Building a Better Breaking News Beat:
Fall 2026 Cohort
Building a Better Breaking News Beat is an eight week training and mentorship program for journalists who cover urgent and unfolding events. The goal is to ensure that when news breaks, journalists have the grounding, sourcing habits, and editorial judgment to cover it with accuracy and nuance.
Covering breaking news is one of the most demanding jobs in journalism. It requires fast thinking, careful sourcing, and editorial judgment in high-pressure and rapidly shifting conditions. It's something most journalists will encounter in their career, and yet there is little training or support to do it well. Our cohort is designed to support these journalists.
The program will cover key themes of CJJ’s work—avoiding sensationalism, vetting statements from police and other government officials, using humanizing language and imagery—all in the breaking news context. It’s precisely because of the fast-paced nature of this work that the journalists who do it deserve their own dedicated space to slow down and build skills.
What the cohort includes:
- Biweekly one-hour sessions with journalists, researchers, public defenders, and community experts working at the intersection of public safety and media
- Optional one-on-one mentorship with program leaders
- Access to CJJ's network of sources, data, and resources
- A peer cohort of journalists working through the same challenges
Who leads it:
Hannah Riley Fernandez is Director of Programming at the Center for Just Journalism, where she works directly with journalists, advocates, and newsrooms to shift how public safety gets covered. She has spent her career working at the intersection of criminal defense, journalism, and communications.
R.L. Nave is a veteran journalist and Type Media Center fellow who has written extensively about politics, race, equity, and criminal justice across the American South. He previously served as editor-in-chief of both Reckon and Mississippi Today — now the state's largest newsroom — and has contributed to Serial/The New York Times, Ebony, The Root, and The Source. He and his teams have earned the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Journalism and a national Edward R. Murrow Award, among dozens of other state and national honors.
Who should apply:
This program is open to journalists working anywhere in the country, whether at a daily paper, a digital outlet, a TV station, or a nonprofit newsroom. No prior expertise in criminal legal issues is required. If you've found yourself on scene at a shooting, a protest, a natural disaster, or a public safety crisis and wished you had more grounding, better sources, and more time to think, this program is for you.
Time commitment: One hour every other week for eight weeks, plus optional one-on-one mentorship sessions.
Applications close July 31, 2026.
Questions? Email hannah@justjournalism.org.