Freelance legal journalists invited to apply for fellowships offered by SU’s Newhouse School

Wendy S. Loughlin
(315) 443-2785

Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications will award four Carnegie/Newhouse School Legal Reporting Fellowships to support freelance journalists reporting on legal issues. The fellowships are part of the Newhouse School’s Carnegie Legal Reporting Program.

The $3,000 awards include paid student research assistants for each reporting fellow, which will give Newhouse students practical experience covering law and the courts. The fellowships are open to freelance journalists working in any medium, with the intent of helping them pay out-of-pocket expenses.

“These days, freelancers covering legal issues need as much support as they can get,” says Roy Gutterman, director of the Carnegie Legal Reporting Program and an assistant professor of communications law and journalism. “Offering the public thorough, comprehensive coverage of legal issues is an important function of the press, and we want to help those efforts.”

Fellowship applications are available online at http://newhouse.syr.edu/legal. The application deadline is Oct. 5. A panel of faculty members from the Newhouse School will choose the winners. Fellowship money and student research assistants will be available for the 2009-10 academic year.

Newhouse students will be invited to compete for the four research assistant positions, which carry a stipend. “Our students are the lifeblood of our University,” Gutterman says. “Marrying up our students with members of the legal reporting press provides a valuable outside-the-classroom experience.”

Supported by a grant from the Carnegie Corp. of New York and its Carnegie Journalism Initiative, the Carnegie Legal Reporting Program provides a number of services designed to teach students about the workings of the American legal system and the role of the news media in covering the law. Additional funding for this year’s fellowships is provided by Syracuse University’s Institute for the Study of the Judiciary, Politics and the Media (IJPM).

For more information, contact Gutterman at (315) 443-3523 or rsgutter@syr.edu or visit http://newhouse.syr.edu/legal.