 My name is Talia Buford, I'm a System Managing Editor here at ProPublica and I'm going to let our other two panelists introduce themselves as well. Hi everyone, welcome. I'm Ginger Thompson. I'm Chief of Correspondence at ProPublica, sort of a hybrid management, editing, reporting role on our masthead. Welcome. I'm Alex. I'm a Deputy Managing Editor. I run some editors and reporters on investigative projects and the three of us designed this program and are really excited to talk about it. Yeah. And so just so that folks know kind of what the run a show is for today, we're going to tell you a little bit about the program. You know, who's eligible, how you'd apply, what you would expect. And then we're going to try to answer some of the questions that you've already submitted ahead of time if you submitted those beforehand. But if you have questions, there is a Q&A box at the bottom of your screen and you can answer it when you put in questions there at any point and we'll try to get to those at the end of the conversation. And so I'm going to turn it over to Ginger to tell us a little bit about the start of this program and the genesis of it. So, you know, what inspired this program is one being a leader in DEI is a pillar of ProPublica's strategic plan for the next five years. And one of the places where we as an organization are least diverse is in our editing ranks. And part of the reason for that, you know, isn't isn't going to be a surprise to most of the people on this call. Investigative journalists from diverse backgrounds are few and far between, and it's worse among investigative editors. Newsrooms simply don't encourage journalists from diverse backgrounds to pursue this kind of work. And so often when we at ProPublica go out in search of editors, we've had a tough time finding candidates with the experience it takes to successfully do this kind of editing. And so, you know, for a long time we sort of complained about it. And a couple of years ago we decided to do something about it and we created this training, which is meant to either bolster the skills of people who are in sort of investigative roles now, typically early investigative careers now, or, you know, editors who don't have the word investigations in their title, but who want to think with more of an accountability mindset and who frankly may not be getting opportunities to do investigative editing in their own newsrooms, because they too don't have the skills or the background and this will hopefully give them some of what they need if if they're interested in pursuing a career in investigative editing. The components of our program, it's a year long training, and it kicks off with an editor boot camp that is held over four days at our offices. It's actually five days, four and a half days in our offices at New York. The training is led by our editors from, you know, their sessions with our editor-in-chief or managing editors, our DMEs, and many of our senior editors. And then that boot camp, and I can talk more about the details of the boot camp, but it's essentially meant to sort of it's it's organized in a way to take participants through the production of an investigative project from the story idea to sort of developing your reporters have the right tools to do investigative editing to managing the first draft of a huge investigative project, and then to kind of exploring different ways of storytelling, whether it's rolling investigations or long deep dive narratives. You know, after after the boot camp and it it's called a boot camp for a reason because it's a lot. There's a lot of real work involved. But after the boot camp, there are monthly virtual trainings with other editors and other leaders in our newsroom, including our legal staff. We have, we do a session on, you know, how to protect yourself legally, how to protect your investigations legally. You know, you know, our lawyers are really good at not just telling you what you shouldn't do, but how to make sure that you protect yourself to do the most ambitious work that you can. And then after in the middle of those virtual trainings, each participant is assigned a ProPublica editor who works as their mentor for the year, and who also meets with them monthly to talk about anything from navigating their careers, managing their own supervisors, managing their reporters. It's a it's a it's a mentorship that is really designed by the participants and we try to listen to what our participants say they want in a mentor, and then pair them with a ProPublica editor who we think would best be suited to to serve their interests. So, so that's just a brief overview of the program and why we're doing it and I'm happy to take more questions as we go along. Yep. And so I'm going to go over, you know, who is eligible to apply for this great program that Ginger just mentioned and then I'm going to turn it over to Alex to kind of talk a little bit more about our ideal candidate. And so, you know, the eligibility requirements, you know, this program is open to all, but we are especially encouraging people from traditionally underrepresented communities to apply. That means women, people of color, LGBTQI plus people and people with disabilities. As Ginger mentioned at the top of this conversation, you know, this is designed to try to change the face of investigative editing and those groups are often very underrepresented in newsrooms today. As a part of the application, it's also important that participants know that they will be asked how their inclusion in the program will help to diversify the editing ranks of investigative journalism. So, in terms of age or age requirements, we don't have an age requirement. One of the questions I saw come in is, you know, are we looking for older candidates, such as those in their early 60s. We are agnostic on age. We're open to anyone who is interested in a journalist who is interested in bolstering