A second cohort of California Local News Fellows and newsrooms announced today will work in newsrooms statewide starting this fall as part of a state-funded initiative to invigorate local journalism, with a focus on underserved communities.
The program will now support 75 early-career journalists working at small and large newspapers, public radio stations and community and ethnic media outlets across 35 California counties. The newsroom partners (see full list below) — including the Sacramento Bee, SJV Water, Radio Bilingue and Người Việt News — span the state and will join the inaugural 2023 cohort of newsrooms.
“With a national crisis in local journalism upon us, every single one of these fellows and newsrooms is a sign of hope,” said Christa Scharfenberg, director of the California Local News Fellowship program. “We’re honored to support the next generation of journalists and help invigorate a national movement for robust local news.”
Based at Berkeley Journalism, the fellowship program was spearheaded by California State Senator Steve Glazer in 2022 with $25 million in state support to bolster beleaguered newsrooms. The funding is supporting three cohorts of fellows to work full-time for two years each. Glazer and Berkeley Journalism Dean Geeta Anand conceived of the innovative program as an antidote to newsroom layoffs and the shuttering of local newspapers nationwide.
“The survival of local journalism is in the balance, and its survival is not optional,” said Berkeley Journalism Dean Geeta Anand. “Robust local reporting makes a difference for all that we hold dear: the education of our children, safety and dignity for vulnerable community members, the protection of our environment, and more.”
The program, now in its second year, again drew hundreds of applications from newsrooms and early-career journalists who were selected through a competitive process involving the fellowship staff and advisory board, along with leaders from some California State University journalism departments.
Beginning in September, the new fellows will live and work for two years in the communities where they are assigned, reporting on everything from breaking news to local government, the environment, education, economic disparities, the unhoused and more. The first cohort, which started in September 2023, will enter its second and final year.
In addition to invaluable, hands-on newsroom experience, fellows receive robust training — from the First Amendment Coalition, the Dart Center, Big Local and many others — and mentorship from industry professionals, such as Marco Werman of the World, Lorraine Ali of the Los Angeles Times and Sara Ravani of the San Francisco Chronicle.
For Editor Annelise Pierce at Shasta Scout, the addition of Fellow Nevin Kallepalli will double the size of her newsroom.
“In our overwhelming information age, access to truthful, non-partisan, community-curated news is more valuable than ever,” Pierce said. “Communities like ours know that. They’re just afraid to trust reporters. As on-the-ground journalists, we build trust with our community one interview, one public meeting, and one reported story at a time.”
Pierce said that in her Shasta County community, “It’s no exaggeration to say that democracy itself is on the line.” She emphasized that journalists are called on to report the truth in a context that can help people make sense of events.
The San Francisco Chronicle is on the other end of the size spectrum from Shasta Scout, but will benefit just as much from the fellowship support, said Race and Equity Editor Raheem Hosseini. He said a local news fellow will help his newsroom expand much-needed coverage of San Francisco’s Asian American Pacific Islander community.
“It’s no secret. We’ve seen the transformation of this industry for well over a decade now,” said Hosseini, who will bring on fellow Olivia Cruz Mayeda to report on the city’s Filipino, Japanese and South Asian communities. “Even big newspapers don’t have the resources they once had to really take advantage of and give opportunities to promising young journalists.”
Hosseini said he is excited about the opportunity for Mayeda to receive additional support and mentorship through the California Local News Fellowship program — the kind of support he wished existed as a young reporter — as well as the opportunities available at a major metropolitan daily. “It’s the best of both worlds,” he said.
Hosseini emphasized that local journalism can and should echo beyond a specific place and time — expanding its significance.
“You can always find a person, a group, on your ground level that speaks to a feeling, emotion, movement, that is happening in a much broader way. Telling these hyper- local or even these regional stories, it’s important to understand how global these stories actually are,” he said.
