 For those who don't know us well, ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom dedicated to investigative journalism. Our reporting shines a light on abuses of power and betrayals of public trust. And we focus on stories with the potential to spur real world impact. In December, ProPublica announced a new investigative editor training program aimed at expanding and diversifying the pipeline of investigative editors. The program includes a week long boot camp in our New York offices and one-on-one consultations with ProPublica senior staff. The goal of the program is not only to diversify the ranks of investigative newsrooms, but also to coach editors on how to navigate complicated accountability stories and maximize the potential for impact. We're currently accepting applications and today's webinar is intended to give prospective applicants a detailed overview of the program and application process. We've also built in time to answer your questions. To submit a question at any point, click the Q&A icon at the bottom of your screen and type it there. To give you a short preview of today's webinar, we'll begin with an overview of the program, including its conception and various components. In the second section, we'll cover eligibility and what we're looking for in an ideal candidate followed by a brief Q&A. And then in the third section, we'll cover the application process before opening up the floor for questions in general. Once again, to submit a question at any point, just click the Q&A icon and type it there. And now allow me to introduce you to two of the chief architects behind this exciting new program. Ginger Thompson is ProPublica's chief of correspondence. A Pulitzer Prize winner, Ginger's work has exposed the consequences of Washington's policies in Latin America, particularly policies involving immigration, political upheaval, and the fight against drug cartels. Celia Buford is ProPublica's talent development director. She initially joined ProPublica as a reporter in 2017, covering disparities and environmental impact. Thanks again for joining us. I'll let Ginger and Celia take it from here. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for coming. As Connor said, I'm Ginger Thompson. I'm chief of correspondence at ProPublica. Mine is a sort of hybrid management and reporting role. One of my duties here is to oversee our hiring and retention efforts. And it's that work that led to Leah and I to begin working on this investigative editor training program. We found that in our own efforts to diversify the leadership of our newsroom, we often had trouble finding editors from diverse backgrounds with experience having worked on investigative and accountability stories. I know that in my own career, I had to push my way into investigative spaces because editors didn't immediately see me as a good fit for the kind of work that ended up defining my reporting career. Historically, reporters and editors from diverse backgrounds have not been encouraged to pursue investigative journalism. As a result, many of them don't. And as a result of that, investigative newsrooms have far too few reporters who look like me and even fewer editors. We're hoping this program will address the shortage. We're inviting reporters and editors with at least five years of experience who have demonstrated the potential to be investigative editors to participate in this year-long training program that is meant to not only give them the editing tools and experience they need, but also build a network that they can turn to as they navigate their careers. We also hope to create a pool of editors from which all of the industry can draw as newsrooms look to diversify their leadership. Again, as Connor said, the program will start with a week-long intensive boot camp in New York that will include classes and panel discussions led by editors and reporters who have worked on some of our marquee projects. The sessions will cover everything from how to identify investigative reporting ideas, how to help reporters map and managing, reporting on complicated subjects. They'll learn how to help reporters manage secretive or sensitive sources. They'll learn to give tough feedback. And finally, they'll learn how to edit, taking a story from a first draft to publication. We'll have several hours of hands-on editing exercises and we'll also have breakout groups to workshop ideas for overcoming the challenges of being a good leader. From there, each participant will be assigned an editor at ProPublica who will serve as a mentor to them for throughout the rest of the year. They'll work with their mentor, meet with them at least once a month, possibly more, to talk through stories that they're working on, to talk through career challenges that they're facing in their newsrooms or in newsrooms that they're seeking to join. In addition, we'll gather participants, the participants of the training program every other month for additional training, whether it's in management techniques or in techniques of investigative editing. I'm gonna hand it over to Leah to talk a little bit more about the qualifications for the program and the application process. Thanks, Ginger. As you mentioned, our goal is to provide an on-ramp to investigative editing, especially for journalists from diverse backgrounds who haven't had the opportunity to gain those skills. As a reporter, it took me about a decade to find my way into an investigative newsroom because I assumed I needed more experience and more expertise before I could do work on that level. And once I got into an investigative newsroom, I realized that much of what I've been doing for most of my career had been investigative work, looking for unexplored angles and telling stories that brought light to injustices and to hold powerful to account. We know that similarly, journalists interested in investigative editing may have the skills, but may need a little help seeing how their experiences and expertise can be used in an investigative context. That's why this program, we're focusing on journalists who have at least five years of experience and