Published: 24 August 2021
Last updated: 4 March 2024
The The Jewish Independent Fellowship for young journalists was launched over the weekend, with the six participants convening for their first meeting of the four-month program
UNDER THE GUIDANCE of program director Gary Samowitz, the six Fellows selected for the inaugural The Jewish Independent Fellowship “met” each other virtually in their first meeting on Sunday night.
This year’s Fellows are Yaffa Bart, 24, Hannah Blount, 22, Kea Cranko, 23, Daniel Etzion, 23, Harrison Rosen, 24 and Joey (Josef) Wilkinson, 24 (see brief CVs below).
After introductions and discussion of the program outline, held via Zoom due to the current lockdowns, guest speaker Sam Koslowski - founder of the popular news media site The Daily Aus - spoke to the group about innovation and risk in the modern media landscape.
Sam spoke about his journey of creating The Daily Aus with Zara Seidler and what they learnt along the way, and answered the Fellows’ questions about objectivity, monetisation and editorial decisions. The Daily Aus, which has over 200 thousand followers on Instagram has recently launched a daily podcast, and a daily newsletter.
Gary Samowitz said the Fellowship seeks to “empower a new generation of articulate, passionate and skilled Jewish journalists by giving them the skills, networks, and support to create compelling content on issues that matter to them”.
Samowitz said the Fellowship will offer participants meetings with key stakeholders and experienced leaders on contemporary issues facing the Jewish community and Israel; individual mentors from the media industry; the opportunity to work across a range of mediums, including podcasts and video; and support and guidance from the The Jewish Independent editorial team.
He said how pleased he was “with the high calibre participants that we attracted for this inaugural program. Our first session was fantastic and I’m really looking forward to the next four months of workshops and content creation sessions. Sam was a brilliant speaker for our first session and the fellows loved hearing from him.”