their investigative editing chops, whether UV 25 or 65. And, but we are asking for people who have a minimum of five years of journalism experiences as a program for journalists and for reporters, editors, people who are in working in newsrooms. Not folks who are necessarily in academia, maybe that comes later, but for right now we're focusing on folks who are actively producing journalism. There are no, this program again is open to everybody, but our goal is to improve also the diversity of investigative editors in the United States. And so, yes, you are eligible if you live in the United States, but you need to have some sort of connection to a US based publication, and then we'll kind of focus our participation accordingly. I'm going to pass it over to you to talk a little bit about last year's participants because I think they were a great example of kind of the kind of people that were very interested in supporting. Yeah, we had 159 applications. And we just were just blown away by the applications they were really fun to go through there was, it was overwhelming. The quality of candidates that were out there and we wound up we had we were originally going to do 10 slots but we ended up having 11. We just had to take 11 folks. We wound up taking all editors. You know, and I can get into that in a little bit we are open to reporters. And I think, you know, we really want our investment in folks to pay off immediately as quickly as possible right so, you know, taking on 11 really great editors who are already trying their hand at accountability work with their reporters. We know they'll be able to implement the stuff they learn as quickly as possible that does not say that we would not take a reporter. We would like to know if it is a reporter. Do they have accountability experience and do they have actual traction and momentum toward an editing career they player coaching. Are they serving as the lead reporter on projects have they been talking to their bosses are they are they taking on night editing shifts right. We really want some evidence that if we were to train a reporter to be an investigative editor that they will be practicing their investigative editing skills, relatively soon. Again, there are a small number of slots for the amount of people that are interested in so we just want to choose those who are most likely going to create the biggest impact as soon as possible. You know, these editors by the way came from a very diverse range of publications and backgrounds. Let me pull up the story here to give you a quick, quick sense so we had a managing editor from type investigations who works at a high level with with freelance reporters we had a metro editor at the Boston Globe we had a managing editor at the tiny paper called a full day. We had a managing editor at New York focus which is a nonprofit that covers the state of New York. We had a bureau chief for Chuck beat Detroit. We had a deputy health and science editor for the Washington Post whose official job was not doing investigations but whose team was doing some accountability work. We had an executive editor at gimlet media. We had the accountability editor for the Idaho statement statesman. We had a managing editor at shelter force, which is a nonprofit that aims to inform and hold accountable those working towards more just and equitable equitable communities. We had the national editor at capital B, and a senior editor at ESPN, their investigative and enterprise unit. So, in all of the portfolios we look for has this person. Do they demonstrate that they have a heart for accountability reporting right have they as a reporter or as an editor tried their hand at doing stories that matter that are in the public interest. Are they kind of, are they, you know, and do they make a good argument for how they would apply the skills that they learn to their job so you know anything else that I'm missing guys that that we look for in candidates. I don't I don't think so I think you know we've gotten actually a handful of questions from folks about eligibility. You know people wondering if they're in public radio. If they are an investigative producer or they do investigative documentaries are those the kinds of people that we're looking for a lot of our training so a lot of our training does focus on writing. At the same time, there is a lot of coaching on story choice on reporting that could be useful to folks in broadcast to could be useful to folks who in other mediums and in fact we did have at least one audio person. So we would indeed consider, you know folks from non writing backgrounds, but I do think that folks from writing backgrounds would. There is more for you. I would only add to that Alex is that you know some of these broadcast organizations now have really big digital operations that are producing investigative stories. If you are an editor in that space. This program could very well translate to what you do and be useful for what you're doing the person who joined us from gimlet. Last year was an audio based reporter but they did a lot of long form storytelling it was a heavily text process that his work involved and so I think if you, you know if you think about it that way it is very much a text based training. And so I'm not sure it applies exactly the same way to a daily small local, local television producer, news producer, but if you are a producer on that stations website and you are working on text stories for the website, particularly investigative pieces or you just want to do more investigative pieces on your website, and this could be something that would apply and be useful to you. Yeah, and I think that you know you can hear from you know the kinds of organizations that we selected for last year that all kinds of publications are eligible so yes a small community newspaper is absolutely eligible. If you were a freelancer, we would require you to have a, you