Deadline: 12-Oct-2025
The Documented is excited to announce the Media Training Program supporting local newsrooms across the United States and its territories, helping them better serve immigrant communities.
The 2026 Building Bridges: An Immigrant Media Training Program will offer a practical, intensive, and highly supportive training program for six newsrooms interested in launching an editorial product based on inclusive, ethical, and high-quality journalism produced for and with immigrant communities in their region.
The Building Bridges: An Immigrant Media Training Program is a project-based educational initiative designed to support newsrooms in developing community-driven journalism that better serves immigrants. This stipend-based training program is designed to build on learnings and best practices from Documented’s own model, which includes listening and understanding immigrant communities by conducting needs assessments (based on principles from the Listening Post Collective) and launching a customized product that reflects immigrant voices and serves their needs. Newsrooms will follow a 15-module course to create an editorial product from scratch or to overhaul an existing one designed for, but also with, immigrant communities. Several modules will also focus on building stakeholder buy-in and funding interest to support sustainability.
The program will offer weekly virtual sessions and office hours with Documented’s staff and subject matter experts in the field to support them in the process. At the end of the program, participants will be invited to join a community of practice to receive ongoing support and peer advice on developing their product and contribute to a growing field of community-driven journalism. Lastly, participant newsrooms must agree to share their projects and lessons learned publicly.
Each newsroom selected will receive $10,000 in stipends to launch a news product designed with immigrant communities and will have the opportunity to participate in a final investment round to secure additional funds for its development. Two more cohorts will be selected in 2027 and 2028.
Applications open on September 2, 2025, and close on October 12, 2025, at 11:59 p.m. PT. The training will begin in mid-January 2026 and conclude in early May 2026. Participants should expect to dedicate approximately 8–10 hours weekly to engage with modules, attend virtual sessions, and complete assignments that guide them through researching, designing, prototyping, testing, and launching their product.
The program is open to reporters, producers, editors, and managers working in any newsroom in the United States and its territories who are committed to serving immigrant communities. Each newsroom must ensure that one full-time employee is available to participate in weekly sessions and one additional staff member is dedicated to supporting project development, fundraising, and sustainability.
Funded by the Knight Foundation and others, the program is free for participants and is informed by Documented’s track record in creating community-driven and multilingual journalism products, such as the Spanish-language WhatsApp newsletter Documented Semanal. Documented has since developed a range of products that meet the needs of New York City’s immigrant communities and is now sharing this expertise with newsrooms nationwide.
For more information, visit Documented.
