Apply to be WBUR's next Arts Reporting Fellow

January 25, 2023

Who we are:

WBUR is Boston’s NPR and a public media leader, producing exceptional journalism on-air, online, on demand and in real life. Our mission is to provide high-quality journalism and enriching experiences that foster understanding, connection and community for an expanding circle of people. WBUR is a member-supported nonprofit and provides its journalism to the public for free, with no paywall or subscription. Our broadcast license is held by Boston University.

Employees at WBUR are a team of professionals who value truth, diverse perspectives and candid debate, creating a culture of mutual respect, passion, and belonging.

We’ve got exciting plans to keep innovating and building WBUR for the future.We’re growing. And you’ll grow too.

What we can offer you:

Part Time Fellowship Opportunity: Work 25 hours a week for six months (with the potential to extend to one year) and receive compensation of $2,500 per month.
Onsite: An opportunity to be based in Boston and when appropriate and safe, conduct in person reporting.
An opportunity to work in a newsroom operating as a reporter on an arts and culture team.
Gain practical experience pitching stories, covering breaking news. Contributing and publishing news stories to our website and for broadcast, and managing social media.
Having access to experienced journalists, working alongside senior team members, with opportunities for mentoring.
Curious about the Arts Reporting Fellowship experience? Read from our current fellow here.

The opportunity and who you’ll work with:

WBUR’s Arts & Culture team covers the vibrant and thriving arts scene in and around Greater Boston with a particular focus on overlooked communities and artforms. Our reporting is featured on air, online, in our weekly newsletter, The ARTery, and at live events hosted at WBUR’s CitySpace and other venues across the city. We’re passionate about human-centered storytelling and strive to bring curiosity, openness and thoughtfulness to all we do. If this sounds exciting, we want to hear from you.

Our Arts & Culture Team is now accepting applications for our Arts Reporting Fellowship. As a fellow you will be embedded with the arts team and report on local arts and culture news in Boston. You will work with the arts & culture editors to develop local reporting skills, enterprise stories and radio technique.

Your assignments will include covering breaking news stories, writing local arts guides, crafting social media posts and reporting short news stories for broadcast.
Working in tandem with the arts reporters and editors, you will generate and pitch story ideas.

In addition to expanding your writing and reporting skills, you will learn to use the newsroom’s digital publishing platform and the content managing platform.

You will also learn how to record and edit broadcast-quality audio.

What you’ll need to succeed:

Application instructions and important details:

Please submit your résumé and three writing clips to dcbell@bu.edu and wburartery@gmail.com by Sunday, March 12, 2023.
This fellowship will begin in late April or early May 2023.
Finalists will be notified by March 31, 2023.

Capabilities and proficiencies:

An excitement about WBUR’s mission to provide an essential public good: high-quality local journalism and enriching experiences that foster understanding, connection and community.
A commitment to journalism fundamentals, including accuracy, fairness, respect, honesty and independence on air and online (for more, see WBUR’s ethics guidelines).

In an ongoing effort to enrich our organizational culture, WBUR is committed to building a staff and leadership team that reflects the diversity of our city, region and nation.

Designing an organization where everyone thrives, creating connection and community that permeates our workplace requires real change across all facets of what we do and who we are.

We must hire, support, develop, advance and retain diverse talent at all levels of the organization with a standard of inclusive excellence.

If you are excited by this opportunity and have a passion for our mission - whether you meet some or all of our criteria — we want to talk to you.

Please note this fellowship is distinct from the WBUR newsroom fellowship.