When I hear people say young people don’t care about news and don’t follow it, I respond, “Tell that to all the students in the Michael I. Arnolt Center for Investigative Journalism at Indiana University.”

Semester after semester, these students spend their own time working in the center on state and national investigative stories with professional media partners. They do it because they want to learn the latest journalism techniques and how they can deliver provocative investigative stories that make a difference. Like me, they believe journalism is a bedrock of our democracy, and they want to make our society better for their generation and those to come.

Unlike most student investigative centers around the country, our students are not getting class credit for working at the Arnolt Center. Instead, we pay them a modest hourly wage as we want to emphasize their work has value. We do everything we can to replicate the job of a working journalist. Students work in teams alongside journalists from Gray Media’s national TV investigative team, IndyStar, Reuters, the Associated Press, and more. Our students come from all over campus. Not all of them are journalism majors and many won’t pursue careers in investigative journalism. But I believe all of them will be better teachers, lawyers, businesspeople, and citizens because of the ethical decision-making and critical thinking they employ in their work for the center.

We are starting our eighth year of operations at the center. Our students are working on nine stories with nine professional media partners. One of the stories with Free Press Indiana, a digital start-up covering the state, involves 12 newspapers. The project dovetails nicely with our partnership with the Hoosier State Press Association, the umbrella organization for the papers around Indiana. Since we began in 2019, we have offered all our stories free of charge to the newspaper group in keeping with our mission to help fill news deserts in the state with hard-hitting investigative journalism. As a bonus, our students see their bylines in multiple publications on one story.

Speaking of bylines, one of the nice things to see is former students’ bylines in publications and websites around the country. Our graduates are getting good jobs and internships throughout the country. Employers are pleased with the work in the center. One of our supporters said they were impressed with the complexity of the accountability journalism Arnolt Center students produce year after year.

It takes money to pay our students and send them into the field for interviews and documents. We rely on private support to work at this level. That’s why we’re excited about an opportunity to increase your donation through NewsMatch, a collaborative fundraising movement to support independent public service journalism like ours.

From now through the end of the year, NewsMatch will match your donation of up to $1,000 per individual. The stakes are high: We can earn up to $15,000 in matching dollars and additional incentives from the Joyce Foundation and Andrew Carnegie Foundation, which means the Arnolt Center for Investigative Journalism can raise $33,000 through the initiative.

This fundraising campaign will set us up for another award-winning journalism year with reporting that makes a difference.

We believe journalism should serve the public interest — not private profits. But we need support from folks like you to uphold that mission. Will you invest in us?

https://give.myiu.org/crowdfunding/I380016219-CF.html

With gratitude,

Kathleen Johnston

Founding Director, Michael I. Arnolt Center for Investigative Journalism

Professor of Practice