Seventeen collegiate and emerging journalists have been selected to participate in the Ida B. Wells Society Investigative Reporting Internship Program this summer.
The cohort is the largest in the initiative’s history, with more than a three-fold increase in newsrooms participating in the effort since its inception in 2021, when seven interns were placed at five news organizations.
Founded by four prize-winning African American investigative journalists, the Society is a news trade organization devoted to increasing the numbers of journalists of color and other underrepresented groups in investigative reporting and editing ranks.
2025 interns hail from a broad spectrum of colleges and universities and will be placed in an equally diverse collection of newsrooms, including some of the nation’s largest and most prestigious news organizations, metropolitan daily newspapers, nonprofit newsrooms and, for the first time, a prize-winning, historic Black newspaper.
“This year’s expansion represents extraordinary growth for the program and reflects the industry’s recognition of the value our interns bring,” said Ron Nixon, co-founder of the Society and director of the Associated Press Local Investigative Reporting Program. “It’s a testament to the growing demand for diverse investigative journalists.”
Interns will serve 10–12-week appointments on investigative teams or in slots otherwise devoted to data and investigative newsgathering. The Society provides salaries and other professional development support to interns throughout the process, including a pre-internship boot camp that will be held in Atlanta this week. However, this year two news partners agreed to pay the salaries of their selected interns while a third news partner will cover a portion of two internships.
Here are the selected interns who emerged from a highly competitive pool of hundreds of college juniors, seniors, graduate students and recent graduates who were eligible to apply:
















