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Report For America grows to 225 reporters amidst pandemic
May 1, 2020Report for America today announced last week the selection of 225 journalists for its 2020 reporting corps. The new cohort will be placed with more than 160 local news organizations across 46 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico.
These reporting positions come at a time when local journalism is already reeling from years of newsroom cuts and unforeseen challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. They also mark a major expansion from the current corps size of 59, of whom, more than 90 percent are returning.
Report for America is a national service program that places journalists into local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues and communities through its reporting corps. It is an initiative of the nonprofit news organization, The GroundTruth Project.
The full list of 2020-21 corps members is here. The journalists start in June and reflect wide ranging backgrounds of the communities they will serve:
- 225 reporters in 162 newsrooms
- About 40 percent are journalists of color, more than a quarter speak Spanish
- Average age is 27
- 5 are post-9/11 U.S. military veterans
- More than two thirds are women