IAJS-sponsored John S. Knight Journalism fellows focus on shifting power in disenfranchised communities
Bettina Chang at a City Bureau event.
To bolster journalism that helps diverse communities flourish, the Institute for Advancing Just Societies is co-sponsoring two John S. Knight Journalism fellows for the 2024-25 academic year.
The JSK Fellowships offer a nine-month residential program on the Stanford University campus that provides fellows with individual coaching, access to Stanford experts and resources, tailored workshops, and peer-to-peer learning opportunities. The JSK fellows co-sponsored by the institute will participate in all JSK Fellowship activities as well as the institute’s programs.
“We are excited about this partnership with an important new venture at Stanford,” said Dawn Garcia, JSK Fellowships director. “The Institute for Advancing Just Societies’ mission aligns with JSK’s efforts to support journalists who work with communities to close news and information gaps that have perpetuated their disenfranchisement.”
Fellows connect with their communities
The two JSK Fellows co-sponsored by the Institute for Advancing Just Societies have both focused on community engagement.
“We believe our JSK fellows will bring valuable perspective from their grassroots journalism work to the institute’s community of researchers, scholars and other practitioners, while gaining insights and knowledge that may shape their work going forward,” Garcia said.
One of the fellows is based in the U.S. and one internationally:
Bettina Chang is a co-founder and former co-executive director of City Bureau, a civic journalism lab focused on community engagement, participatory journalism and racial equity. City Bureau in 2022 won a $10 million Stronger Democracy Award for its Documenters Network, which trains and pays people to cover public meetings and build community around democratic participation. Read Chang's Life as a fellow essay, "Survey: Where do editors come from?"
After identifying vast disinformation regarding the coronavirus among German-Turks, the largest migrant community in Germany, Nalan Sipar started making news about the pandemic in Turkish on her YouTube channel. Sipar is founder and CEO of her non-profit media startup, MedyaN, recognized as the best media start-up idea by the German Journalists’ Association. She has received a Media Startup Fellowship from Media Lab Bayern and was also a participant to the European Journalism Center’s YouTube News Creator Accelerator Program. Read Sipar's Life as a fellow essay, "Immigrants are underserved by Germany’s mainstream media."
“Both Bettina and Nalan have been immersing themselves in the communities they serve and lending their expertise to co-create new journalistic approaches to helping people thrive,” said Brian S. Lowery, Walter Kenneth Kilpatrick Professor of Organizational Behavior in the Graduate School of Business and co-director of the institute. “This aligns well with the institute’s solutions-focused approach to advance racial and ethnic justice.”
Connecting programs with a focus on problem solving
The Institute for Advancing Just Societies at Stanford University brings together researchers, thought leaders, community partners, and policy makers to develop practical solutions to pressing societal problems involving race and ethnicity. Backed by Stanford’s research capacity and external partnerships, the institute works on a local, national, and global scale to ensure that race and ethnicity no longer adversely impact people’s security, health, freedom, opportunity, political self-determination, or life experience. The institute was founded in 2022 with the goal of developing a cross-disciplinary infrastructure at Stanford for the study of race and its effects on society.
The John S. Knight Journalism Fellowships empower diverse journalism leaders to succeed as effective change agents, sustain democratic communities, and defend press freedom around the world. Stanford has offered journalism fellowships since 1966 as a way to give journalists access to the university and develop leaders in the field. The fellowship program was renamed in 1984 for newspaper executive John S. Knight.
“We are excited to introduce Bettina and Nalan to the institute’s growing community of scholars and community partners collaborating on real-world solutions to racial and ethnic injustice,” said Tomás R. Jiménez, professor of sociology in the School of Humanities and Sciences, co-director of the institute, and Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education. “We hope their time at Stanford will help Bettina and Nalan initiate new approaches to advancing both an understanding of the communities they cover, and an understanding why helping these communities thrive is important to all of us.”