The Knight-Mozilla Fellowships were an opportunity for people who love to code and who want to influence the future of journalism on the web. Our 2016 fellows worked in six newsrooms in the U.S. and Germany. The fellowship has closed.

This page describes details of the program as it existed from 2011-16.

THE FELLOWSHIP

What is happening with the fellowship during 2017?

The fellowship will be on hiatus for 2017. After five cohorts of fellows, we’ve gathered a lot of data about how fellows help their newsrooms and the broader journalism-code community. During early 2017, we’re going to review that data and chat with community members about what shape the fellowship could take going forward. If you’d like to learn more about this process, please sign up here, and we’ll be in touch.

What is the Knight-Mozilla Fellowship?

The Knight-Mozilla Fellowship places creative technologists in newsrooms to work on open-source tools and support reporting that strengthens the web and changes people’s lives. Knight-Mozilla Fellows spend 10 months working with newsroom technology teams to write open-source code, analyze and visualize data, and explore tough problems facing journalism.

What do fellows do?

Over the past four years, fellows have created open-source projects, traveled the world sharing their work, and built strong relationships with their cohort and the wider journalism-code community. We welcome the fellows at the start of their fellowship (get to know them) and support their work during and after the fellowship.

Fellows get to work in a way that is different from a lot of other roles. Not a newsroom employee, nor an intern, fellows operate more like independent researchers. They spend time working in and with their newsroom, but also have the flexibility to pursue learning and other projects of interest. Being a fellow means having the time for the experimenting, teaching, speaking, and learning that often gets forced into your evenings and weekends at a regular job.

Who can become a fellow?

It could be you. Anyone who loves to solve problems via code and has an interest in journalism. You do not have to have previous experience with journalism. You also do not have to have experience with any particular programming language. A lot of news app development happens in the front-end, especially mapping and visualization, and people with those skills are highly sought after. Statistics, data, and even hard math skills are also great.

And you can be from anywhere. We are an international program and welcome participants from around the world. You do not need to be a U.S. citizen to participate in the program. We assist fellows with any necessary visa applications for working and traveling during the fellowship. We make our best effort to handle any visa needs a fellow may have, but it is possible that visa requirements may affect your ability to participate in the fellowship. If you are concerned that this may be the case for you, it is something we can investigate at the finalist stage of the application process.

Where do fellows work?

Fellows are based, unless special circumstances dictate, in the town of their host news organization.

Our fellowship locations for 2016 are:

• The Los Angeles Times Data Desk—Los Angeles, CA
• NPR—Washington, DC
• Vox Media—Austin, TX; New York, NY; or Washington, DC
• Frontline—Boston, MA
• Correct!v—Berlin, Germany
• The Coral Project—New York, NY (a partnership of the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Mozilla, based out of the New York Times)

Each news organization described what they are looking for in a fellow and the types of projects they are excited to work on with a fellow.

When do the fellowships start?

Fellowships typically being in the first quarter of the calendar year. The fellowship is on hiatus for 2017.