Missouri School of Journalism students and faculty are invited to meet the 2023-2024 WWG fellowship class.

WWG is now accepting applications for its paid reporting positions and scholarships for the 2023-2024 academic year. These positions are open to graduate and undergraduate students. Applications will be accepted through May 15.

Tuesday, May 2, 2023

Noon—2 p.m.

Open to ALL students. Pizza, salads, and drinks will be served.

The Palmer Room, “Fish Bowl,” on the main floor of the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute, Room 100A.

The yearlong WWG program partners students with experienced investigative journalists writing books. Independent, self-motivated students with a passionate interest in investigative reporting and narrative writing are encouraged to apply. WWG authors are writing books about the U.S. credit-rating system, the incarceration of women, the ecological destruction of the prairie ecosystem, and the defense industry. New authors will be named by June.

Interested students should email Christopher Leonard, WWG founder and executive director, at christopherleonard@missouri.edu by May 15. 

To learn more, visit our website: https://watchdogwritersgroup.com

Graduate students join by fall 2023, report part-time first semester as part of an independent study class. In 2024, students work full-time, receive a full tuition waiver and $8,000 stipend, with their work qualifying as a “Professional Project.” Undergraduate students work with authors as their schedule allows and are paid the maximum hourly rate allowed by the university.

WWG Authors that wil be present include:

Sarah Smarsh is a journalist who has covered socioeconomic class, politics and public
policy for The New York Times, National Geographic, Harper’s, and many other
publications. Her first book, Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the
Richest Country on Earth (2018), was a New York Times bestseller. Her latest book, She Come By It Natural: Dolly Parton and the Women Who Lived Her Songs (2020), was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Alisa Roth is a contributor to Marketplace, NPR, and other outlets. She is the author of Insane: America’s Criminal Treatment of Mental Illness. She is writing a book that combines new research and deep narrative reporting to examine the accelerating crisis of women in American jails and prisons. Her work has appeared in The New York Review of Booksand The New York Times, and she has been featured on Fresh Air.

Mya Frazier is writing a book for Knopf that expands on her recent investigation for The New York Times Magazine into America’s housing crisis and the credit reporting system. During the fellowship, she will research the relationship between class mobility and the credit system.

Shoshana Walter is writing a book for Simon & Schuster that builds on her award-winning reporting for Reveal on unpaid work camps masquerading as rehab. Her book, “Untreated,” will chronicle the many problems plaguing the country’s addiction treatment system, how it got this way and how we could do better for the millions of people in the US struggling with addiction.

Michael Grunwald is working on a book for Simon & Schuster about how to feed the world without frying the world. It’s about the food we eat, the farms that make the food, the forests that get cleared to make room for the farms, and the search for technological and political solutions that can prevent us from eating the earth.

Christopher Leonard is the executive director of the Watchdog Writers Group, and author of The Lords of Easy Money, The Meat Racket and Kochland. Leonard graduated from the University of Missouri Journalism School in 1998. His work has appeared in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Fortune, and Bloomberg Businessweek.