Tarini Mehta, who graduated from Berkeley Journalism in spring 2024, was selected as a fellow and paired with The Press Democrat in Santa Rosa. At Berkeley, she studied narrative journalism and investigative reporting through the school’s Investigative Reporting Program.
Mehta said she’s looking forward to connecting with the local community where she’ll cover education, reporting daily stories as well as more complex investigative pieces. For Mehta, the first step will be hanging out at “local haunts” to listen to and learn about community needs and perspectives.
“To build relationships, there’s no substitute for spending time in the community,” Mehta said.
She says early-career journalists like her are passionate about covering local news. “We get into this work to change lives and make an impact and that is most tangible on the local level,” Mehta said.
Fellow Lingzi Chen shares Mehta’s commitment to and excitement about being deeply immersed in a community. A graduate of Columbia Journalism School, she’ll be a general assignment reporter at Lake County News where she plans to report daily news and longer, more complex stories as well as connect with underrepresented communities.
“I hope to be a local reporter who knows everything about a place and its people,” Chen said. “I want to truly understand the local community I serve, to know people, to explore what matters, what is at stake, what has gone wrong and to report on what has not been adequately reported.”
The first cohort of California Local News Fellows is doing just that, said Scharfenberg.
“From Chico to Chula Vista, these inaugural fellows have truly exceeded all expectations — both in terms of the quality and impact of their reporting and the way they’ve become part of the communities they serve,” Scharfenberg said.
They collectively have written or produced hundreds of stories — and won awards along the way.
For example, Steve Brooks, an award-winning prison journalist who is currently incarcerated in San Quentin, recently wrote about a new program that prepares convicted felons to be truck drivers for Local News Matters. (The second cohort will include journalist Joe Garcia, who is currently incarcerated but was recently granted parole and is scheduled to be released this fall. He will be based at CalMatters.) Fellow Kori Suzuki recently reported on elective vehicle chargers in the Imperial Valley for KPBS. Fellow Zhe Wu exposed inadequate language services at San Francisco public meetings for the San Francisco Public Press.
Fellow Philip Salata is about to begin his second year as an energy and environment reporter at inewsource, an investigative reporting organization in San Diego. Salata said one of the things that resonated about the fellowship for him is that it both supports local news outlets and connects the fellows with resources, thinkers and platforms to elevate their reporting.
He said the idea is to, “think about how local news radiates out to the state, nationally, and beyond. That’s something I found to be very powerful.”
Salata said that at inewsource, he has the support and time to work on longer investigations. Two of the pieces he’s most proud of include a story about whether locals will find jobs in the midst of the Imperial Valley’s “white gold” rush and another story about a nonprofit leader who made derogatory statements about and unfairly targeted two Black farmers.
In reporting these stories and more, Salata said he received a lot of support within his newsroom, but also mentorship, skill-building and community from the broader fellowship program.
Fellows and their newsroom editors expressed a deep commitment to local reporting that ensures all community voices are listened to and reported on. They also highlighted the essential role local coverage plays in accountability and the rule of law.
“I always feel that fair and professional local news is the ultimate gatekeeper of democracy,” said Chen. “As local news reporters, we play a frontline role in combating disinformation and misinformation, which can substantially harm our local communities, especially during an election year. This harm often disproportionately impacts underrepresented communities.”
Fellow Mehta underscored that point, noting that the stakes are high and that we’re at an inflection point in our history. “We’re face-to-face with the fact that local journalism is essential to saving our democracy from collapse,” she said.
Chen added that local journalism has a legacy: “For me, writing local stories is like writing the first draft of history. With a background in cultural history research, I understand that it’s not just for today, but also for people in the future who will seek to find out what exactly happened.”
See the full list of 2024-26 Fellows and newsrooms here.
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For more information about the California Local News Fellowship or to request an interview, contact Berkeley Journalism Communications Director Andrea Lampros at alampros@berkeley.edu or 510.847.4469.