Dow Jones News Fund staff and Early Career Training Program fellows meeting with Rafael Lorente, dean of the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland, College Park.

COLLEGE PARK, Md. — Seventeen journalists from around the country completed the Dow Jones News Fund Early Career Training Fellowship in College Park, Maryland, last week. The participants, hand-picked as emerging talent by their newsrooms, attended a one-week session featuring skills-based training and seminars led by award-winning journalists and thought leaders.

The journalists from USA TODAY Co., McClatchy, the Maine Monitor, the Bangor Daily News and the Maine Trust for Local News are primarily beat reporters with less than three years of experience.

The News Fund launched the program in 2023 to help position new reporters for success, after many newsrooms slashed training opportunities amid deep budget cuts. Now in its fourth year, the Early Career Training Program is an increasingly important aspect of DJNF’s offerings, said Shirley Carswell, News Fund executive director.

“Our mission to train the next generation of newsroom leaders now includes not only high school and college students, but professionals at the start of their careers,” Carswell said. “We believe the skills gained and relationships forged during this training will give attendees a competitive advantage throughout their career and will improve newsrooms’ ability to retain talented staff.”

The session was hosted by the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism. Dean Rafael Lorente was one of several Merrill alumni to address the group. Others included Capital News Service director Deborah Barfield Berry, who led a session on pitching stories, and City Cast DC reporter Michael Brice-Saddler, who provided tips for covering local politics.

The Early Career Training program provides a series of such master classes, covering topics such as the future of artificial intelligence in news coverage, new approaches to public safety and immigration reporting and keeping up with breaking news. The goal is to teach tricks of the trade that can be used immediately. Veteran news executive Sandra Long Weaver, the program director, lined up more than a dozen distinguished journalists and other experts to lead the sessions, including former Poynter Institute president Dr. Karen Dunlap; Pulitzer-prize winning reporters Eli Saslow of the New York Times and Keith Alexander of Bloomberg Law; and education reporter Melanie Burney and Deputy Managing Editor Molly Eichel, both of the Philadelphia Inquirer.

The News Fund offered the program this year with support from News Corp Philanthropy.

The 2026 Fellows:

Maine newsrooms
Sean Scott (Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting: Maine Monitor)
Annie Rupertus (Bangor Daily News)
Jimmy James (Maine Trust for Local News: Lewiston Sun Journal)
Abigail Driscoll (Maine Trust for Local News)

McClatchy newsrooms:
Nora O’Neill (Charlotte Observer)
Veronica Fernandez-Alvarado (Sacramento Bee)
Twumasi Duah-Mensah (Raleigh News & Observer)

USA TODAY Co. newsrooms:
Shawn Raymundo (Arizona Republic)
Kate Kealey (Des Moines Register)
Mickenzie Hannon (News Press & Naples Daily News)
Amelia Hurley (Tuscaloosa News)
Molly Davis (The Tennessean)
Matthew Cupelli (Cincinnati Enquirer)
Marissa Meador (IndyStar)
Ryan Murphy (IndyStar)
Claudia Levens (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
Benjamin Warren (Detroit News)