South Jersey Information Equity Project congratulates 2024 reporting fellows
By Adrienne Bauldock and Cassandra Etienne
The South Jersey Information Equity Project has concluded its third year of reporting fellowships, with fellows covering a record number of stories of importance to South Jersey communities.
In June, we celebrated the fellows’ work and a year of growth for SJIEP. The annual closing ceremony was held at The Cultural Collective Cafe & BrickNKulture Event Space in Woodbury and featured keynote remarks from Phil Lewis, senior front-page editor at HuffPost. Lewis, who also publishes “What I’m Reading,” an award-winning newsletter focused on the Black experience in America, talked about his career trajectory and encouraged fellows to carve their own successful, nontraditional paths into journalism.
Adding to the festivities, family members and friends of the fellows attended to offer support and hear them speak about their reporting experiences in the program. Weeks later, we’re still inspired and excited about our fellows’ accomplishments.
As we reflect on SJIEP’s third round of fellowships, the Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University is proud to share some highlights from 2024 and what we have in the works for next year.
Successes and accomplishments in 2024
SJIEP was launched in 2019 to increase the amount and quality of local news and information produced by and for communities of color in South Jersey.
This year, SJIEP expanded its coverage to six counties, adding Salem, Atlantic, and Cumberland Counties to the original three: Burlington, Camden, and Gloucester.
We welcomed eight new reporting fellows, three more than our previous cohort of five. We also had the pleasure of working with our three returning media partners: Tennyson Donyéa of Black In Jersey, Clyde Hughes of Front Runner New Jersey, Sherri Darden of Scoop USA, and our newest media partner, Mark Tyler of Atlantic City Focus.
The fellows — Queena Bergen, Shaniele Brown, Brandon Edwards, Erika Heinrich, Taja Johnson, Ahnyah Pinckney, Frank Santos, and Emmanuel Young — worked directly with SJIEP media partners.
They reported on a number of local issues and topics, such as environmental justice, small businesses, education and youth programs, housing, and the local impacts of state legislation. In all, SJIEP partner newsrooms published 75 stories produced by this cohort. You can also read their stories at sjiep.org.
SJIEP also hosted nine workshops to help reinforce skills such as news judgment, news writing, interviewing, and photography. The sessions, organized by SJIEP mentor and training coordinator, Velvet McNeil, featured presentations from Black journalists based in South Jersey and the Philadelphia metropolitan area. The workshops offered fellows the opportunity to network while receiving professional guidance from veteran reporters familiar with the local news landscape.
This year we piloted an introduction to an investigative workshop series hosted by Meg McGuire, publisher of Delaware Currents, and Beatrice Forman, general assignments reporter at the Philadelphia Inquirer. The sessions helped fellows explore water safety and pollution issues in South Jersey and develop forthcoming articles based on their findings.
Community convenings
Every year, we host discussions with community members and local organizations that help to deepen the fellows’ engagement and reporting. The conversations welcome feedback on news coverage, what South Jersey residents find important and should know more about, and news leads from community members.
This year’s convening participants expressed the need for more reporting and information about maternal mortality rates, voting (especially among young people of voting age), traffic issues, municipal responses to road conditions, and the need for affordable housing, among others.
Lessons from a year of expansion
Support and productivity: The fellows developed stories with the guidance of their editors, which provided additional training for these early career journalists. Each fellow contributed 1–2 articles per month, which supported the offerings of our partner outlets.
We’ve seen again how direct placement with partnering newsrooms has helped fellows practice their craft and see their pitches and assignments through to completion. That’s why we were so excited to offer a stipend to our SJIEP media partners this year, with generous support from the Independence Public Media Foundation and the New Jersey Civic Information Consortium. The stipends are by no means compensation for their investment in the program and the success of our fellows, but instead, they are a gesture of thanks for our partners’ continued collaboration.
Community engagement: This was our first year hosting convenings in person. While the previous years’ virtual events were well attended and readily accessible, being able to meet with community members face-to-face made all the difference. The fellows got to showcase their work and speak with residents directly about what changes they wanted to see in local news coverage. Plus, we had the opportunity to work with businesses in the area to host these events. So the extra legwork was beneficial in many ways, including building awareness of SJIEP and cultivating ongoing partnerships.
Consistency and fellow engagement: As with any cohort, there were some lapses in productivity and engagement with workshops as family, work, and other commitments took our fellows away from their SJIEP work, rightfully so. Our priority is not just the output — although this has been our most productive year in terms of published stories. Instead, SJIEP seeks to invest in our fellows’ overall growth as media professionals and engaged community members.
This program is designed precisely to connect with and equip aspiring journalists and emerging storytellers who come into this program with different levels of media experience. They are looking to gain and strengthen newsgathering skills while considering possible careers in news media. We’ll continue to work with our fellows, with the help of our SJIEP mentors and partners, to provide additional support and ensure they complete the program successfully.
To this end, we’ve continued to bolster the mentoring and career development components of SJIEP. Fellows are paired with our mentors: noted journalists Celeste Whittaker of the Courier Post, Melanie Burney of The Philadelphia Inquirer, and Linda Shockley, former managing director of the Dow Jones News Fund. They met regularly as part of the program to discuss the fellows’ progress, current assignments, and what resources can assist in their work.
The focus areas for SJIEP in 2025 are:
- Enhanced media trainings that build on current offerings
- Increased outreach efforts within SJIEP coverage counties
- Launch of an SJIEP alumni network helping to connect reporters with resources and opportunities beyond their fellowships
As we solidify our plans for next year, we continue to focus on our goals to support reporting and information sources by and for communities of color in South Jersey. We hope SJIEP will serve more journalists and help them with their career advancement, as well as deepen the coverage of South Jersey communities by reporters who better reflect them.
Adrienne Bauldock is the project coordinator for the South Jersey Information Equity Project. Contact her at bauldocka@montclair.edu.
Cassandra Etienne is the assistant director of membership and programming at the Center for Cooperative Media. Contact her at etiennec@montclair.edu.
About the South Jersey Information Equity Project: The Center for Cooperative Media partnered with the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists to launch SJIEP in April 2020. Its goal is to address media inequity in South Jersey, specifically by seeking to improve the quality and quantity of news and information produced by and for communities of color.
About the Center for Cooperative Media: The Center is a primarily grant-funded program of the School of Communication and Media at Montclair State University. Its mission is to grow and strengthen local journalism and support an informed society in New Jersey and beyond. The Center is supported with funding from Montclair State University, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, Democracy Fund, the New Jersey Civic Information Consortium, the Independence Public Media Foundation, Rita Allen Foundation, Inasmuch Foundation and John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. For more information, visit centerforcooperativemedia.org.
