News Ambassadors receives funding for solutions journalism mentorship

News Ambassadors, an initiative that facilitates collaboration between journalism schools and public radio newsrooms, was awarded $10,000 in microgrants from Listening Post Collective to support engagement with KBIA in the 2024-25 school year. As News Ambassadors works to train participating new-academic partnerships in democracy-focused solutions reporting, the microgrants will cover community listening in order to improve their solutions reporting. News Ambassadors was also awarded a $30,000 grant from Scripps Howard Journalism Fund to support journalism students receiving mentorship from trained journalists, many of whom are accredited SoJo trainers and/or Complicating the Narratives Fellows. The mentorship aims to increase the likelihood of the stories’ being strong enough to air on partners’ newsroom stations at the end of the semester, and the grant will support efforts to match mentees with journalists in parts of the United States for enriched, similar learning experiences.