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The Douglas Tweedale Memorial Fellowship

The 2009 Fellowship Program Focusing on Digital Media

In 2009, ICFJ awarded Douglas Tweedale Fellowships to:

Verónica Galán of CNN Expansión in Mexico City, and
Pedro Ylarri, a reporter for the newspaper Perfil in Buenos Aires, Argentina

Their Tweedale fellowships focused on how news and information businesses are expanding and improving their digital media offerings. They joined five International Journalism Exchange Fellows for a Washington orientation on how to make the most of video, audio, graphics and social media like Facebook and Twitter to make a news web site more appealing and useful. Under the leadership of News Lab founder and former network news reporter Deborah Potter, the visiting journalists shot video with “flip-cams”, learned to integrate cellular telephone messages and social media into their web sites, and learned how to create graphics to illustrate and simplify data-rich stories. The group visited newsrooms at USA Today and The Washington Post to see what those major papers were doing to boost the appeal of their online editions.

Galán did a two-part internship: one week in New York at CNN Money and about ten days in Washington, D.C. working at Kiplinger, a personal finance magazine.

Ylarri interned at the St. Petersburg (FL) Times, where he rotated from one department to another learning how each part of the news organization worked. He also spent two days at the Poynter Institute, which is devoted to teaching journalists how to master new skills.

At the conclusion of their month-long fellowship, they returned to Washington, D.C. for a debriefing and ICFJ’s annual awards dinner, which was attended by about 350 of the capital city’s leading journalists.

Galán returned to Mexico with authority to make changes in CNN Expansión, the financial magazine for which she is running the Web site. Ylarri became a link between the print reporters at his newspaper and its relatively new Web site, Perfil.com.

“The experience as a whole was outstanding both at a personal and professional level,” said Ylarri. “I learned excellent practices during my time in the newspaper that I intend to apply in the media in my country and share with my regional colleagues.”

Application and Selection

Applicants should be early to mid-career journalists working at independent newspapers or television stations in Latin America who have an interest in integrating new, digital media into their news organizations. They should be committed to excellence in journalism, interested in improving their knowledge of the role of independent journalism and how it functions in a democratic society, and dedicated to developing strong professional skills.

Additionally, applicants must have enough proficiency in the English language to comprehend assignments and conduct their work and personal activities in an English language environment even though they will write their stories in Spanish.

The next Tweedale fellowship will take place in the fall/winter of 2011. We will not accept applications until summer 2011.

Program Costs

The fellowship provides international airfare to and from the United States; program-related travel expenses within the United States; a housing and meal allowance; and health insurance for the duration of the program.