Report
for
the
world.
Report
for
Impact.
Report for Impact.
A global resource on impact and revenue diversification in the newsroom.
Research Partners :
Our Goal is to reach 200
reporters by 2027.
Where we are
Forging Local-Global Connections of Journalism
As disinformation, economic turmoil and state repression attempt to suffocate the free press, local media remain a powerful antidote to global crises.
We are
Report for the World, an initiative of the GroundTruth project. We serve public interest media in communities most affected by the erosion of democratic freedoms. Through the diverse reach of our newsrooms and journalists, we raise accountability and action on critical issues globally.
Our mission
Our mission is to build global communities of local journalists around critical beats. While we begin our relationships with the newsrooms and journalists through funding, our larger mission is to strengthen and diversify the media landscapes in which they operate.
Our role
How we work: The Impact Behind the Impact
Report for the World forms global cohorts of local newsrooms around beat-focused journalism roles, each of which receives financial support over three-year cycles. We help the media hosting our journalists to deepen their coverage of critical issues, whilst in parallel, providing the journalists with stable employment opportunities in their home countries.
With each new season of recruitment at Report for the World, we see a common reality among our members. Regardless of the type of challenges – environmental destruction, systemic corruption, gender discrimination or racial injustice – the communities hold the solutions to their own problems. Local journalists and newsrooms are uniquely positioned to create accountability in these communities with their reporting, because of their access and intimate knowledge of the topics they cover. They are vital agents in the fight for social justice. They are conduits of our collective impact.
Our two-track support system
To amplify the impact of our media partners across the globe, Report for the World has developed a two-track support system.
This track strengthens the career trajectories of the journalists that RFW supports.
We achieve this through a combination of hands-on training, in-person and virtual workshops, collaborative reporting opportunities and beat-focused mentorship.
RFW member journalists also meet through regional and thematic forums, where they exchange ideas on their current reporting, collaborate with each other and request additional support from the program.
The second track primarily serves the editors and founders at the member newsrooms by supporting their impact efforts, from new forms of storytelling and increased audience engagement, to creating accountability and revenue around the beats.
We analyze impact related to individual stories and beats to explore ways of integrating successful methods into newsrooms’ editorial planning.
Report for Impact forms part of efforts to systematize learnings, and to help streamline the newsrooms’ impact practices.
The Journey Through Change
Through a competitive annual call, we invite newsrooms to apply with the roles they seek to support, citing evidence for the need of a specific beat in their community. Applying newsrooms are required to prove prior successes of covering the beat, the gaps it would fill in their reportage, and how it relates to other verticals and their overall editorial mission. Upon stringent assessment of the newsroom’s independence, reputation, reliability, diversity of staff and a strong code of ethics.
We pay half of each reporter’s annual salary, while the newsrooms pay the other half, making it a mutually invested partnership.
The newsrooms devise a specific job description for each reporting role and select the best suited candidate, while the program tracks the stories they produce, to ensure that the reporters are performing in line with expectations.
This support is renewed for the 2nd and 3rd years, provided the journalists are delivering the stories, and the newsrooms are providing editorial support and a healthy working environment.
Report for the World does not interfere with the editorial processes of the newsrooms. Instead, we meet their needs through bespoke services.
Our partners: Report for the World’s Ecosystem of Support
Our core team partners with local and regional media development organizations, specialized media outlets, academic institutions and subject experts to implement context and language specific professional development and media innovation.
Several regional organizations help Report for the World to source diverse and representative talent, including newsrooms, journalists, trainers and program specialists.
Key Advisers
- Wits University (Africa)
- Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism-ARIJ (MENA)
- Splice Media (Asia)
- Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalism-ABRAJI (Latin America)
- The Global Forum for Media Development-GFMD (Europe/global)
- The International Press Institute (IPI)
- Syli-climateXchange
A key value of our program is our bird’s eye view of the trends.
Our Theory of Change: ‘Building Communities Around Critical Beats’
Given the complexities in effecting change in the professional development and collaborations for journalists, and diversifying innovation and viability for newsrooms, and considering the links between our two track support system, we set out with short, medium and long terms goals:
Short term – Newsrooms and reporters have the financial means to cover their desired beat with consistency through the 3-year salary support.
Medium term – The beat becomes a permanent feature in the newsroom, and is covered with an intersectional lens, and in collaboration with other staff.
Long term – The journalists we support remain in the field, while building their skills, and the newsroom partners increase their reach, revenue and impact. Together, these two outcomes help fortify the media landscape.
While our newsroom partners are innovating on the go, from creating new revenue models to accountability, too often the impact of their work is not systematically captured.
Drawing from diverse cases of success with storytelling, audience engagement, collaborations and sustainability, we bring our members together to form peer-to-peer networks, in order to deepen and scale their efforts. We find that it is also the most organic way of fostering collaborations between the media.
Our network serves the journalists we support, and their peers in the newsrooms, from managing editors and founders to impact producers.
Based on our engagement with our partners, we are building additional services in partnership with other media development specialists.
As we support this human experiment of storytelling for good, our ‘HOW’ is naturally rooted in the people we support. The expressed needs of our newsroom leaders and reporters are at the heart of our support system and we will continue to collaborate with like minded organizations to serve them.
In the long term, we see Report for the World transforming into a global resource hub that links reporters, newsrooms, media experts, foundations and investors within countries and across continents, to connect, to share knowledge, to lead workshops, to collaborate on projects, and to build hubs around different types of innovation.