a solid grounding in accountability reporting, either as an editor or a reporter. I saw one of the questions come in, how strict are we gonna be about those five years? And I wanna say, five years as a professional journalist, we were saying that as a minimum just because we really want you to feel comfortable being a journalist, right? Like you shouldn't be comfortable doing accountability stories. You don't need to have had the title of an investigative reporter, but we wanna see that you have got an accountability mindset. You should be used to asking the difficult questions and doing what it takes to get answers. Our goal is not to teach you investigative reporting, but it's to teach you how to elevate an investigative story or project. So this is designed to build on the expertise that you already have. So an ideal participant is gonna have a strong grasp of the elements of editing, storytelling, structure and framing. And editing, even just editing your own work, right? You know, as journalists, as reporters, we will rearrange a story or say, hey, this needs a more narrative element. This doesn't have to be formal editing, but we do need you to know what makes a good story and how to tell one. We would love if you have experience managing either a team of journalists or a team of anyone and or a complicated multi-pronged reporting project. We understand that there are lots of different ways that leadership or management come or might show up in your career. And so what we're looking for is some demonstration that you understand what it means to be responsible for not only your own work, but the ultimate success or failure of something larger. As an editor, you'll be required to manage relationships, deadlines, reporters and partnerships. And we need to know that you can handle all, juggling all of those balls at once. We're really excited about the potential for this program to help shift the investigative landscape in the United States. And even though our program is open to all, since our goal is to improve the diversity of investigative editors in this country, we'll be focusing our participation accordingly and prioritizing journalists working either in the US for companies based in the US or for companies with a very strong presence here in the United States. One of the other questions that we got is what happens if your employer changes during your participation in this program? First, congratulations. Second, the program is awarded to an individual, not to the organization. So you'd be able to continue participating in the program even if you change employers during the course of this year. We got a number of other questions about the eligibility requirements and about the application. And so I wanna go through a couple of those while we're still in this eligibility section. And I'm gonna go through them pretty quickly just so that we can move on to the other elements of the conversation. One question is the program to academics with the background in media or investigative reporting since it would be beneficial to train students on more ambitious investigative projects. We're really excited about the potential for this training to be used in a lot of different contexts in the future. But at this moment, we're focused on folks who are active journalists or who are in newsrooms producing work today. Will you consider candidates who are reporters interested in editing but who do not have formal editing experience but a peer edited? How can they bolster their application? Jinder, do you wanna take that one? Who have peer edited? I'm sorry. Yes, peer edited. Yeah, so will you consider candidates who are reporters interested in editing but have not done formal editing experience but have peer edited themselves? Absolutely. Absolutely. I think, you know, we, if you have been an investigative reporter or a reporter with an accountability lens and have helped other colleagues of yours, complete projects, we'd be happy to consider you and I think you'd be a good candidate. It would be, you know, how you'd bolster your application I think is to show your own work and to talk about the ways that you in your own work and in your own stories, your own projects served in a capacity that was similar to editing either, you know, helping discuss how the story would be led, what pieces of the project you needed to bolster the findings in the project. But the work that you've done and showing how the work, how you've been a leader in managing your own work would be useful to see in an application like that. Yeah. I saw a question about freelancers. The answers. Mm-hmm. Why don't you take that? Absolutely. Is the program open to freelancers who have written for many outlets? Yes. Yes. Full stop. Yes. We're not limiting this to people who are, you know, working at organizations. We are interested in people who are journalists. And so we understand, again, you know, in this industry, your career may look a lot of different ways. So as long as you meet the other qualifications, yes, we would love to have your application. Another question we've gotten is, will editors from small newsroom strap for resources be considered? I can take this one, Ginger. Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely. We are interested in helping to diversify the ranks of investigative editors at all organizations. And so if you are at a smaller newsroom or specifically like maybe in a news desert or something like that, like, yes, we want to be able to give you some of the tools so that you can tell the stories that are important to your community. You know, ProPublica is a nationwide organization, but we are not everywhere. And we want to make sure that there is as much investigative journalism in as many corners of the country as possible. So yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, you are eligible, please, please, please apply. Whether we would recommend limiting our applications to one editor per outlet. We are asking for our applicants to get letters of recommendation from their managers or our participants to get letters of recommendation from a manager. So