ST. PETERSBURG, FLA. (Oct. 16, 2024) — In partnership with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Poynter Institute is pleased to announce a new six-month fellowship that will strengthen the leadership and editorial excellence of public media station managers.

The Executive Editorial Integrity and Leadership Initiative will offer local public media executives who oversee stations with local newsrooms the opportunity to strengthen their editorial and business capacity. It will equip station managers with the vision and support they need to uphold public media’s highest editorial standards and advance the goals for every part of their station — greenlighting innovation, developing effective partnerships, managing budgets, enforcing editorial firewalls and fostering a high-performing, robust culture that prioritizes institutional evolution and growth. 

“Over the past decade, public media stations have added almost a thousand full- and part-time journalists, totaling 4,400 journalists today at stations,” said Kathy Merritt, CPB’s senior vice president of radio, journalism and community service grants. “At a time when the craft of journalism is under increased scrutiny, it is critical that public media general managers have the support and expertise needed to lead local newsrooms in a rapidly changing media environment.”

This new fellowship seeks to train 50 public media executives in two cohorts of 25 — one in 2025 and one in 2026.

Station managers will work with Poynter’s expert instructors and coaches, starting with an in-person week at Poynter in St. Petersburg, Florida, followed by virtual trainings every other week during the six-month program.

Fellows will learn from and support one another, creating bonds that last beyond the life of the program. They will develop their ethical decision-making skills and leadership abilities.   

Each participant will create an executive leadership action plan drawn from their strategy and vision for their news organization and informed by a range of tools, frameworks and coaching that begins during the in-person week at Poynter. 

“We hope to better equip these leaders with the knowledge, tools and best practices to help them lead their stations today and into the future,” said Kerwin Speight, Poynter leadership faculty. “As the media landscape changes, station managers need support to adapt, adjust and effectively lead.” 

CPB has long supported strengthening public media leadership, including a previous Editorial Integrity and Leadership Initiative for public media news managers and editors, which Poynter has led since 2023. 

The success of the Editorial Integrity and Leadership Initiative program helped inform this initiative, designed specifically for station managers.

Applications for the first cohort of Executive Editorial Integrity and Leadership Initiative close Friday, Dec. 6. Selected participants will be notified in January and convene in St. Petersburg for five days, April 28 through May 2.

Applications for the second cohort will launch in 2025. 

About CPB

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), a private, nonprofit corporation authorized by Congress in 1967, is the steward of the federal government’s investment in public broadcasting. It helps support the operations of more than 1,500 locally managed and operated public television and radio stations nationwide. CPB is also the largest single source of funding for research, technology, and program development for public radio, television, and related online services. For more information, visit www.cpb.org and follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, and subscribe for email updates.

About the Poynter Institute

The Poynter Institute is a global nonprofit working to address society’s most pressing issues by teaching journalists and journalism, covering the media and the complexities facing the industry, convening and building community, improving the capacity and sustainability of news organizations, and fostering trust and reliability of information. The Institute is the gold standard in journalistic excellence and dedicated to the preservation and advancement of press freedom in democracies worldwide. Through Poynter, journalists, newsrooms, businesses, big tech corporations and citizens convene to find solutions that promote trust and transparency in news and stoke meaningful public discourse. The world’s top journalists and emerging media leaders rely on the Institute to learn new skills, adopt best practices, better serve audiences, scale operations and improve the quality of the universally shared information ecosystem.

The Craig Newmark Center for Ethics and Leadership, the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), MediaWise and PolitiFact are all members of the Poynter organization.

Support for Poynter and our entities upholds the integrity of the free press and the U.S. First Amendment and builds public confidence in journalism and media — essential for healthy democracies. Learn more at poynter.org.