know, some there be a slightly different application process which I would go into for you but yes there is a possibility for that as well. And so I'm going to walk really quickly through the application process. So on our website, which Connor has put into the into the chat, a link to the application we asked for you know kind of all of your general information. And but we really want to know, you know, kind of one, why you're well suited for this program again thinking about how your participation is going to add to the diversity of investigative editors in the industry overall. We also want to know why you want to be a part of this, and then also any editing experience that you might have. We also asked a couple of other questions just to kind of get out you know what you're interested in learning from a mentor, and the skills that you'd want to develop. So the application is submitted, which it's due on March 11 at midnight, so 1159pm on March 11. And we'll be selecting a handful of folks to go through a zoom interview with us and so then we'll deliberate and figure out the final 10 or 10 people that will be, you know, selecting for participation. So I want to, you know, hear from, you know, Ginger and Alex, you know, for people who are thinking about applying. What do you think they should think about when they're approaching the application if they've, you know, maybe work primarily in not an editing capacity. Maybe they've worked as a reporter or, you know, as some of these other folks who have been maybe, you know, radio producers or TV producers or things like that. But they're interested in making the leap to editing. How should they approach their application? I mean, I really think what Alex said is spot on in that what we want to see in reporters or non editors, journalists who are not yet editors is some real sort of either game plan or effort that is underway. And that is moving them towards an editing role that, you know, that they that they're interested in these skills because they have a plan for applying them sooner rather than later that they can demonstrate in like what Alex said, are they doing night shifts? Have they already edited a project? Are they player coaching for their team? Anything that they can tell us that shows exactly how and why they want to use these skills would be, would be very helpful because there are a lot of editors applying for this thing, for this program, who can, you know, who have a clearer way of demonstrating that they want to want to use these skills or how they'd use these skills now. And so that is what I would recommend reporters really think about. How can they show us their the momentum toward editing? We're still asking folks to submit letters of recommendation from their managers, right? So if you're a reporter, I would have your manager say, hey, this is someone who we would, you know, who the organization does see as on the path to editing. I think that that would go a long way. With these skills, we could see them being an editor in the next two or three months or six or whatever, but we would like them to move toward editing and if this helps them sort of do that, we'd be grateful to ever be. Yeah, and I apologize for missing that part. Yes, we do require a letter recommendation and that letter is not only to ensure that, you know, your organization supports you attending for this week and really being able to devote your time to the training. But also, because we want to help make a pathway, hopefully at your publication and to say, hey, you know, Talia has done this training and when she gets back to her newsroom, we want to put her to use, right? And so again, hearing from your supervisor or someone who is in a position of authority to be able to say, yes, we really support this person attending will be really great. I'm going to answer a couple of these questions that we have that are coming in. You know, I think that, you know, our participants from last year's cohort seem to be from well known city and national publications are editors from smaller papers such as alt weeklies viable candidates. I'm going to say that I don't know if that's necessarily a fair characterization of all of our, all of our folks but we're open to publications if you're producing journalism today, then you are eligible. By the way, I love alt weeklies, because they do great investigative journalism so please apply if you're related. All right, so if you're already in an investigative editing position, what would make a candidate stand out? Ginger Alex. You know, I think examples of some of their work, you know, descriptions of the kind of work that they do and you know, there's this question that has come up in other times that we've talked about this between learning on the job versus doing a boot camp like this and is one better than the other and I would say they kind of compliment each other and so, you know, it's sort of like a doctor sometimes when you're a doctor and you're just doing one surgery after another you don't have time to step back and either learn new ways of doing things or thinking think strategically about how you're doing the work you're doing why you're doing it this way, what your reporters might need that you're not always think because you're just running and got all the time and so the opportunity to step back and explaining why the opportunity to step back and really sort of think strategically about your work, think sort of long term learn new ways of doing things, you know, spending time with some of the best investigative editors in the country. You know, how that would, you know, shape what you're doing now, how that would benefit you I think would be useful and in making you stand out. Yep. Okay, awesome. The selection process how long does it take so our application is due March 11. And I believe that we would be notifying folks by the end of April, early May because the boot