I think that, you know, we would like to spread this program or the wealth of this program as widely as we can. And so it may mean that we would prefer not to have one more than one applicant per news organization, but our commitment is to have this program for at least the next three years. And so if one of you is not selected in this class, there will be opportunities a year from now. Yeah, absolutely. One other question that came in through the Q&A that I think I want to throw to you, Ginger, can you give more examples of what's perceived as a accountability lens that we talk about? We throw that phrase around a lot here at ProPublica. So when we say that we want people who have an accountability lens to the reporting, can you tell us a little bit more about what that means? Accountability lenses means stories that look at harm and look at the cause of harm. And that harm can be caused by anything from a company to a government agency to a system. You know, I've written a lot about immigration and sometimes it's just that the entire system has failed in a significant way. And we look for sort of stories that help sort of narrow the lens and allow readers to see sort of specific failings in the system and potential ways that those failings could be fixed. And so it's stories that identify harm, identify a problem, identify the cause of that harm and identify ways that that harm or that program or that problem can be fixed. All right, thanks, Ginger. One of the other questions that we've gotten ahead of time is identifying our ideal candidate. How will we assess applications from news editors who've transitioned into journalism from other careers? That might be those who haven't gone to journalism school who are home their research and reporting skills in other fields prior to entering journalism. And I can take that one. I think we are not looking at your pedigree. We're not looking to see what school you went to or anything like that. If you were a working journalist and you meet the other qualifications, that's what we're going to be judging you on. We're gonna be judging you on the ability or the vision that you have or the commitment that you have to pursuing a career as an investigative editor. This is not a training that we want just for people to kind of add it to their resume as a booster. We really want people to use this training to either reach a higher height in their current editing career to transition into editing. And however you started your career, that's fine with us, as long as you are currently a journalist and you meet the other qualifications in terms of having five years of journalism experience, then we are happy to consider you as an advocate. I'm gonna check the chat really quickly because I see you guys have lots and lots and lots of questions. All right, so we've addressed the limiting applications to one editor per outlet. How about mid-career journalists with a good foundation in reporting editing but not as much investigative experience? I would say again, we talked a little bit about that. One, I think that you probably have a little bit more investigative experience than you might think. I think people think investigative means you have to produce a 50,000 word multi-day series in some fashion. Investigative and accountability mindset is really just what Ginger was talking about. It's about asking those questions. It's about framing things in a way that you are looking to hold someone accountable. And so if you have that basis, then I would say absolutely apply. And if you don't have the clips that might show that you are interested in that kind of work, then maybe use the next year to start doing some of that work. Because again, we will be doing this training for another couple of years. And so, you know, if you feel like that might be a hole in your resume, then try to use the next year to fill it before the next application. I have a question about someone who works at a US agency but is based in Mexico. I know that laundry very well and has plans to move to the US and keep working at his agency or her agency. But right now, my reporting is in Spanish. Can I apply? Am I a good candidate? The fact that you write and report in Spanish does not disqualify you. What's important is what we've been talking about is have you been working in an accountability kind of way? Has your work in Mexico been sort of accountability or investigative kinds of work? If so, and you can write and edit in English then absolutely. Because this program will be conducted in English. And so, but writing and reporting in Spanish right now does not disqualify you. It's whether or not you have all those other qualifications that are important. Yeah. I see a lot of people, you know, kind of putting their individual situations into the chat and into the Q&A. We are being, we are very interested in getting as many applicants as we possibly can who are qualified for the program. And so if you meet literally the minimum ideal qualifications that we talked about, you know, you have five years experience, you have that accountability mindset, you're interested in editing, then you are eligible to apply and we would encourage you to apply. As a talent development director, I talked to a lot of people who are interested in working at ProPublica and I always tell them, you know, if you think that you are qualified then submit your application and then let us see what we think about that, right? I don't want to tell you not to apply. And if you do have additional questions and you're really like this is a really specific case, I want to talk to somebody about it, you can feel free to reach out to us at talent at ProPublica.org and I'm happy to correspond with you to talk a little bit more about some of the nuances of your particular situation. All right, so I'm gonna skip over some of these individual things and if you have a question that I'm skipping over and as I'm reading this, feel free to put it into the Q and A or again to reach back out to us and we'll try and get to as much as we can. All right, so I wanna also move on a little bit and we can always