The Environmental Reporting Fellowship (ERF), an annual fellowship program for minority journalists, provides reporters with science education and science-based reporting opportunities in print, television, and radio. ERF is a powerful nexus of media, science, education, and applied learning that broadly enhances public understanding of science, and promotes new voices within multicultural communities and mainstream media. The ERF program recruits, trains, and supports a total of 18 minority journalists (six per year for three years) to work at collaborating media institutions including Talk of the Nation: Science Friday (NPR); NOVA and NOVA Online (WGBH); WBUR (NPR Boston); The Providence Journal; and The Daily Press or The Hartford Courant. The ERF program is based on a three-year pilot program sponsored by the Metcalf Institute, based at the URI Graduate School of Oceanography (GSO), that focuses on increasing the understanding of science by the media and strengthening connections between multicultural communities, the research community, and the media. The 42-week environmental reporting fellowships include a 1.5-day orientation for the scientist/journalist mentor teams and the ERF fellows; a three-day science immersion workshop on Environmental Justice, tying science to policy, communities, and news; four weeks of independent mentored science research based at GSO; and 37 weeks of mentored reporting at six media institutions. The program recruits minority reporters from community-based media; provides earth and environmental science education; provides on-the-job science-based reporting experiences; increases earth and environmental news coverage for broad dissemination to multicultural communities and the general public; and helps to increase diversity in U.S. newsrooms.