camp is in June so it's a little bit over probably like six weeks or so. Something around there, if doing my math correctly maybe a little bit less, but somewhere around that process but we will be in contact with folks and, you know, if obviously if you have some sort of other time constraint you can reach out to us we can always give you an update and how things go. All right, so are we planning on doing this again in the future. Absolutely we are doing this again in 2025. So, even if this is not the year for you, we will be able to, you know, have you as a as a possible candidate next year. All right, so one question we're getting I don't think I'm currently qualified but I'm interested in the program would be better to apply now and then try again if I'm indeed not ready yet or wait until I'm in a better position to participate. Alex ginger. I think it's about how much about your time really. If you don't think you're a great candidate for us now. I don't think that applying applying does you any benefit right. What do you think ginger. I feel, I think what you said Alex it depends on your time. If you have time to apply and you don't and it doesn't work out. It doesn't work out and we, you know, we'd be happy to sort of when we write people back we typically say if you want to talk to us about what it was that you still need or things that we thought were gaps in your experience. We'd be happy to talk to you about it. If it's if it's a time crunch and you just don't really have the time to invest in this yet because I don't want people to think these applications aren't serious. They're serious and we take them seriously and it really is our first sort of look at you and and we get a lot of applications. If you want to spend time to make sure you're putting, you know, as much as you can into it. If that's not you right now, that's not the kind of time you have when you're not even sure you're the right candidate, then I think, you know, only you can judge. If you have the time to apply and you don't get in it might be a way for you to get some answers to what it is you need to apply. Absolutely. And so just for folks who might be coming in late or you know cycling through and who may not understand where we're getting all these questions from. There is a box at the bottom of your screen that says Q&A and you can drop in any questions that you have there that you'd like for us to answer. Okay, so one of the questions that we got is, you know, will this program help participants find new employment after the program is? Is that what this program is about? That is not what this program is about necessarily. Now I will say that some of our participants have since changed jobs, but it wasn't because of work that we've done. This is, you know, what this at this point anyway, what this program focuses on is trying to give folks skills that perhaps will enhance their abilities to go out and get. We hope that would enhance their abilities to go out and get other jobs or to advance their careers where they are. But it is not our role to, we don't make that a part of the program. You will, along the way, meet a lot of ProPublica editors and it will give you a network and a place to talk about your own career moves and to discuss new opportunities and things like that in an informal way. But that is not a formal objective of our program. Yeah. And just to note that if anybody has to dip out, we will be posting a copy of this webinar on our YouTube page on ProPublica's YouTube page. So feel free to access that there after this conversation. Alex, Ginger, can you tell us like, when you're thinking about this program overall, how would you measure the success of it? What does it look like if this program is successful? Alex? I would want to know that the editors have learned something and are actively applying what they learned to what, you know, what, to their work, right? I mean, look, this is a bit self reported from the folks, but we do develop a relationship with them in our year of mentoring them and it is a success when we see that we have made an impact on how they think and how they do their jobs. We don't have any stricter metrics than that, I don't believe. Again, I will say some of our candidates, some of our participants have moved on to other jobs, bigger jobs, and that's kind of cool. I wish we could take credit for it. It's just we've had some talented folks in the room, but they do say to us that, you know, that this program has changed the way they think about their work. And that to me is successful. Yeah. One of the questions has come in and I can just reiterate for this person, you know, what are the characteristics of the ideal candidate? We do have a list. If you scroll down on our application of frequently asked questions, including what ideal of participants will have. And so those are, you know, a minimum of five years of journalism experience, either as an editor or a reporter doing work with an investigative accountability focus. A strong grasp of the basics of editing, storytelling, structure and framing, experience managing a team of journalists or a complicated, multi-pronged reporting project and an accountability mindset. You don't have to have been on an investigative team, but we are looking for people with an eye for watchdog reporting and editing. And for folks obviously who are joining this call now, you can always rewind, I guess, on the YouTube page and hear Alex's great answer to that shows a little bit more about what we loved about some of the candidates from our last, our last boot camp and what we'd be looking for from people going forward. Alright, so let's see here we got a lot of really good questions and if you have questions feel free to drop them into the Q&A box. Oh, this is a fun one. Are you able to talk about how ProPublica defines accountability journalism? Alex and Ginger, I'll let you guys take that one. Impact