come back to some of these questions just to walk you through the application process really quickly. So our application mirrors and our application process mirrors our job application process in a lot of different ways. We use essay questions to really get people's vision for a particular role or their philosophy of their work and we're doing the same thing here with this program which again is not a salary position. This is a all expense paid week long boot camp that you would attend in New York and then there are all of these different supplementary programming and mentorship that happens over time but you are not in a public employee just to be clear about that and there is no requirement that you publish a story or anything like that. We do have programs like that but this is not one of them. This is truly just a training program so that you can get the information that you need to further your career. So you will submit an application to us and I'm gonna try to find the application link and put it into the chat right after I answer this question. So you'll submit an application you're gonna have a letter of support from somebody who knows your work hopefully a supervisor if you are working at a news outlet if you're a freelancer anyone who is really familiar with your work who can just kind of say, hey, you know what? Talia has been a freelancer for me for however many years I think she would be a great editor and she just needs an opportunity to be able to do it. Like we need something like that. Someone who is able to just kind of attest some of recommendation basically that's what we're looking for here. You'll submit those. We will look at all of them. We read all of these applications really, really closely. We are very used to doing this because we do it for literally every role that we hire here and then we'll select a subset of people to move on to an interview phase and that will most likely be with a handful of people on ProPublica staff most likely maybe me or Ginger probably some other people who are in executive leadership roles. And again, we're not only looking at your application materials we're also building a cohort, right? We're building a cohort of 10 people. And so we're gonna be trying to balance a lot of different things different personalities, different experiences different organizations, things like that and so all of those things will come into account. The interview will most likely be either on phone or Zoom we haven't really decided yet I think it depends on how many people we move forward and then we'll deliberate. We'll deliberate and then we will select 10 people to be a part of this program and hopefully based on the number of questions that I'm getting in this chat that will have a lot of applications so it's gonna be really difficult for us and we know that you're gonna put a lot of effort into your application and we appreciate that and we are going to do this for the next two years. So even if you don't get in in this first year we really wanna encourage you to not only apply this year, next year maybe the year after if necessary and just know that we're only selecting 10 people and so we're gonna do our best to select a really great cohort. All right, dinner and boot camp is happening. It is happening the first week of June from June 5th, make sure I'm getting this right, Talia June 5th to June 9th, I believe. Yeah, okay. And a lot of these, a lot of things that we're putting here I'm gonna put it, I don't know if I can put it into the chat actually but if you go to the website up can they go to the website you can totally go to websitepropublica.org slash editor training program, I believe it is that will bring you to a lot of different questions and answers including dates like the dates of the boot camp, our application link, et cetera. Oh wait, someone's saying the website says fourth to eighth so maybe I have mistaken that could be my fault. Fourth to the eighth, let's- Fourth to the eighth. Apologies. Yes, that is correct. So yeah. Thank you. That's okay. All right, okay, what kind of work samples are we looking for? Ginger, do you want to take that one? So we're looking for what you consider your best, most compelling, most impactful accountability style, investigative style projects. Some, it could be something if you don't have something that completely fits that it could be just your best narrative piece of work your best, most hard-hitting scoopiest piece of journalism. Well, we'd be happy to take a look at it but whatever you consider to be work that sort of most closely fits into this frame of ours which is accountability, investigative, impactful kind of journalism, that's the kind of stuff that I think would make your application strong. All right, one of the other questions we've gotten in from the Q&A is we asked about a letter of support and this person's supervisor is new. Is their manager still the best person to write the letter or anybody else familiar with their work? And I can take that one. Really, again, we're looking for someone who is familiar with your work. Ideally someone who is in a management position or a leadership position because what we will need to do is we need to make sure that you have your organization's permission and support to attend a week-long boot camp. This is not going to be a thing where you can still be editing or reporting a story while you're at the boot camp. We really will need your undivided attention for the entire week of the program. And so we need to know that your supervisor is on board with that, right? And that they support you taking those four to five days and really being sequestered with us and having your full attention. And if you can't give us that, then that is going to play into whether or not we're able to select you because we really need to know that this has the support of your organization and that you will be able to give us your undivided attention. Let me clarify something that I've gotten some follow-up questions to about the kind of work to submit. Editors, yes, please submit work that you have edited because we'd really like to