small, homogeneous pool of the same experienced professionals who rotate between KPCC, American Public Media and NPR West.

In order to broaden our potential hiring pool, KCRW created the Report LA Fellowship program in 2019. This program offers two full-time, 18-month fellowship positions that pay a living-wage salary and benefits. KCRW staff provide rigorous training in digital recording and editing, show production, story planning, writing, and reporting. The goal is to graduate our Fellows with the skills to be hired as public radio or podcast professionals.

KCRW welcomed our first cohort of Report LA Fellows in September 2019. During their tenure, Angel Carreras and Danielle Chiraguayo worked across a broad spectrum of KCRW’s programming. They have produced content for “Press Play”, “Greater LA”, “Morning Edition”, “All Things Considered”, and KCRW’s digital and social platforms. KCRW’s Managing Editor and other staff have provided training and mentorship in various areas across the station.

As our first class of Fellows was about to graduate into a tough pandemic job market, we were very excited to extend their fellowships to last through August 2021.

Perhaps most exciting of all, both our Fellows are leaving the fellowship to take full-time media jobs. Angel Carreras had multiple job offers and accepted a position at a legacy media company in LA. We welcomed Danielle Chiriguayo as a digital news producer in the KCRW newsroom this past summer.

We are now in the process of hiring our second cohort of fellows, who will join KCRW this fall. The Report LA Fellowship has emphasized the immense power of representation in media, and we’re thrilled that this program has been so successful.

Project Impact: The stories our fellows produced for KCRW are representative of the communities in which they grew up, and have received positive attention. Five of their stories are finalists for LA Press Club Awards this year: Danielle’s stories “How LAUSD’s Classic Coffee Cake Evolved and Led to Love '' and “Face Shields, Verbal Abuse and Persistent Danger. Restaurant Workers Share Their Reopening Stories,” as well as Angel’s stories “USC students and volunteers help deliver thousands of gallons of water to Skid Row every Sunday,” "This LA Barber Started Giving $20 Haircuts in His Garage After COVID-19 Closed His Shop,” and "Hoop Bus Dedicates Itself to Kobe Bryant, Black Lives Matter, Unity in LA.''

Our fellows are proud of the ways they’ve been able to give back to their respective communities as journalists. Moreover, each of them has provided mentoring to other young journalists of color who have reached out for their guidance and support. In this way, the training KCRW provided has created a ripple effect in the community of aspiring reporters and producers in LA.

Within the public radio community, we’ve heard from our colleagues at other stations who are eager to attempt this model of training for young journalists. We hope this model can provide a replicable way to diversify newsrooms and give back to the communities that stations call home.

Funding (if applicable): The Report LA fellowship generated enough revenue from major donors and our foundation partners to cover two years of salaries and expenses for our two fellows.