Ask Me Anything: StoryReach Midwest

The Pulitzer Center is now accepting applications for its 2025-2026 StoryReach Fellowship. The yearlong Fellowship opportunity empowers forward-thinking journalists working with local and regional newsrooms in the U.S. to collaborate with peers and the Center’s team to unlock the full potential of storytelling and strategic, creative audience engagement. 

Our second year of StoryReach will focus on supporting newsrooms and journalists across the American Midwest. We invite applications from freelance and staff reporters hosted by local or regional news outlets in the following 12 states: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, or Wisconsin.

Fellows will receive financial support, training opportunities, and access to a community of peers to pursue reporting projects and innovative engagement activities that expand the reach and impact of their reporting on issues impacting the regions their outlets cover.

Please join us on Thursday, March 13, 2025 at 1:00pm EST (12:00pm CST) for an "Ask Me Anything" webinar and the chance to learn more about this new fellowship opportunity from the Pulitzer Center editorial and engagement teams.

The session will be led by Steve Sapienza, senior editor for U.S. Partnerships and Fareed Mostoufi, associate director of education and DEI lead. Sapienza and Mostoufi led the recruitment, selection, and management of the inaugural StoryReach U.S. fellowship and will be the primary contacts for StoryReach Midwest Fellows.
 

Participants:

Steve Sapienza is the senior editor for U.S. news partnerships at the Pulitzer Center. He is an award-winning news and documentary producer who has covered a wide range of human security stories in dozens of countries, including the HIV crisis in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, child soldiers in Sierra Leone, climate refugees in Bangladesh, and landmine survivors in Cambodia. For over 20 years he has shot and produced stories for broadcast television and online distribution. He works closely with the Center's journalist grantees, new media makers, and newsrooms to identify the collaborative space, digital tools, reporting strategies, and partnerships that enable storytellers to best reach their audience. 

Fareed Mostoufi is the Pulitzer Center's associate director of education and DEI lead, where he focuses on designing resources and programs that connect students, teachers, and other U.S. audiences to underreported news stories and the journalists who cover them. Mostoufi joined the team in 2016 after working for nearly four years as a theater artist, educator, and program manager in the community engagement department at Arena Stage theater in Washington, D.C. While at Arena, Fareed devised and directed original, autobiographical plays with communities in Washington, D.C., Peru, India, and Croatia that explored violence, health, and identity. Before that, he taught ESL and Spanish in D.C. Public Schools and had a 2009 Fulbright Scholarship to teach literature and playwriting to English teachers in San Miguel de Tucuman, Argentina. He is passionate about social justice and is a firm believer in the power of storytelling to cultivate empathy.

Register here to join us on February 15.