O'Brien Fellowship in Public Service Journalism

Backed by Marquette University, the O'Brien Fellowship helps news professionals dig deep while mentoring student journalists.
The program honors Marquette alumni Alicia and Perry O'Brien. Their daughter, Patricia Frechette, and her husband, Peter, donated $8.3 million in 2012 to create the fellowship. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is a co-founder and partner.
The O’Brien Fellowship accepts applications from journalists using print, digital, or visual mediums. Applicants may also produce news or opinion content. Journalists producing opinion content, however, including editorial writers and columnists, should inform, and support, their views and commentary with independent, in-depth investigative reporting.
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Remembering Untold Stories
In America today, the lights are going out. Many urgent stories go untold.
Practically all the record number of journalists – more than 60 – applying for O’Brien Fellowships this year proposed projects in the best tradition of public service journalism: exposing wrongful convictions, the impact of climate change on cities, a rise in homelessness, mass incarceration, government coverups of environmental hazards, the unseen victims of the opioid epidemic, to name just a few.
Truth be told, dozens of these projects, and the impressive journalists who proposed them, were worthy of a nine-month O’Brien fellowship at Marquette University in Milwaukee. Unhappily, O’Brien can fund only four fellowships a year.
That means not only a line of disappointed people who put in the serious work of applying for a national fellowship, but also an immeasurable loss for the nation. Without funding, without a platform, many of these stories may never be told. Nor will the nation benefit from the difference those investigations would make in exposing injustice; creating a more just, equitable, and healthy society; and making state, local, and federal governments more accountable to the people.
There are fewer and fewer places for journalists to do this invaluable work. Since 2005, the country has lost one-third of its newspapers – more than 3,200 have closed – and two thirds of its newspaper journalists. The legacy media outlets still standing are, mostly, shadows, with stripped-down staffs unequipped for investigative work.
Fewer journalists have steady gigs and more independent ones are looking for a way, anyway, to stay on the grind. For local news, especially, the problem isn’t demand – it’s supply.
Journalists aren’t perfect. They make mistakes. They ignore stories they shouldn’t. Too many of them are punking out, trying to curry favor with the very people they should be holding to account. Still, as the distinction between truth and lies blurs beyond recognition, most journalists still respect the truth enough to shine a light into the darkness. What happens when the lights go out?
Sincere thanks to everyone who applied for an O’Brien Fellowship this year. I wish we had many more to hand out. Now more than ever, the country needs to have their stories told.
Pulitzer Prize-winner Jeffery Gerritt is director of the O'Brien Fellowship in Public Service Journalism at Marquette University in Milwaukee.
The Latest O'Brien-Backed Journalism
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The Right to Read
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The Flight of Banks
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A New Prescription
The Right to Read
O'Brien Fellow Sarah Carr investigated reading disparities in schools and the actions people are taking to close them. This series breaks down how these disparities often play out through a child's life and what approaches are being taken to change that narrative.

Photo by Jahi Chikwendiu / THE WASHINGTON POST
The Flight of Banks
O'Brien Fellow Sari Lesk investigated the struggles that Milwaukee entrepreneurs, many of them racial minorities, face when trying to access funding to start or scale their business. Many small business owners said they found themselves rejected by traditional banks.
Photo by Kenny Yoo / MILWAUKEE BUSINESS JOURNAL
A New Prescription
O'Brien Fellow Guy Boulton investigated the social determinants of health across the country, including here in Milwaukee. The story breaks down how social services can be more important to health than access to medical services despite the U.S. health care system accounting for a fifth of the economy.

Photo by Mark Hoffman / MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL
A Unique Journalism Fellowship
- Report and produce an in-depth public service journalism project on a regional, national or international topic.
- Receive a $75,000 salary stipend and additional support.
- Fellows traditionally are in residence, but we are now taking remote or partial remote applications along with full-residency arrangements. The O’Brien newsroom is housed at Marquette University’s Diederich College of Communication near downtown Milwaukee and the Lake Michigan shore.
- Publish or broadcast the project through your home news organization or, in the case of independent journalists, another outlet.
- Integrate Marquette’s best journalism students into your projects as reporters and researchers.
- Help identify a journalism student for a university-funded summer internship at your news organization or other publisher.
Marquette University challenges students and staff to “be the difference” in improving the community. The Catholic and Jesuit institution has educated journalists for 100 years.
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