Early career journalists— apply for the 2025 Journalism & Women Symposium (JAWS) Health Journalism Fellowship! This unique opportunity includes a $4,000 stipend, workshops, mentoring and more! The fellowship is open to women and individuals who identify as women with 2-7 years’ professional journalism experience.

Colorado Sun reporter and past president of the Journalism & Women Symposium (JAWS) ejected from the Colorado Republican Party state assembly for past coverage deemed “very unfair” by party leaders

The JAWS board appointed Sylvia Snowden, reporter, anchor and producer at WGN Chicago, to fill its vacant seat.

Join us Sept. 13-15 in New Orleans for this year’s Conference & Mentoring Program.

A coalition of diverse journalists is organizing a 2024 Presidential Candidate Forum hosted by the George Washington University School of Media & Public Affairs in September.

Based on the site selection committee’s recommendation, the JAWS board is thrilled to share that the 2024 Conference & Mentoring Project (CAMP) will be held in New Orleans, Louisiana! ⚜️

The goal of the fellowship is to train more journalists in health reporting and help diversify the reporting pool for better and more inclusive reporting on health issues across the nation. Each fellow will spend the next seven months working on a substantive reporting project.

It was 1992. I’d met journalism trailblazer Nancy Woodhull at a conference somewhere – and she urged me to come to JAWS CAMP. (My first reaction was: I ain’t going out in the woods in Montana to integrate the entire state!) And yet I found myself in Montana, hanging out with legends like Nan Robertson and Betsy Wade. At one point, Nancy Woodhull turned to me and asked: “What do you think, Rachel?” That shifted something in me. Women of that caliber were addressing me as a colleague and a peer.

You know JAWS has an ambitious (and necessary!) goal of raising $30,000 by year’s end. You’ve already given more than $14,000 to get us there. As your treasurer, deeply involved in our financial sustainability, I am thrilled to announce that a generous anonymous donor has offered to match the next $5,000 that come in. That doubles every dollar you give!

I didn’t feel welcome at my first JAWS CAMP. Or my second or third. But I’m passionately invested in JAWS now – because we’re going to change our profession. Let me explain how I got so excited about our work to make journalism better for all women – our journalists, our audiences, our country, and our world.

I got hooked on JAWS the very first time I attended CAMP in Austin, 2022. CAMP was amazing, and unlike any other conference I’d been to: deeply educational while also supportive, relaxed and incredibly inclusive. Of course I came back – and felt just the same way in Chicago, where I gave and got advice on the issues challenging women in journalism, especially right now.

A November 27 letter signed by 14 civil society groups, including the Journalism & Women Symposium (JAWS), urged Secretary of State Antony Blinken to declare Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reporter Alsu Kurmasheva wrongfully detained.

A little more than a decade ago, because of JAWS, I doubled my paycheck – and caught up to a man’s salary. As a Gen X reporter, I truly believed that the pioneering women who’d come before me had fixed the wage gap. Then I found out that a man hired the same time as I was hired, with completely equivalent credentials and experience, was making twice what I was making. I was stunned. And I had no idea what to do about it.

Rachel Jones, the seventh president of Journalism & Women Symposium (JAWS) is joining the group’s board for a two-year term.

Appointed by JAWS President Angela Greiling Keane to fill a vacant board seat, Jones received unanimous approval from the board at its Nov. 13 board meeting.

Alongside Tanya Gazdik, Elissa Yancey volunteered countless hours as this year’s CAMP co-chair. We were inspired by her tireless good cheer in the role, as well as her enthusiasm for her nonprofit, A Picture’s Worth, which is experiencing exciting success. We caught up with her to learn more.

Second year of program to grow cohort from six to eight

Journalism and Women Symposium (JAWS) will offer eight promising emerging journalists interested in health care coverage intensive training and mentorship as part of a ten-month fellowship cohort launching in January 2024.

The leaders of six national organizations advancing diversity in journalism gathered recently in Chicago for leadership training, organizational development and to ensure stronger cooperation in the future in order to better serve their communities and increase their collective impact in supporting multicultural democracy.