see the kinds of stories that you have shepherded to publication. Reporters who have not had formal editing experience are the people I'm speaking to and I say the scoopiest, most accountability kind of stories that you have written as reporters or reported and written as reporters. But editors by all means, please submit stories, particularly stories that have a bit of an accountability lens. Submit stories that you have edited. Yeah, absolutely. Let's see here. So let's say, let's see here what other questions that we have. Well, it looks like there's a ton of Q&A questions. So let's let's, I guess, keep working through some of those. All right, one of them is work samples that have, should they be articles published at a news publication? Can they also be news articles written for a master's program that are published online but not for a particular publication? You know, again, I think that those articles would be fine as long as they're coming from an applicant who has five years of experience working at a news organization and has sort of a track, a longer track record of reporting and publishing. Yeah, okay, great. All right, so I think we've answered a couple of these live in terms of, you know, recent work versus past work. I think we're looking for your best work, right? You know, hopefully it's been within the last five to 10 years as before then. Then, you know, hopefully you've got some stuff that's a little bit more current because you're an active journalist working in a newsroom or as a freelancer. If you have additional questions, you can reach out to us and we can talk more. Let's see here, who is helping to facilitate the bootcamp? Ginger, do you want to take that one? So there will be several editors from ProPublica's Senior Editor Corps who are going to be both leading the classes. Each one of the classes is going to be led by two to three ProPublica editors. There will be panel discussions with some of ProPublica's veteran reporters. And so it is a range. And then there will also be some of our senior leaders including myself and other managing editors at ProPublica who will be involved in sort of leading their classes, as I mentioned. There are panel discussions. There will be actual hands-on editing exercises and there will be sort of breakout groups to talk about management and leadership. And all of those will be led by ProPublica staff, mostly editors and some reporters. All right, will our priority be to give the opportunity to editors over reporters? And I can take that one. I think that our goal is to, I don't know if we would give a priority to one over the other. I think that what we say is that we are open and interested in people who are either editors or people who are in reporters who meet these qualifications. And I think that's because we are not giving priority over one versus the other because we know that just because you have not been an editor doesn't mean that you are not already editing or that you are not ready to become an editor. And just because you have been an editor doesn't mean that you're necessarily ready to move into investigative editing. And so I think that we're gonna be looking at candidates holistically. And we're really looking again for people who are either interested or currently in an editing role so that within the next several years they can be doing investigative editing and really impacting the landscape of investigative newsrooms across the country. Can I just wanna add to that? What we're looking for in this program are newsroom leaders, the next generation of newsroom leaders and editors at many news organizations are those who are sort of leading and shepherding coverage. And so whether you are an editor now or not, we're looking for people who either are editors and want to do more investigative editing or journalists, reporters who aren't editing but have all of the potential to be great editors and are looking to do so someday. So that's how we're gonna be thinking about this cohort. Yeah, we got one question from someone who is gonna be on maternity leave during the coming year. Is there flexibility for being in the program or would they recommend? We recommend not applying this year. I think one, you need to be eligible, available rather to attend the bootcamp in person. Again, July, June 4th through the eighth. And so that is a requirement. The rest of the sessions will be on Zoom virtual because we're based in New York and you may be based anywhere. And so I think it's up to you to decide whether or not you have the capacity to do both of those things and congratulations on your impending new arrival. And yeah, so I think it's really up to you. Again, we will be doing this next year and the year after. So this is not your only bite at the apple. All right, let's see here. What else can we do? Ginger, I'm gonna give this one to you. Can you describe the check-in process and work with editors? And when we talk about kind of the work that we'll be doing after the bootcamp. So afterwards, as I mentioned, every participant in the bootcamp will be assigned an editor at ProPublica who will serve as a kind of mentor to them over the year. And what we are hoping will happen in those relationships is that our participants will go back to their newsrooms. They will either continue to work on editing stories or doing their own investigative reporting and writing and that these editors will serve as mentors to them in that work. There may be opportunities for any of these journalists to advance their career in some way. And we hope that these mentors will be places or people that our participants can go to for advice about career moves, about moves in their own newsrooms, about navigating politics, about pursuing a story, about how to help a reporter get a FOIA request, about how to help a reporter manage an interview with a traumatized source. We are hoping that these relationships will give our participants a person to talk to and experienced investigative editor to talk to through the challenges of doing their work or navigating their career. In addition to that, every other month, every