We’re excited to catch you up on the News Ambassadors program and highlight the amazing work done by our partners. If you care about strengthening communities and better supporting democracy, help us by following us on Instagram or Linkedin, donating or forwarding this newsletter to a friend. 

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📻One big story 📻

What happens when a city faces a threat that could reshape its identity?

This month we’re highlighting a KBIA story by News Ambassadors student journalist Olivia Mizelle on a challenge faced by residents of Centralia, Missouri. For several decades, Centralia has called itself the “city of ash trees.” Generations have grown up under their shade, but the emerald ash borer — a beetle that destroys ash trees — is now putting this legacy at risk. 

City officials and residents have chosen to confront the problem head on. Public Works Director Matthew Rusch is leading a plan to cut down 800 to 900 ash trees over the next three to five years before falling branches cause serious harm. But the project will cost about $378,000 – seven times more than the city usually spends on tree care. The hefty bill means leaders have delayed other priorities like street and water repairs.

Community members have voiced support for the work, even as they watch their leafy streets change. Residents value safety and want leaders to invest in replanting a more diverse mix of trees once the removal ends.

Why we like it: Reporter Olivia Mizelle shows how a community responds when its identity collides with safety and budget realities. Her reporting highlights the tradeoffs leaders make and how residents stay involved in shaping what comes next.

Broader context: Centralia’s story reflects a national challenge. Since its discovery in Michigan in 2002, the emerald ash borer has spread across 36 states. Towns everywhere must decide how to act quickly to keep people safe from falling branches of rotted trees while also planning for what comes after. 

Tip: When covering community response, look beyond the immediate fix. Learn what people are willing to give up and what they want to preserve. Those choices say as much about identity as they do about policy.

Listen to the full story here. 

Measuring Our Impact and Looking Ahead 

We got some feedback from our 2024-2025 independent evaluators at Convergence Design Lab on how student participants feel about our program- and we are excited to share some of these findings with you. 

Both SoJo and depolarization trainings got overwhelmingly positive feedback — as did our mentor pool, engagement coaching and cross-classroom exchanges, which we hope to share more feedback on in weeks to come. But since this week showed the results of toxic polarization spilling over into actual political violence, we want to especially narrow in on the feedback trainees gave our depolarization strategies training, featuring the Complicating the Narratives (CTN) method, which we increasingly see as a crucial skill set for emerging journalists to meet the moment. Among the key findings: 

In post-training surveys, many said they felt better equipped to cover polarized communities with empathy and rigor. One trainee credits the training with helping them “think more carefully about who’s left out of the narrative.” 

In addition to our depolarization trainings, News Ambassadors 2024-25 evaluation  shows deep impacts on student journalists from other aspects of our model, including:

• Our professional mentor pool guided students to apply these strategies in practice while reinforcing the values of accuracy, ethics and trust; 

• Cross-site exchanges with other schools expanded student perspectives and allowed them to witness how community-responsive journalism takes shape in different contexts. (We had some career-reframing feedback from a few students, especially repeat participants and fellows who worked most in-depth with us on place-based engagement efforts in their communities 

• SoJo training: One SoJo trainee said the training gave them “new confidence to apply SoJo strategies” in their reporting, reminding them that journalism isn’t just about naming problems but also about highlighting responses that strengthen communities.

Looking ahead, we’ve been thinking about how to best support emerging journalists who want to meet this moment with tools to foster healthier and resilient communities that are better equipped to collectively respond to the pressing shared problems they are up against. News Ambassadors will be working to bring our Depolarization Reporting Strategies training to more J-school classrooms and fellowship programs, so that emerging reporters can access these essential tools and integrate them into reporting. We’ll continue offering Solutions Journalism trainings in 2025–26, too, but we’ll focus more outreach on bringing the depolarization strategies to more J-schools and newsrooms, especially those already doing Solutions Journalism, engagement, or robust news-academic partnerships. Stay tuned for next month’s newsletter to hear more about changes coming this year! Until then…

Here are our core trainings for 2025-2026: 

News Ambassadors offers J-school and newsrooms accredited training on two methods: Solutions Journalism and the depolarization in reporting strategies known as Complicating the Narratives, designed by High Conflict author/journalist Amanda Ripley and her Good Conflict colleague Hélène Biandudi Hofer. The strategies were born from researching conflict mediation psychology studies -- how people actually behave when they're feeling suspicious and threatened by the other side -- and distilling lessons journalists can use to improve coverage of contentious issues. Designed for journalists to use covering contentious issues, the tools have applications for many different types of reporting – and beyond the journalism field. 

Interested newsrooms, J-schools and journalism fellowship programs can fill out our Training Interest Form!  

