Learn to report
your own city.
You already notice what is happening on your block. The Academy teaches you to turn that into real journalism: how to verify it, write it, and get paid for it. No degree required. You start as a contributor and, if you want it, we train you into a working reporter that newsrooms hire.
Free to begin · You earn when your stories are licensed · Top reporters get placed with partner newsrooms
Local newsrooms lost the reporters who used to watch your city. We think the next generation of them already lives here. The people closest to a story are often the best ones to tell it. They just need the training, the editorial backup, and a way to get paid. That is what the Academy is.
Contributor
You sign up and start filing signals: real reports from your neighborhood. Every one carries your byline and goes through our review desk.
Trained reporter
You opt into training. We pair you with an editor, work real stories together with guidance and fact-checking, and build your public portfolio.
Placed journalist
Your best work gets licensed and you get paid. Prove yourself and you become eligible to be hired directly by a partner newsroom.
Verification & sourcing
How to confirm a tip before it becomes a story: corroboration, primary sources, and telling a pattern from a rumor.
Interviewing
Getting people on the record, asking the follow-up that matters, and protecting a source who needs it.
Public records & data
Requesting records, reading a budget or a police log, and turning documents into a story residents can use.
Media law & ethics
The lines that keep you and the platform safe: libel, privacy, fairness, and special care around minors.
Writing with substance
Structure, the lede, and giving a story real length without padding. Clear, useful, and honest.
Photography & the field
Shooting a scene responsibly, capturing what words can't, and staying safe while you report.
- ✓Free to start. There is no tuition to begin. You learn by doing, on stories that matter to your own city.
- ✓You are paired with an editor. A working editor mentors you: story selection, verification, and line edits on real pieces, not homework.
- ✓You build a public byline. Your published work becomes a portfolio with a real track record, visible on the Contributors' Ledger.
- ✓You earn when your work is licensed. When a newsroom licenses one of your stories, you are paid. Reporting becomes income, not a hobby.
- ✓You become hireable. Proven reporters are placed with partner newsrooms looking to hire from this community first.
Newsrooms hire trained reporters out of this community. See the partner program for how placement works.
Start your training.
Tell us a little about you. No experience needed. We train complete beginners and sharpen working writers alike.
We review by city and reach out with next steps. No spam.