Who's behind the news?
Who's behind the news?
1.5.2
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Use of DataInternational — An initiative of Report Local (formerly The GroundTruth Project) · Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Report for the World is an international journalism service program that applies the Report for America model — matching emerging journalists with under-resourced newsrooms and subsidizing their salaries — to the global crisis of local news capacity. It was launched in April 2021 as an initiative of The GroundTruth Project (now Report Local), co-founded by Charles Sennott and Kevin Grant, GroundTruth's then-chief content officer. The program announced its first six corps members on World Press Freedom Day, 3 May 2021, placing journalists at TheCable in Nigeria and Scroll.in in India. Within three years it had expanded to 49 newsrooms in 28 countries, with a corps growing from 6 to 66 reporters, and with a particular and distinctive emphasis on supporting newsrooms operating in exile — journalists from Syria, Afghanistan, Russia, Myanmar, Nicaragua, and Venezuela continuing to report on their home countries from outside them, in the face of authoritarian suppression of the press. Executive Director Preethi Nallu leads the program's global operations, with Wilson Liévano as training director.
Report for the World was created in direct response to what its co-founders identified as a global call — from journalists, newsroom editors, and press freedom advocates in multiple countries — for the Report for America model to be extended internationally. The underlying crisis is in many ways more severe internationally than in the United States: in democracies under pressure from authoritarianism, in conflict zones, and in countries where journalism has never had the commercial infrastructure that American local news once possessed, the gap between the journalism communities need and what local newsrooms can provide is vast. Kevin Grant described the program in an interview with VOA News as "a response to a global call for more sustainable, more impactful and more local reporting." The program launched with the same structural conviction as its US counterpart — that placing skilled, supported, committed journalists in specific newsrooms on specific beats is more effective than abstract capacity-building, and that the resulting journalism genuinely changes what communities know and can act on.
The Report for the World model mirrors Report for America in its essentials. Newsrooms apply to the program proposing a specific reporting beat that addresses a genuine coverage gap — government accountability, health, gender, environment, criminal justice, data journalism, disinformation, and financial investigations have been among the most common. If selected, the newsroom receives financial and structural support to hire a corps member for up to three years. Report for the World pays half the first-year salary of each corps member; the host newsroom is responsible for the other half, with coaching support available from the program to help newsrooms develop earned revenue, philanthropic, and crowdfunding strategies. Corps members become full-time employees of their host newsrooms, reporting to a designated editor, covering their assigned beat, and participating in international peer networks and world-class professional development throughout their service. The program's application process is highly competitive, with two rounds of interviews with shortlisted newsrooms.
A notable and deliberate distinction from its US counterpart is the program's explicit inclusion of media-in-exile newsrooms. As authoritarian governments in Russia, Syria, Afghanistan, Myanmar, Nicaragua, and Venezuela have suppressed, imprisoned, or forced out independent journalists, the organizations those journalists have built or continued from abroad represent some of the most important — and most financially precarious — journalism operations anywhere. Report for the World has specifically expanded support to these exile organizations, recognizing that the journalism they produce is often the only independent accountability journalism reaching their home country audiences. The program describes its approach to this population of newsrooms as "building connections across borders," with corps members in exile collaborating with counterparts in Lebanon, Pakistan, India, Mexico, and Ukraine to cover the regional ramifications of local stories and the issues affecting diaspora communities.
As of 2024–25, Report for the World corps members work in national and local newsrooms across a span of countries that includes Mexico, Brazil, Peru, Chile, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Venezuela, Colombia, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Hungary, Russia, Ukraine, Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, Zimbabwe, the Philippines, Myanmar, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Papua New Guinea, Tonga, Fiji, and the Solomon Islands. The Pacific Island expansion — conducted in partnership with the East-West Center through the Financial Investigative Reporting and Mentorship Initiative (FIRM) — brings five Pacific newsrooms into the program with a specific focus on financial investigative journalism covering transactions that have major impacts on small island economies and political systems.
Partner newsrooms reflect the full diversity of independent journalism globally. They include Alma Preta (Brazil, covering early childhood issues for Black communities), The Caravan Magazine (India, democratic institutions and constitutional issues), Reporters Collective (India, data investigations), Behan Box (India, women and work), Suno India (gender and climate), Jummar (Iraq in exile, climate change and gender), ARIJ (Jordan, data journalism), Daraj (Lebanon, water and climate change), Etilaat Roz (Afghanistan in exile), and PumaPodcast (Philippines, disinformation). The International Press Institute has partnered with the program on initiatives to gauge story impact and map revenue opportunities for partner newsrooms.
Report for the World places significant emphasis on professional development and journalist safety, drawing on the GroundTruth Project's foundational commitment — shaped in part by the death of James Foley — to ensuring that journalists working in difficult environments have the training, support networks, and institutional backing they need. Corps members receive training from veteran journalists, nonprofit leaders, technologists, and service professionals throughout their service years. The program's training director Wilson Liévano has described the goal of training as building investigative capacity and enabling collaborative reporting across beats and borders — with corps members learning from and with their counterparts in other newsrooms and other countries. The program publishes a Pathway to Impact impact study, begun in late 2023, to systematically measure and document the effects of its journalism placements on the communities served.
Newsrooms anywhere in the world can apply to become Report for the World partner organisations during the annual application window, which is typically announced in January with a February deadline. Journalists seeking to become corps members apply after newsrooms are announced, in a separate competitive process. Full program information — including the list of current corps members and their beats, the list of partner newsrooms by country, FAQs for journalists and newsrooms, and information for funders — is at reportfortheworld.org. The program is funded by the MacArthur Foundation, Google News Initiative, Microsoft, JournalismFund Europe, the East-West Center, climateXchange, family foundations, and individual donors worldwide.
Report for the World
An initiative of Report Local (The GroundTruth Project, Inc.)
Boston, Massachusetts, USA (coordinating office)
Executive Director: Preethi Nallu
Training Director: Wilson Liévano
Co-Founded by: Charles Sennott · Kevin Grant (2021)
Scale (2024–25): 49 newsrooms · 28 countries · 66 corps members
Website: reportfortheworld.org | Apply (newsrooms): reportfortheworld.org/newsroom-application
Apply (journalists): reportfortheworld.org/journalists
