Early-Career Fellowship Program 2025
The application deadline is October 31, 2024
The Open Notebook offers a paid, part-time fellowship program for early-career science journalists. During the course of this fellowship, fellows work with a mentor to plan, report, and write articles for publication at The Open Notebook and become part of the TON editorial team. This one-year program offers fellows the opportunity to explore their career interests and passions and to sharpen their skills as part of a talented, supportive, diverse community of past and present fellows and mentors. This fellowship is made possible through the generous support of the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, which has supported this program since 2012.
Key Details
Length of Fellowship: 12 months (part time)
Fellowship Start Date: February 24, 2025
Location: Remote
Stipend: $6,600 (paid in 4 installments)
Deadline: October 31, 2024
The Fellowship Experience
During this fellowship, each fellow will pitch, report, and write four articles for publication at The Open Notebook—a mix of “story behind the story” interviews and reported features. They will have weekly phone or video meetings with a mentor who is an experienced science journalist and who will help them shape story ideas, provide reporting and writing guidance, edit fellows’ article drafts, and offer general craft and career-development advice and guidance.
Typically, fellows’ articles go through several rounds of substantive editing. As each article nears completion, fellows are also responsible for annotating their articles for fact-checking and for collecting demographic data about their sources as part of our ongoing source-diversity tracking effort.
Fellows and mentors also take part in a Slack discussion group composed of other current and former fellowship participants and TON editors. During the fellowship, fellows will be responsible for participating in cohort-based activities in the fellowship Slack community. Membership in this community will continue after the fellowship ends.
Eligibility
- The fellowship is open to early-career science journalists.
- If you live outside the U.S., you are welcome to apply.
- Some training and/or experience in writing for the general public is a requirement for this fellowship.
- You do not need to have extensive experience or training, but you do need to have some.
- Science journalists (or aspiring science journalists) must have fewer than three years of regular professional science writing experience.
- Internships and student work do not count toward the fewer-than-three-years requirement.
- Exceptions to this requirement may also be made for cases in which an applicant has more than three years of professional science writing experience but some or all of that experience is not in English.
- Applications, including writing samples and letters of recommendation, must be in English.
- Materials translated into English from another language are acceptable.
Time Commitment
This is a part-time, remote fellowship. The fellowship involves reporting and writing four articles of 1500-2000 words for The Open Notebook, as well as meeting regularly with an assigned mentor and taking part in editorial discussions and cohort-based activities on Slack. We estimate that for most fellows, the fellowship takes about 5-7 hours per week on average; however, the amount of time the fellowship takes will depend on fellows’ experience and working style as well as the phase in the reporting/writing/editing process for any given article. Some weeks will almost certainly require more time and some will require less. PLEASE NOTE: Although it is part-time, this fellowship requires a significant weekly time commitment, and juggling the fellowship along with other commitments can be challenging.Before applying, please consider carefully whether you will be able to devote sufficient time to completing articles as specified in the fellowship description. We have a rigorous editorial process and fellows must be committed to meeting article deadlines and filing stories on time and turning around revisions on schedule. This includes making time for 1) conducting phone interviews with sources, ordinarily during U.S. daytime hours; 2) weekly phone or video meetings with mentors; 3) multiple rounds of editing and revision for most stories; 4) annotating stories for fact-checking; and 5) participating in conversations in the fellowship Slack community.
Selection Criteria
Priority will be given to applicants who demonstrate:
- A strong intention to work primarily as a professional science journalist. (Note: This fellowship is intended for people whose main goal is to do journalism, as opposed to other forms of science communication.)
- Some training and/or experience writing about science for the general public (it does not have to be extensive)
- Some understanding of the science journalism profession, the challenges science journalists commonly face, and the ways in which you would like to grow as a science journalist
- Familiarity with The Open Notebook and the types of topics we tend to cover
- An ability to generate good story ideas suitable for The Open Notebook
- A commitment to delivering your best work and being conscientious about deadlines
- Strong writing ability (If English is not your first language, we do take this into consideration and do not expect flawless writing. However, for a successful experience in this fellowship you must have a fairly high level of proficiency in English.)
Required Application Materials
The application form for this fellowship includes the following:
- Responses to questions about:
- Why you are interested in this fellowship and what you hope to learn
- Your prior training and/or experience in writing stories about science for the general public
- Any particular skills, interests, or perspectives that you would bring to this fellowship
- Your overall plans for during the fellowship period (for example, will you simultaneously be finishing a dissertation? Freelancing? Seeking full-time employment somewhere? Doing something else?)
- Short proposals for two TON features or multimedia stories that you think would be suitable for publication at The Open Notebook. These can take the form of behind-the-story writer interviews; reported features on some element of the craft of science writing; roundtable discussions; or some other creative, feature-length project centered on the craft of science writing. Please familiarize yourself with the types of stories that The Open Notebook publishes. (Note: These are brief, 100-word proposals, not full-scale pitches.)
- A resume or CV
- One letter of reference. This can be from a professor, editor, mentor, supervisor, or other colleague—whoever you think can best speak to your skills and qualities as they relate to science journalism and to this fellowship experience.
- Up to two writing or multimedia samples of work aimed at the general public (not scientific/academic writing). If you are sharing audio or multimedia clips, you can simply put the URLs for the work into a PDF to upload in this section. (Samples must be in English. Translated materials are acceptable.)
- Optional: Additional information about you. We strongly encourage writers from all types of backgrounds to apply. If you are a member of any group or community that has historically been marginalized or underrepresented in U.S. journalism, we invite you to let us know. This is entirely optional, and any information you disclose will be kept confidential
Deadline
Applications must be received by 11:59 p.m. U.S. Central time on October 31, 2024. (Note: The deadline for reference letters is November 6, 2024. We recommend that you notify letter-writers well in advance of the deadline so that they have time to write you a well-considered letter.)
Questions?
If you have any questions, please email TON executive director and editor-in-chief Siri Carpenter: siricarpenter@theopennotebook.com.