is a sort of multi-layered thing, right? There is no one kind, but certainly the classic kinds are stories that change laws, stories that change the way governments work, stories that change an agency, stories that expose harm and who's responsible for the harm or what's responsible for the harm. Sometimes those stories actually force agencies or governments or processes to be changed legislation. Sometimes they just start a conversation in the place where these stories are happening that also sort of move, you know, change the way this, the process works, alleviates the harm that's happening to people or mitigates it somehow. But at its core, and Alex will have a lot more to say, at its core it's exposing harm and it's explaining who's responsible for that harm, naming names. That was far better than what I planned to say, so that's good. Okay, all right. I'm going to keep going with some more questions. What are the dates? I'm taking some of these easy ones first. What are the dates for the boot camp right now? We have the boot camp set for June 2nd through June 6th. So that's the first week in June. And again, this is all expenses paid. We bring you out to New York. We put you in a hotel, we pay for food, all those different things. Is it possible to select an editor and a reporter from the same outlet or should the outlet choose one applicant overall? I'll give my answer. And then Alex and Ginger, I can let you guys. So one, I don't necessarily think that the outlet needs to choose who to move forward, but it is probably unlikely that we'll select an editor and reporter from the same place. I think that sometimes organizations will bet on one application and say, oh, I'm going to have this one person and maybe that person will go through. Maybe there might also be somebody that, something that we see in that reporter that I also wanted to go that would be interested. So if you have the bandwidth, I would encourage all of them to apply. Alex, Ginger, if you guys want to add anything to that. Perfect answer. Perfect answer. Got it. All right, so can you talk about some of the other aspects of investigations that are covered in the program? I heard legal considerations being mentioned as one. So, we really take you through the entire lifecycle of an investigation. We have the day, the first day starts with the idea. What is an investigation? How do you hone and find investigative stories? Then we get into reporting, right? We have a great panel with some great reporters about how they do their work. We talk about investigative reporting management. So when you're an investigative editor, your job starts now when you get a draft, but in the very beginning. So how do you manage the investigative reporting process? We take a couple of edit tests, but it's, you know, don't worry about it. You don't get graded. You actually get to do an exercise that applicants for jobs at ProPublica do where we'll give you a draft that needs some work and you tell us, you know, what you see and we coach you through that. The third day is very much devoted to editing, actual editing, putting the investigation together. So what do you do when you get the first draft? We talk about, you know, editing multi-part series, how to run that process, structure. We talk about traditional structure, narrative structure. And we also get into ethics. We get into engagement reporting. So that's just a sample of what the week has. Great. All right. Another question that's come in. I'm a freelancer reporter editor who is also starting a media company with a narrative accountability focus. What would you need from someone like me? I guess my answer would be all the same things we need from everybody else. We need you to submit an application. And in terms of, I guess the one question would be for the letter of recommendation for freelancers. Traditionally what we encourage them to do is to submit a letter from somebody who's familiar with your work. Like an editor at another publication that you've worked for, you know, something, someone like that who can speak to the work and your ability to become an editor or your likelihood of becoming an editor, that kind of thing. And so that would probably be the best route for someone who is, you know, more on a freelance route. Go ahead. All right. Let's see here. So are there any particular tips for people who applied last year and how to stand out this year? We did get a lot of applications last year. And should they put more focus on steps that they've made within the last year to grow? I think that would be terrific if they applied last year and they're going to reapply one I would flag that you applied last year because I think showing that interest is important and will stand out to us. But also say, and here's what, here's what I've been doing since I last applied. Right. So, you know, we, knowing us, we'd go back and look at your other application and look at what you're doing now. That would be useful. So please flag us if you applied last year and please talk in some detail about what's changed and how your interest in this program has only, you know, increased. Got it. So again, if folks are coming in and they have questions, feel free to drop them into the Q&A. This is a pretty good question. You mentioned that participants shape what their mentorships look like and what they and the editor they're paired to focus, paired with focus on. Can you give examples of what participants have decided to, decided to focus on in past year or just past year? This is the only, we've only done this one year. This is our second year doing it. So can you give examples of what folks have focused on with their mentorship? So we did, we're going to do mentor pairings a little differently this year. But, you know, there was somebody who wanted to talk to their mentor mostly about leadership and management challenges. There is, but there might have been someone