News Ambassadors ✨Resource Spotlight✨ 

We’ve got a couple great resources for journalism educators and a bunch for recent journalism grads this month so let’s dive in!

Journalism Educator Resources

Check out Listening Post Collective’s Civic Media Playbook for Educators

Curious about doing engagement journalism in the classroom? 

Together with PBS Student Reporting Labs, the great team at Listening Post Collective just launched a version of their Civic Media Playbook especially for Educators. College (or high school) educators who want to strengthen media literacy and civic engagement can check out the Educators version of the Civic Media Playbook for “practical lesson plans and tools that guide students through every step of community-focused journalism, from initial research to sharing stories that matter.” (Heads up, you’ll have to create a free account and log in to access the playbook HERE.) You can also register for a free DEMO of the Playbook on Sept. 24 @ 1 p.m. ET!

A Civic Media Magazine! 

It’s worth spending some time checking out It’s Time for Civic Media - a printed magazine from the News Futures Collaborative and The Objective featuring essays by Jenn Brandel (Hearken), Daryll Holliday (co-founder of City Bureau),  Jesse Hardman (Listening Post Collective) and several other leading voices in civic media. (Several of the essays are also published online in the Objective.)

Early Career Resources 

Here’s a starter list of resources for recent grads to have on their radar, including a few especially for those interested in audio journalism:

1. Calling All Journalists release monthly lists of journalism jobs compiled by Rebecca Aguilar.

2. The Early Career Audio Collective (ECAC) is a global peer-led community of emerging creators in radio, podcasting, and sound. Designed for those at the beginning of their audio careers—interns, production assistants, associate producers, and new independents. 

3. Association for Independents in Radio: Journalism students interested in audio can check out the FREE 3-month Student Memberships AIR now offers, (News Ambassadors alums whose audio pieces aired on the radio may be eligible for free yearlong AIR membership! Please reach out if this is you or your student!) 

4. All Hear, “The Everything List for Audio Opportunities” also has a substack published in partnership with Transom here.

5. WBUR Newsroom Fellowships for 2026 are open. Apply! 

6. Follow News Ambassadors on Linkedin for more resources and journalism job leads on a rolling basis.

Upcoming Events/Opportunities:

We have a curated and PACKED list of awesome opportunities to check out this month - from contests to free trainings and webinars! In fact, it was SO big, we had to create an UPCOMING EVENTS/OPPORTUNITIES Google Doc to list everything!  So please head there to check this month’s great spread, including offerings from More Like US, Center for Cooperative Media, Center for Community News, Solutions Journalism Network. Advancing Democracy, Poynter, INN, Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting, Connective Tissue, Democracy Day and more! There are even a couple in-person events in NYC!

🌱Knowing and Growing🌱

We wanted to give a shoutout to recent Temple University journalism grad Mariyum Rizwan, who started helping to curate and edit this newsletter behind the scenes with our former engagement strategist before taking the reins herself. Rizwan’s experience in Solutions Journalism, breaking news and audience engagement have been an asset to our newsletter and social media presence, and we wanted to take a moment to give her a warm sendoff before she heads into her first full-time journalism job this fall - as an Assignment Editor at MSNBC. 

You brought your skills from Temple’s Solutions Journalism curriculum and Resolve Philly’s engagement team to help you curate this newsletter. What have you learned from working with us so far and/or what aspects of our work and strategies were new or unfamiliar to you when you started with us? 

I came in with a background in breaking news and reporting on communities, but I hadn’t always thought deeply about how to present that work in a way that encourages collaboration, learning and even depolarization. Curating [newsletter] content that blends student-produced reporting, community engagement and actionable strategies opened my eyes to see  that journalism can also create space for dialogue and bridge-building. That perspective was newer to me when I started, but it’s something I’ll carry forward into whatever newsroom I’m part of.

From the South Asian diaspora in New Jersey to Republicans at the 2024 New Hampshire presidential primary rallies, your reporting experience spans a range of politically and culturally dissimilar communities, which you cover with cultural literacy and nuance. What have you learned from covering such disparate groups, including communities who may be initially skeptical of journalists.

Reporting across very different communities has taught me that listening is the most powerful tool a journalist has. Whether I was in Philadelphia neighborhoods covering stories on marginalized groups, connecting with the South Asian diaspora in New Jersey, or talking to Republican voters at a primary rally, the common thread was that people want to be heard and represented fairly. Sometimes there’s skepticism toward journalists, especially in politically-charged spaces, but showing up consistently with empathy and cultural literacy builds trust. I’ve learned that nuance matters—no community is a monolith, and being open to hearing peoples’ lived experiences, even when they challenge your own assumptions, makes the reporting more honest and impactful.

That’s all for now folks…until next month!