Are you a Midwest journalist or have one on staff who would benefit from training to produce more in-depth clean energy, environmental and climate stories for your news outlet?

InsideClimate News, the Pulitzer Prize-winning national nonprofit newsroom, will hold a two-day training for about a dozen winning applicants from March 7-8 in Nashville. The workshop will be business journalism-focused and will center on covering the clean energy economy in the Midwest. The training is part of ICN’s National Environmental Reporting Network.

We are looking for reporters, editors or producers from Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio and Wisconsin who have the ambition and potential to pursue clean energy and climate stories. Journalists from all types of outlets—print, digital, television and radio—are encouraged to apply.

The workshop will be held at the First Amendment Center in Nashville. All lodging, food and reasonable travel costs are included. Some of the sessions will be conducted by professors from Vanderbilt University, and others by ICN’s journalists. They will include presentations and discussions on the clean energy transformation; climate science; how to find compelling and impactful clean energy stories; how to search for public records and build sources; and other important journalistic skills and tools. You will be asked to bring a story idea and will receive one-on-one confidential coaching to launch your idea.

If your newsroom is chosen, your reporter or producer will also receive ongoing mentoring. Attendees can apply to ICN for story development funds and other financial assistance. Opportunities will also exist for co-publishing on our website. It would be helpful if your newsroom is open to this type of potential collaboration.

The training is made possible thanks to the generosity of the Grantham Foundation, Park Foundation, Wallace Global Fund and others.

Preference will be given to journalists from newsrooms, but freelancers can apply.

To nominate yourself or a team for this opportunity, complete this form. The application deadline is Feb. 1, 2018.

In your application, you will be asked to identify a project you would like to work on following the workshop. Please be as specific as you can, as we want to help you as much as possible during the one-on-one sessions. All ideas will be kept confidential. Winning applicants will be notified by Feb. 8.

About the National Environment Reporting Network

A national ecosystem that informs the public about critical environmental issues is collapsing, and its survival hinges on an endangered species: the local environmental journalist. In the last 10

years, conversations around climate, energy and basic pollution protections have suffered from a hollowing out of local environmental news, particularly in the country’s interior.

InsideClimate News is developing a National Environment Reporting Network to counter this trend by establishing at least four national hubs to help local and regional newsrooms produce more in-depth reporting. Our first hub, in the Southeast, is staffed by veteran environmental reporter James Bruggers, who is based in Louisville. Our second hub in the Midwest was launched in mid-September and is run by Dan Gearino, a longtime business and energy reporter based in Columbus, Ohio.