ProPublica will once again organize and host the Diversity Mentorship Event at the Online News Association conference in June. This is the seventh year of the program, which is designed to connect people from communities that are historically underrepresented in journalism with people at the top of the field. ONA21 will be remote and virtual, and this program will be too.
Professional networks are crucial to advancing a journalist’s career. The goal of this event is to help promising journalists build these networks in order to make the industry more inclusive.
Past mentors have included newsroom leaders, startup founders, highly accomplished reporters, producers, designers, editors and more.
We pair mentees with mentors based on their backgrounds, challenges and interests in journalism. Mentees also have an opportunity to network with one another.
We’ll host a virtual event for people who are participating in the ONA conference on Wednesday, June 23, 2021. We aim to pair mentors with at most two mentees for this event, and are planning to accept about 35 mentees. Our event will kick off with a short group discussion and then will transition to virtual guided networking between mentors and mentees.
Anyone is welcome to apply to be a mentee, but people from underrepresented groups — including people of color, women, LGBTQ people and people with disabilities — are especially encouraged. Applicants must be attending ONA and must be available Wednesday, June 23, at 3:30 p.m. EDT.
If you’re interested in participating as either a mentor or mentee, apply via this form. The deadline to apply is Thursday, June 17. We’ll let you know by June 22 if you’ve been matched with a mentor. We’ll do our best to match everyone with a mentor, but space is limited.
Past mentors have found the experience easy and rewarding, and they have let us know they appreciate meeting with ambitious journalists in the early and middle stages of their careers and sharing their knowledge with them. We will provide some guidance for beginning and maintaining a relationship with your mentee.
Questions? Email diversity@propublica.org. For more about ProPublica’s commitment to helping make our newsroom and journalism at large more inclusive, see some of the steps we’re taking.