In partnership with the California Local News Fellowship program, the Maynard Institute supports a cohort of editing fellows — reporters or producers moving into editing roles in local newsrooms. The Maynard Institute works with the fellowship team to provide intensive skill-building training and mentoring to editing fellows, in the craft of editing but also the art of managing people.

The Maynard Institute also leads the Propel Initiative, an effort to strengthen California’s multilingual media ecosystem, ensuring the long-term sustainability of local public service journalism in underserved communities. Working with American Community Media, California Black Media and the Latino Media Collaborative, Propel provides resources to strengthen business models, connect with audiences and build robust local newsrooms in California.

The Propel collective:

American Community Media

California Black Media

Latino Media Collaborative

The California Health Care Foundation helps support the fellowship program’s inaugural 2026-2028 health reporting fellows. These fellows work locally in their communities and are trained to integrate the best available health and scientific data into their reporting. They play a crucial role in addressing local health challenges, informing policymakers and residents about the choices we face in building healthy, thriving communities.

UC Berkeley School of Public Health partners with the fellowship to deliver the academic side of the health reporting fellowship. Five health reporting fellows are placed in local news outlets covering underserved communities facing significant health challenges. Resources and coursework from the School of Public Health deepen the fellows’ reporting through access to evidence-based research, online coursework and collaboration with professors and experts in the field.

Since 2024, the fellowship program has partnered with Big Local News to provide ongoing training and support that helps fellows integrate data into their reporting. Big Local News maintains statewide databases that reporters can use to find underreported stories in their communities. Big Local News, based at Stanford University, collects, processes and shares governmental data that are otherwise hard to obtain and difficult to analyze. Their team partners with local and national newsrooms on projects ranging from disparities in criminal justice to forest fires, making it easier to find stories within the data.

CalMatters partners with the California Local News Fellowship on its Voting Matters event series. Together, we educate newsrooms across the state on how to use CalMatters’ community election events toolkit and voter guides for community gatherings and conversations about elections, and we help plan events that showcase the reporting and expertise of California Local News Fellows.

Distributed Media Lab’s mission is to help establish a more viable economic framework for quality original content on the open web. Their digital platform amplifies our fellows’ reporting across multiple networks.

FAC hosts training sessions for the press and public on a range of open government and First Amendment topics.

Provides critical safety training for our fellows, including when covering protests and civil unrest. As one of the largest supporters of women-produced journalism, IWMF's transformative work strengthens equal opportunity and press freedom worldwide.

Provides essential training for our fellows in obtaining public records as reporters in California. The Reporters Committee also maintains a Signal chat group where fellows get timely support about urgent public records questions.

A reporting partnership between the fellowship and The Guardian focused on gun violence and prevention, with an emphasis on rural and historically underserved communities. Building on The Guardian’s pioneering Guns and Lies project, the collaboration offers fellows and their host newsrooms the opportunity to pitch and co-produce solutions-driven stories with Guardian editors and reporters.

As a community of public radio stations throughout the state, this partnership allows our fellows to tap into the reporting of colleagues statewide. It also provides coaching to fellows placed at public radio stations working on ambitious stories.