The Pulitzer Center is now accepting applications for its fifth cohort of the Rainforest Investigations Network (RIN).

Few global issues are as urgent as the destruction of the world’s tropical rainforests. The RIN fellowship fosters collaboration among journalists to investigate the financial incentives, illegal activities, and global supply chains driving industrial-scale deforestation. 

RIN Fellows will pursue both individual and joint investigative projects, examining the root causes and structural drivers of deforestation across the three main tropical rainforest regions: the Amazon, the Congo Basin, and Southeast Asia.

What We Are Looking For

We are seeking seasoned investigative journalists - whether they are on staff or working with a host outlet as a freelancer - who are from the tropical rainforest regions or focus on these regions in their reporting. We also accept collaborations with local and global media outlets.

This is a full-time, yearlong fellowship that provides financial support, covering the reporter’s salary (or part of it, depending on variables such as location and experience). Additional support will be provided to the journalist’s reporting expenses, such as travel, insurance and hiring of consultants.

We are particularly interested in investigative projects that take a cross-border approach, connecting local drivers of forest destruction with global supply chains. We will work closely with selected Fellows to connect them with potential partners within the network. Please note that applications must be submitted individually and not by groups or media outlets.

Thank for your interest to the AI Spotlight Series. Welcome to the Track 2: Reporting on AI Intensive application page.

Please submit your application for the AI Spotlight Series Track 2. One or two of our three coaches, Karen Hao, Gabriel Geiger, and Lam Thuy Vo, will teach this course.

Each course is designed to give you a firm grounding in AI and how it works, as well as the tools to identify critical stories -- from spot news to deep investigations -- that will highlight the technology’s impacts, hold companies and governments accountable, and drive policy and community change while avoiding hype and unnecessary alarmism.

Track 2 is designed for reporters who grasp AI, spend significant time covering technology, and want to go deeper. It will help you clarify your understanding of technical concepts and think more expansively about how to cover the different facets of this fast-moving story.

The course will require a dedicated time commitment: We will meet for 6 hours in one week, and an additional hour of recommended homework will be provided between sessions to maximize class time.

At the program's end, you can pitch the Pulitzer Center for a grant or fellowship to support an AI accountability reporting project. You will also join the Center’s broader AI Accountability Network, a global consortium of journalists investigating and documenting AI's impacts on people and communities.