Report for America journalists increasingly keep jobs in their host newsrooms, data shows

Eight years after Report for America launched, its graduates are more often than not accepting permanent positions in their newsrooms.

RFA launched in 2017 with the goal of placing “emerging journalists” in local newsrooms for a year of service and the option for a second year, with half their salary covered by RFA. The idea — familiar from programs like Teach for America and the Peace Corps — was that even if reporters didn’t stick around beyond a year, both they and the newsrooms would benefit from their service.

Now, RFA’s data shows that, increasingly, its reporters are “graduating” to permanent positions in their host newsrooms, even as a significant number also don’t complete the program.

In an impact report released Tuesday, RFA said it’s placed 759 corps members in 429 host newsrooms since 2018. (That’s short of its 2017 goal of placing 1,000 reporters in newsrooms in its first five years.) They’ve produced more than 100,000 stories.

Out of those 759 corps members, RFA has 495 “program alumni,” Alison Griffin, who runs communications for Report for America, told me — “those who were in the program for at least a year and left in good standing.” (In other words, about a third of people who start the program don’t finish it, sometimes because they get other journalism jobs.) For the 2024-2025 corps year, 181 reporters were placed in 152 newsrooms and 55% of them were hired into permanent positions at the end of the corps year.

That percentage has gone up in recent years. Griffin gave me this data:

“Our goal isn’t necessarily to keep graduating corps members in their host newsrooms,” Griffin noted. “Many of them are ready for new adventures after two or three years with RFA. We’re thrilled so many stay in journalism.”

RFA says 82% of its program alumni are still working in journalism in some capacity — “in newsrooms, freelancing, and working in journalism education or support roles (like RFA or the Committee to Protect Journalists, for example),” Griffin specified. “It doesn’t include communications, PR, or marketing positions, where we see some program graduates go if they leave journalism.”

Read the impact report here.