couple of months, we're going to convene the participants for sessions to talk about everything from FOIA requests and how to more strategically use FOIA requests, meet with lawyers and how to use lawyers to help push your investigative stories. We'll have sessions on crafts with photography and news app development and just all of the different sort of tools that can be used to enhance and bolster investigative projects. Yeah, awesome. All right, I can take a couple of these, give ginger a break. Will the in-person program in New York be accessible for journalists with disabilities? Yes, the offices, the training will be held in for public as offices, which are accessible. And we'll be obviously talking with all of the people who are participating and see if there are any additional accommodations we need to make for folks once they're selected. The best way to stay up to date when next year's applications open, I think that you can probably sign up for our jobs newsletter, which is where we post all of our new opportunities, jobs, fellowships and programs like this one. Thank you, Connor, for putting that into the chat. And you'll be notified as soon as the application is open for next year's application as well. Let's see here. Yes, we are interested in seeing work between two journalists or as a part of a team. Again, we have a place on the application that actually allows you to give us a backstory for the application and for your particular clip. So you can explain like, hey, I was the lead reporter on this or I was a data reporter on this and I did, this is my role and here's how I contributed to this project. So you can tell us a little bit more about that project. Now I would recommend that you definitely use that as part of your application. How, let's see here. Is this training suitable for someone looking for player coach roles? That is, are you looking to award this to journalists who only want to be editors? And I can take that one. And then maybe, Ginger, if you can take the one that just came in about multiple applications. For the player coach role, I think one, I would challenge you to reframe how you're thinking about a player coach role versus an editor. I think that what you're saying is that you're interested in maybe in moving into a leadership role, right? In a newsroom, whether it be a traditional editor role or a player coach role, I think this program specifically, ideally we are interested in people who are wanting to be editors, right? We want them to be shaping copy. We want them to be really helping to frame conversations, frame stories and to help people with editing, right? If you're interested in being a reporter, we're excited for that and excited for you. This might not be the exact program for you at this moment because we do really want to focus on people who are interested in having careers as editors. Okay, great. And then Gendry, I'll pass it to you for multiple applications from the same publication. How will you handle multiple applications from the same publication? What if two editors want to apply from the same place? Again, we are likely going to pick one editor from that publication, we'll pick one, you know, and we'll sort of look at the two candidates and we'll look at their qualifications and we'll look at their letters of recommendation and we will likely pick one. We, again, would like to spread this out as much as we can and that means if one of the two applicants didn't get picked, there is another year and we would be very happy to invite them to apply again in the future. Yeah. And I think I want to address maybe the slight elephant in the room on that question, which is, you know, should organizations be coordinating, right, who gets who applies for this and who might not? I don't think you should. I mean, I think that, you know, if you're gonna, they're gonna know that you're applying because they have to submit a recommendation regardless, you have to submit a recommendation regardless. So as long as they know that, you know, you're interested, I would say, you know, and I may regret this, but I would much rather one organization flood us with applications that we have to pick from than for you to say no to someone internally. Like, you know, I would say, again, let us be the one who says, you know, we think that Talia should be the person who is selected from ProPublica versus not. But again, we do want people who have the support of the organization, whom hopefully the organization sees potential in as well. Because again, they do have to support your application because we are asking for you to be here for an entire week, and we need to know that they support you. All right. So let's see here. So we're getting some of the same kinds of commerce, kind of same kinds of questions. And so I'll just go really quickly through them. Somebody who's already done investigative editing, but hasn't really any training in it. Again, as long as you're meeting the qualifications of the application, you're eligible to apply if you have very specific questions about your own individual, you know, situation, you can reach out to us at talent at ProPublica.org and I will address them directly. What types of publications or outlets are you looking to work with? In other words, I work for a small circulation weekly nonprofit newspaper in a community, not the Washington Post or New York Times, et cetera. Is that okay? Ginger, do you wanna take that one? Yes, yes, and yes, absolutely. We are extremely excited about working with news organizations big and small, new and old. So please apply. There was another question similar to that about a veteran, I think who is starting a newspaper in his town or community, please apply. There are 10 spots in the program. There was someone who asked that. There was one that I wanted. One other thing to just kind of underscore, this is open to different mediums, but the instruction will be focusing on print editing. So, you know, if you're looking for audio or visual or, you know, film editing, that's not this program. This is going to be focusing on long form text editing. Let's see