"California Local News Fellowship, Editing - School of Journalism"

Position overview

Salary range: The UC academic salary scales set the minimum pay determined by step at appointment. See the following table for the current salary scale for this position: https://www.ucop.edu/academic-personnel-programs/_files/2025-26/represented-july-2025-scales/t24-b.pdf. Fellow salaries will start at $80,000. All fellows will receive benefits from the University of California.

Percent time: Full-time

Anticipated start: September 2026

Position duration: The fellowship will start September 1, 2026 and will run for one year, ending on August 31, 2027.

Application Window

Open date: February 3, 2026

Next review date: Wednesday, Feb 18, 2026 at 11:59pm (Pacific Time)
Apply by this date to ensure full consideration by the committee.

Final date: Thursday, Mar 5, 2026 at 11:59pm (Pacific Time)
Applications will continue to be accepted until this date, but those received after the review date will only be considered if the position has not yet been filled.

Position description

Central to the story of the decline of local news is the dramatic reduction in the number of reporters working in communities across the country. There is an equally concerning, yet less visible, decline in the number of editors working in newsrooms. Editors are a vital and critical resource, as they set the editorial scope and direction of a newsroom, guide the work of reporters, provide training and mentoring and ensure accuracy and accountability. Editors also play an essential role in shaping the next generation of journalists; early-career journalists benefit enormously from strong editors who provide on-the-job training, helping reporters to learn the ropes, get to know their beats, become more discerning about what makes a good or important story, and find their voice, among many other things.

Unfortunately, most newsrooms have had to cut their editing ranks just as severely as their reporting ranks, leaving newsrooms under-resourced to carry out their critical mission. To help address this gap, the California Local News Fellowship program is launching a pilot, one-year editing fellowship program in 2026. In partnership with the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, we will support five early- to mid-career reporters or producers to move into editing roles. We will provide intensive skill-building training and mentoring before and during their newsroom terms, in the craft of editing but also the art of managing people. Historically, reporters have moved into editing roles with little to no training in either; we seek to provide a strong foundation for the fellows, setting them up to succeed as editors and managers and to dramatically increase the capacity of newsrooms to produce more reporting for their communities.

The Editing fellowship is open to digital, print, audio, photo and multimedia journalists. We're looking for candidates with relevant experience as much as formal education. We welcome applications from graduates of two-year, four-year and graduate-level journalism programs, as well as people who have not attended journalism education programs but have a high school diploma or GED.

Editing fellows will be expected to have at least five years of journalism experience and a strong desire to move into a newsroom leadership position. Criteria for newsrooms to host an editing reporting fellow will include evaluation of the newsroom's proposed role for the editor and ability to support their growth and learning.

The fellowship program partners with newsrooms throughout the state that are seeking to meet their communities' information needs with original local news coverage. We prioritize news organizations operating in underserved communities, including for-profit, nonprofit, public media, and community and media outlets. Once newsrooms and fellows are selected into the program, they are paired through a matching process that seeks to meet the needs of individual newsrooms and interests of fellows.

Newsrooms and fellows are selected through an equitable and transparent process, with input from the fellowship program staff and fellowship advisory board, which represents journalism education and newsroom leaders from around the state.

Applicants must be authorized to work in the United States at the time of hire. Visa sponsorship is not available for this position.

Program: https://fellowships.journalism.berkeley.edu/cafellows/

School: https://journalism.berkeley.edu/

Qualifications

Basic qualifications (required at time of application)
High school diploma or GED (or equivalent international degree)

Additional qualifications (required at time of start)
Professional journalism experience may not exceed six months of full-time editing experience by the start of the program.

Applicants must meet one of the following criteria to be considered:

• High school diploma or GED (or equivalent international degree) plus at least 8 years newsroom experience, OR
• Two-year associate's degree (or equivalent international degree) plus at least 7 years of newsroom experience, OR
• BA or MA (or equivalent international degree) plus at least 5 years newsroom experience.

Preferred qualifications
Ideal candidates will have experience working in local news, either professionally or through a journalism education program, and will submit clips that illustrate a variety of reporting genres and skills. In certain cases, when matching fellows with newsrooms, the ability to report in a language other than English and/or proficiency in specialized journalistic skills (audio, video, data, etc.) will be preferred. California residents will be given preference.

Application Requirements

Document requirements

• Applicant's materials and any supporting files as part of the recruitment must be converted to PDF before they can be uploaded.
• Other acceptable media file types: zip, jpg, rar, tif, mov, bmp, 3gp, png, wmv, m4v, psd, swf, tiff, mp3, mp4.
• 50 MB is the maximum file size accepted.
• Do not upload any file that contains sensitive information (e.g. social security, drivers license, passport, or bank account numbers).

• Resume/CV - Applicants must upload a PDF detailing their educational and work history, including all journalism experience. This may take the form of a formal resume or a simple list with dates. Journalism experience should be clearly detailed.
• Tell us about your journalism experience and fellowship preferences. - To complete your submission, you must also fill out the Supplemental Information Form. Once you've done so, upload a short Word document here to confirm that you have completed the application. The document need only state, 'I have completed the Supplemental Information Form' along with your full name.
• Work sample #1 - Please provide a sample of your work.
• Work sample #2 - Please provide a sample of your work.
• Work sample #3 - Please provide a sample of your work.
• Work sample #4 - Please provide a sample of your work.
• Work sample #5 - Please provide a sample of your work.
  Additionally, provide a short description of the piece, including why you chose to highlight it and anything you might do differently if you could report the story again. If this piece was created with a team, indicate which areas you were directly responsible for. (For example, if you submit an interactive piece, were you responsible for data collection and photography, but not coding or mapping? If there was a reporting team on the story, which parts of the reporting did you lead?)

Reference requirements

• 3 required (contact information only)

Please share three references who can speak to your strengths, personality and work style. We are especially interested in hearing from anyone who has supervised your work in a newsroom, this can include a college newsroom.

Please alert them in advance to look for an email from the AP Recruit system with the subject line: 'You have received a request from [Your Name].' They will have one week after the March 5 deadline to respond. Completion should take no more than 10 minutes.

Apply link: https://aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF05260

Help contact: cafellows@berkeley.edu

Job location
California (various locations)