Fellowship For Desert Reporting
Supporting new voices and underreported stories from the deserts of North America.
The Fellowship for Desert Reporting supports people with important stories to tell about desert communities, landscapes, wildlife, and environmental issues—and gives them the editorial support and resources to tell those stories well.
We are especially interested in reporting that grows from a real connection to a place or community and brings attention to stories that are missing, misunderstood, overlooked, or poorly covered.
What is the Fellowship for Desert Reporting?
The Fellowship is a program of the Desert Advocacy Media Network (DAMN), created to support original reporting about the deserts of North America.
Selected Fellows will develop and complete a reporting project with guidance from experienced journalists and media professionals. Projects may become part of DAMN’s own journalism and educational work or, when appropriate, be developed for publication or distribution elsewhere.
This is not a journalism-school program. The goal is to help people do meaningful reporting, produce strong work, and bring important desert stories to a wider audience.
Who is it for?
You do not need to be a professional journalist.
We welcome applications from experienced reporters, emerging journalists, writers, photographers, filmmakers, audio producers, researchers, community storytellers, and people who have never considered themselves journalists but have the knowledge and perspective to pursue an important story.
Formal credentials and polished résumés matter less to us than curiosity, judgment, persistence, and the ability to earn people’s trust.
Community knowledge, lived experience, language skills, subject expertise, reporting experience, and access to sources can all make someone particularly well suited to tell a story.
Applicants must be at least 18 years old.
What kinds of projects qualify?
We’re looking for original reporting connected to the deserts of North America and the people who live in them.
Projects might investigate or explore wildlife, water, public lands, mining, energy development, borderlands, environmental justice, Indigenous communities, climate, conservation, land use, cultural change, or another subject with a meaningful connection to desert places.
We’re open to different forms of storytelling, including:
- Audio
- Written journalism
- Video
- Photography
- Multimedia
- Story maps and mapping-based projects
- Other formats that make sense for the story
You don’t need to have every detail worked out before applying. If you have a strong story but aren’t yet sure what form it should take, we still want to hear from you.
What do Fellows receive?
Each Fellow will receive a $1,250 stipend to support the completion of their project.
Just as important, Fellows will receive hands-on editorial support as their work develops—from sharpening the original idea and planning the reporting through reviewing drafts or rough cuts and preparing the finished work for an audience.
The exact process will depend on the Fellow, the story, and the medium. We aren’t interested in forcing every project through the same template. And we will work with you to ensure your project doesn’t get so big that the stipend becomes unfairly low.
Our aim is to give Fellows enough guidance to make their work stronger while preserving their own voice, knowledge, and relationship to the story.
Who will Fellows work with?
The Fellowship is led by Chris Clarke, Executive Director of the Desert Advocacy Media Network and host of 90 Miles from Needles: The Desert Protection Podcast.
Chris is a longtime environmental journalist whose work has appeared in dozens of publications. He served as Editor in Chief of Earth Island Journal and as Environment Editor at KCET in Los Angeles, where he reported extensively on conservation, public lands, wildlife, and the environmental consequences of utility-scale energy development in the California desert.
Depending on the needs of individual projects, Fellows may also work with other journalists, editors, producers, subject specialists, and members of DAMN’s network.
Who should apply?
Apply if you have a desert story that you think people need to know about. We are particularly interested in applicants who bring perspectives, knowledge, or access that are often missing from conventional environmental journalism.
That can include people with deep ties to particular desert communities; people who speak languages needed to report a story well; people with relevant professional, cultural, scientific, or community knowledge; and people whose communities have historically had fewer opportunities to tell their own environmental stories.
We also encourage applications from people early in their journalism careers and from people coming to journalism through another kind of work.
If you’re wondering whether you have enough experience, apply anyway. We’re choosing Fellows on the strength and importance of the story and the applicant’s potential to report it—not on the prestige of a résumé.
How will Fellows be selected?
We’re looking for strong, important stories and people with the insight, connection, and determination to tell them well.
We will consider:
- The strength and significance of the proposed story
- Why the story matters now
- What is missing or poorly understood in existing coverage
- The applicant’s connection to the subject, place, or community
- The applicant’s ability to reach and work with relevant sources
- The practicality of the proposed reporting plan
- The potential for the Fellowship to help the applicant produce work they might not otherwise have the resources or opportunity to complete.
Important dates
Application deadline: October 15, 2026
Fellows selected: By November 15, 2026
Reporting and production: January–June 2027
Applicants selected as finalists may be contacted for additional information or a conversation about their proposal before final selections are made.
A few things to know before applying
The reporting and finished work must be substantially your own. Fellows may use ordinary research, recording, editing, transcription, and production tools, but may not use generative AI to write or rewrite material submitted as their own work.
Selected Fellows must also be able to receive payment from a U.S.-based nonprofit and provide any tax or payment information DAMN is legally required to collect. U.S. citizenship is not required.
Not sure whether a particular payment requirement applies to you? Apply anyway. We can address individual circumstances with finalists.
Have a story we should know about?
We’d like to hear it.
Applications close October 15, 2026