else who really wanted to use their mentor as an editing sounding board and talk about the craft. So, you know, it really you will have at your disposal somebody who, you know, might be willing to look at drafts with you might be willing to bounce story ideas with you but also if you're dealing with a particularly challenging staffer, you know, they might help you manage that issue. So really there is a range. You know, led by the mentee to get out of their mentor, whatever they need from them. And we also use our mentors as, you know, channels of communication to pro public a writ large so if a mentee is having an issue at their organization and they need an engagement support and they just want to talk to one of our engagement boarders to get some ideas for how to do something in their newsroom. You know, the mentor and the mentee can arrange a conversation. If they're having a legal challenge if they're having a research challenge, you know, these, these participants have access to ProPublica for a year and we try to really connect them with folks if if we've got a resource that can be useful to them. We try to, you know, connect them to those. And if they have, and if they have a story that they want to partner on with ProPublica that mentor is a really useful bridge and helping, you know, make that partnership happen. Yeah. I'm going to just happen to a couple of questions from folks who submitted ahead of the webinar. One question. I'm thinking about work samples. Can you share an investigative project published in the previous year that you admired going to put you guys on the spot. Is there a clip that you're like, Oh, this was a project that you know you admired. You mean outside of ProPublica? I guess so. Yeah, sure. We'll go outside. I mean, there are a lot of really great investigations that we liked. I mean, you know, there's some really great local ones coming out of the south this, this series of stories and out of Alabama by the father and son who, you know, reported on this one police department in this tiny part of Alabama that was like stopping drivers, all that, you know, just one after another so that they could finance and they built this police department that used to have like three officers had some huge number of officers and they had these military grade equipment and they were just basically, you know, wasting sort of the funding and the growth of this police department on the backs of the residents of this part of Alabama. It was just a very smart, you know, and really what they did is they went to the courthouse and they started seeing all these sort of tickets for things and they started getting tips about yeah everybody in town's been stopped by this police force and charge some ridiculous amount for tickets so that's this. And then they won the local Pulitzer. I love that investigation. And just to, you know, kind of bring it back to the work samples I think you know we are not expecting you to have to submit Pulitzer prize winning stories. What we're looking for is, are you doing accountability work in your publication. What does it look like at your place like wherever you are whatever you're doing for your community what is that it doesn't need to look like a public investigation, or, you know, Washington Post investigation or anything like that it needs to look like an investigation or accountability work, really, I think that's more what we're looking for are you asking the questions are you finding the answers that you need to hold the people in power to account in your communities that's what we're looking for. I look I worked for a local newspaper for 12 years, and there was great accountability work that came out of not the investigative team right like you can cover cops from account accountability perspective or you can cover it from a, you know, regurgitate police from a police perspective right and so is there kind of a hint of accountability in, you know, maybe asking questions about that police involved shooting or asking questions about even the new police chief and accountability look at the police chief right same thing with government same thing with education. Are you a metro reporter who is just giving a skeptical lie to things that that indicates that you care about these accountability. Yeah. I'm going to take a couple of questions about the content so some folks are asking, you know, does it focus on audience engagement or social media. We do have a session on engagement reporting but engagement reporting for public is very different than audience engagement at a lot of other places in engagement reporting and for public is more crowdsourced investigations. So think things like I'm blanking so Idaho we just did a big series in Idaho where it was a crowdsourcing visual evidence of the deterioration of schools across the state for example so that's the thing where we use the power of the public to fill in gaps in official reporting in order to do our investigation so again not audience but more so in using crowdsourcing and the power of people to be able to do investigations. We also are adding in some some additional sessions about, you know, actually, no that's that's not true. So the question is let me just read the question. How do you keep long form projects on track while also juggling day to day duties I think that's a that's a one of conversation we'll have in the boot camp, but I guess Alex ginger, you know for folks who aren't at an investigative outlet you know is that something that we will talk about at the boot camp and you know kind of tells a little bit about that. Very much so. Yeah, I mean, applicants right. Alex are from news organizations where that's what they do. So we really really want this program to be applicable to your organization and we recognize that not every organization is you know, everything long form everything long term right so baked into our curriculum is one and