Mr. Baquet said that A.G. Sulzberger, the publisher of The Times, raised the idea of a new fellowship program earlier this year.
“We started to talk about it, and it was immediately appealing,” Mr. Baquet said. “It was a way for me at this point in my career to give back to the profession. And it was also a way for me to teach — hopefully teach — young journalists and others how to do investigative reporting.”
In a news release announcing the fellowship, Mr. Sulzberger said that Mr. Baquet’s “deep passion for local and investigative work” would pit “his relentless journalistic mind and ability to nurture talent against one of our industry’s most urgent needs.”
Mr. Sulzberger described the decline of local investigative journalism as a “national tragedy,” saying fewer and fewer people across the country had access to information about their community and that many local news outlets lack journalists who can uncover wrongdoing in local governments.
“It’s our hope that this fellowship can play a small role in addressing this dangerous and growing societal gap,” he said.
Mr. Baquet got his start in local newsrooms like the The States-Item and The Times-Picayune in New Orleans, his hometown, and at The Chicago Tribune, where he won a Pulitzer Prize for investigative work that uncovered corruption in City Council committee spending.
During his time as executive editor of The Times, the newsroom won 18 Pulitzer Prizes during a period punctuated by the political rise of Donald J. Trump and a pandemic that disrupted the globe.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/26/business/media/dean-baquet-nyt-fellowship.html
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