here. What else do we have? If you have any additional questions, please feel free to put them into the Q&A. Q&A is ideal. Chat is second, but Q&A is ideal. All right, and another person's coming from the Q&A. I work at an investigative outlet and I've done some editing there, but I've only edited our shorter newsier pieces. But the fact that I work at an investigative outlet still count against me, absolutely not. No, no, it would not. Not at all. All right. If I started a newsletter to monitor local policy in my town, it does it apply for this program? I think, again, once we get into individual situations, please, again, feel free to reach out to us at talentepropublica.org. Again, we're looking to really impact the investigative talent that is available across the country. And I'm happy to answer your very specific questions. Again, at talentepropublica.org. And again, I am not discouraging editors from public radio from applying, but what I am being very clear about is that our program is focusing on editing text. And so as long as you are still doing some sort of text editing, that is what we have to offer. We're not gonna be editing. Yeah, we're not editing audio. We don't actually edit audio, we don't edit text for audio if you want to. Tuck, if you want to bring a sort of long form audio reported and written pieces, but we are not actually going to be editing pieces of audio. We're gonna be working with text. Yes, that's what I meant. Yes, absolutely. So yes, if you're from another medium, as long as you're interested in text editing, then we're good. Connor, I just saw you pop on. Yeah, I have some questions that folks submitted in advance we could get to. So one of them is, do you see this program as being more for people who want to exclusively focus on investigative editing or for those who might be able to incorporate investigative editing skills into editing jobs like breaking news and more day-to-day newspaper work? So we envision this job as one that is meant to train and give investigative editing skills to people who want to edit investigative work. But we also understand that investigative work, as Talia said earlier, happens in all kinds of settings. It is not only happening in investigative units where people spend a year working on a single project. It happens increasingly in a daily news kind of atmosphere, particularly in the last few years. So I think if we hear from an editor who wants to use investigative techniques in their current role and finds use for them in a role such as the one described by the questioner, I think we'd be very happy to consider an application like that. And then Talia, do you have to publish a project by the end of the one year program? Is that incorporated? No, no, no, no, no. This is separate from other programs you may have heard of at ProPublica. This is not a reporting program or a publishing program. This is truly a training program. You're just coming to us learning from some of the best in the business about how to edit and manage reporting. And then hopefully you were using that in your home newsroom or in your current job to do your own work and elevate your reporting, but there is no requirement to publish afterward. And yeah, it's really truly just a training program that we hope will help to elevate your careers. And we have some new questions coming in. Ginger, will there be instruction on database investigations? This is something the question asker doesn't have much experience with. Yeah, we have, in fact, one of the best data units, investigative reporting units in the country, we will absolutely have a session during the boot camp and then afterward in those bimonthly meetings, every other month meetings where we will have, one of those sessions will be devoted to data editing. And then someone's asking, if in addition to editing, will there be any leadership or management training component to this program? Yes, there will be. During the boot camp, there will be numerous sessions on how to help manage a reporter through challenging complicated investigative stories, how to manage feedback, how to sort of what the challenges are of leading a team, what the challenges are of leading a project. And then throughout the other sessions in the year, some of those sessions will be dedicated to management concepts and management techniques. And then some folks have asked, I guess two sides to this question, like one, is there a stipend involved? I know address address this already, but is there a stipend involved? And then is there any costs associated with this program? No. No, no, no costs. This is an all expenses paid program. However, it is not a paid program. You are not becoming employees of ProPublica. It is a training program. Yeah. And just to reiterate the, it's free from the generous support of the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, which is an organization that supports organizations that are dedicated to social justice and strengthening democracy. They, we are a grantor of them or grantee of them. And therefore we are able to offer this programming to you at no cost. And then someone has a question about work samples. Would project managing a multimedia slash interactive project with an accountability focus be good, even if I wasn't as involved in the story at a day? Talia. Project managing a multimedia project with an accountability. I think that's one of the things where if you have the very specifics, you can feel free to reach out to me at Talon at ProPublica. I think at first glance, I think yes. We are still interested again in knowing that you have the foundations of story structure and storytelling. And so, you know, kind of what you've given me isn't enough to kind of be able to tell that. So feel free to send us an email at TalonatPropublica.org and I'm happy to answer your question with more detail there. And then address this a few times, but this person writes, it's a little unclear to me exactly what level of experience with investigative journalism would make the ideal candidate. Are you looking for people who have experience with it and are looking