gone investigations and grappling with that, you know, how do we do it in our time how do we, you know, how do we do it so that's very much what we're teaching. Yeah. To another question, which is, you know, do we have anything related to cross border investigations during the program. We don't get that specific with our investigations and then with the training. I'm going to give you the tenants of what are the components of an investigative project and how we do it at ProPublica centering finding centering accountability centering the ability to have impact with your reporting. And so whether or not you're doing that within your local community or whether you're doing it across border investigation, the tenants remain the same. But Ginger, actually, Ginger and Alex, I can ask you both this. What's helpful about this being a boot camp versus learning on the job ginger you mentioned a little bit of this earlier but just to reiterate for the folks in the back. You want to take a crack Alex. This is a retreat. You know, I mean, but it's a boot camp. Yeah, it's a boot camp retreat. So you're going to get to hang out with people who are yours in your same situation you're going to get to build relationships with us. You're going to get to think about nothing other than awesome investigative editing for a week right so obviously the focus on the job is extremely important. And we, you know, we pay mind to that for the curriculum that we design throughout the year this is why we don't focus on data until you're back in your newsroom this is why we don't focus on research until you're back in your newsroom. We find that the boot camp is a special experience that you know it's great to get people together. And to talk about this. Anything you want to add Ginger. No, I think that's perfect. Great. Again folks if you have any questions feel free to drop them into the Q&A. That's actually all the questions. Everybody just drop one in. All right. So I'm an editor for an educational publication with an audience of young readers, mainly middle to high school students. I have a personal professional background, investigative reporting and interested in bringing accountability journalism to our unique audience. Have we worked with this demographic in the past and any recommendations for an application like this. Interesting. So I'm an editor for an educational publication with an audience of young readers mainly middle to high school students. I think I would have a couple of questions about this one. Are you as somebody who also started in local news and work wrote for my teen section of my school of my local school. I'm wondering is it affiliated with the local newspaper is affiliated with you know some broader journals organization or is it like a, like a high school, like an academic newspaper sort of situation. You guys have very specific, you know, scenarios or circumstances you're welcome to email me at talent at ProPublica.org and I'm happy to get into the nuances of your particular application in your particular situation and so for that attendee if you could just email us at talent at ProPublica.org we can dig into that a little bit more and and try to get you an answer. All right, so can candidates propose their own stories. So this is not a investigative story producing program. This is a training program so you do not have to produce an investigation at the end of this we will not be editing an investigation at the end of this this is in order for you to learn the skills that you need in order to do the work that that we're talking about here. All right, so let's see here what I'm hearing what I'm seeing is a lot of folks who are very interested in their very specific situations. And again, if you have a very specific situation that goes beyond the criteria that we talked about today. Again, a minimum of five years of professional experience doing accountability journalism, actively working at a news publication and and the other things we mentioned you know accountability focus and those sorts of things. One, you've welcome to email us at talent at ProPublica.org, but I think we're we're going to not go too far into individual situations here in in this in this situation so if folks. Let's see here, let me check the field. Okay, all right, great. Well right now, I can give it another, you know, another couple minutes just in case some folks have any, any last questions but while we wait on that ginger Alex anything that you would want potential applicants to know or think about or any last parting words you'd want to say. We also have fun during the boot camp. We actually have a lot of fun. The conversations are intense. We do put a lot into it, you know, our editors are super excited about being involved in this and so they come like ready to like fill you with all this great sort of experience and knowledge and they also love hearing from the participants so it's a very, you know, sort of dynamic and fun experience but we also you get to meet a lot of the folks in our newsroom. You get to know a little bit about ProPublica. We're going to hopefully I may be saying the wrong thing but I think we're giving building and more time for you to actually enjoy New York a little bit. So, so, like Alex said it's it's a retreat and and in a fulfilling experience a rewarding experience we hope it has been for our folks in the past in the last year. Yeah, Alex do you want to anything you want to add. I think what ginger set a spot on and to me the two things I'm most looking for is. Our number one, I really I think I can boil it all down to how quickly can you help us achieve the impact of increasing the diversity of Republicans investigative editing. Like, we want you really want this program to be as impactful as possible and so the likelihood of you getting us there. The the factor that is probably measured most strongly in in in the kind of selection of the candidates.