Apply to be IRE’s Google Fellow next summer!

Are you a college journalism student who enjoys holding government officials accountable, scouring public records or working with data? If so, consider spending your summer at IRE through the Google News Lab Fellowship.

Eight participating organizations in the U.S. select students who will spend ten weeks working on projects focused on data journalism, online free expression, building news apps, and rethinking the business of journalism. Each student receives a $9,000 stipend and $1,000 travel fund. Be sure to apply by Jan. 15!

IRE is based out of the University of Missouri. We’re a small crew, but there’s no limit to the scope and impact of the work you can do here.

We asked our 2017 Google Fellow, Emily Hopkins, to describe her summer at IRE. Emily is now a database reporter covering the environment for the Indianapolis Star.

When people ask me what I did at IRE last summer, the answer is: a little bit of everything. I reported, recorded and mixed audio for their podcast, cleaned data, worked on projects for the Research Desk. I even ran around the IRE Conference doing my (small) part to make sure everything ran smoothly. I think my experience is a reflection of the organization as a whole; IRE's small but mighty staff does the work of twice as many people, all in the name of supporting investigative journalists across the country.

Working at IRE is like being in the same room as all of your investigative heroes. My favorite part of my fellowship was working on the podcast. It let me flex my creative muscles in a medium that I've had less experience with, but it also meant that I had the license to talk to great journalists working on amazing projects and to share their work with other journalists. It's a delightful community to be a part of and I loved all of it.

Read about what some of our previous fellows worked on during their summers at IRE: Brett Murphy (2016), Jessica Park (2015).

If you have questions about IRE’s portion of the fellowship, please contact Sarah Hutchins at sarah@ire.org.