to take those skills to the next level or people who are newer to it altogether? So we are looking for people with at least five years of accountability kinds of experience. That can include and often does include investigative experience. A lot of people, as Talia talked about at the beginning of this, are doing accountability kinds of work without ever being called an investigative reporter. That happened to me early in my career. I wrote about housing. I wrote about police and police misconduct. I wrote about government misconduct. Those are accountability kinds of stories. And if you are working on stories that have an accountability angle, which is, as I described, in angles where you're identifying problems, you're identifying programs that are causing harm or laws or activities that are causing harm and identifying the responsibility for that harm, that's accountability reporting. And so we're not actually looking for people who are super new to this five years of experience. There's a significant amount of experience working in that kind of journalism, whether as an editor or as a reporter. And I think in terms of editors, it's not so much about editing accountability stories. And Talia, please help me here if I'm wrong on this, but it's editors who have worked on stories that have an accountability lens or who have five years working on a city desk or on a science desk or in the environment and who would like to have or bring to their work more of an accountability lens where they are helping their reporters dig deeper, look for harm, look for the cause of harm and be able to write about it in a way that has impact. Those are the kinds of people. That is, those are the ideal, that's the ideal universe of people that we're looking for. And here's a new question we're seeing in the Q&A box. Will the training also look at managing the relationship with the business side of the house? This is coming from someone who works in like a smaller newsroom, where editors are constantly having to sell publishers on the value of investing, a value of investing and investigative work. Yeah, I can start that. So we won't necessarily talk about kind of working with development or working with the business side per se, but we will talk about kind of selling the value of investigations and saying why it's important to do this work and why it's important to maybe invest the additional days, weeks or possibly months to really tell a story in a deeper way than maybe some newsrooms might be accustomed to and saying, hey, like this is why, if we can do this, if we give our reporter a couple more days, a couple more weeks, we might be able to get this kind of a story as opposed to, so we'll be helping you to at least practice or kind of give you an outline of what things to hit when you're having those conversations so that you can make the best argument possible to the powers that be at your organization. Yeah, we often call that lessons in managing up and managing down and we are going to be talking about that. It is important as an editor that you both skillfully manage the people who are reporting to you but also be able to manage the people that you report to as well. And we will cover that kind of material or those kinds of challenges. All right, and we're starting to get close to our time. So if you have questions, send them in now and we'll try and get to them if we can. We've had a few people write in kind of concerned about potential age limits for this. Is there any, yeah, age limit to applicants or anything like that? No. No. Okay. And then we just had one come in. This person works as an editor in a publishing house that publishes educational books. Would they be eligible? I think, again, I think that's sort of one of those individual questions that it's really hard to know based on that one thing. I think it would be important to know a little bit more fully about your overall sort of experience as an editor. And you might be the kind of person who should write us a note and tell us a little bit more about yourself. And then we can sort of address the answer to that question, I think with a little bit more information from you. And someone else wrote in that they're the managing editor of a community newspaper published by a housing nonprofit. So their superiors aren't journalists, but would they be able to provide the kind of information you're looking for in a letter of support? I think they could potentially provide the kind of information. I'd want more information from the applicant first about their work and what kind of work they do. And then I think we could address the question about their supervisors and whether their supervisors could provide the right recommendation letter, but I'd like to know more from the applicant about their work, the kind of reporting and editing they already do. And I just wanted to add not particularly on that, but I've seen a couple of questions come in about past application rounds or past participants. This is our first year doing this. This will be the inaugural class of this program. And so we're really excited to select this cohort and to hopefully have it continue. We'll be continuing at least in 2024 and 2025 and hopefully we'll further well after that. But this will be the first year that we are participating or doing this program. So that we're just in terms of past applicants and all of that. So. Well, I think that's a good place to wrap up. So yeah, thank you, Ginger and Talia for masterfully juggling a million questions. You guys did a great job. I also wanna thank all of you for showing out today. We appreciate your tremendous interest. Again, we really encourage you to apply. If you have additional questions about this program, please don't hesitate to reach out. You can find us again at talent at propublica.org. Again, that's talent at propublica.org. We're also gonna make this recording publicly available. So yeah, if you're listening to this, you're gonna see a link in a couple of days. And from all of us at ProPublica, thanks so much for joining us. We'll see you next time. Thank you, bye. Thanks guys. Bye.