2009 Alfred Friendly Press Fellowship

The Alfred Friendly Press Fellowships (AFPF) is an American non-profit, non-governmental organization that gives developing-world journalists the opportunity to work as reporters in American newsrooms. The program, which runs from mid-March to September, is offered annually to approximately ten professional print journalists between the ages of 25 and 35.

The application deadline for the 2008 program is August 1, 2008.

Created in 1984 by Alfred Friendly, a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter and former managing editor of The Washington Post, the Alfred Friendly Press Fellowships is one of the most successful and admired programs in international education for journalists. AFPF is unique in that it is the only program to offer foreign journalists a non-academic, long-term, hands-on experience in a single news organization. Convinced that healthy democracies need strong, free media, Friendly conceived a fellowship program that would both impart American journalistic traditions and respond to worldwide interest in the dissemination of fair and accurate news.

Applicants must:

• Have an excellent command of written and spoken English
• Have at least three years of professional experience as a journalist in the print media
• Be currently employed as a journalist with an independent print media organization in the country of citizenship
• Have early to mid-career status and be between 25 and 35 years of age
• Show a demonstrated personal commitment to a career in journalism in the home country

About ten applicants from around the world will be selected and will come to the US in March 2007. They will spend 6 months at an American newspaper, such as the Rocky Mountain News, Los Angeles Times, The Kansas City Star, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Saint Paul Pioneer Press, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, St. Petersburg Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. Fellows will participate in an initial two-week orientation program in Washington to learn about life and work in the US; they will also attend a special training workshop at the Poynter Institute in Florida halfway through their stay.

For more information about the program, go to http://www.pressfellowships.org/. You can download the application forms at http://www.pressfellowships.org/application.html.