Up to $20,000 for original reporting on artificial intelligence and its impacts.

We aim to evaluate all applications within 4 weeks of the application deadline. If your story is time-sensitive, you can ask request that we expedite the evaluation process, although we may not always be able to do that.

While our primary focus is on written journalism at established publications, we do consider exceptional proposals in other formats like podcasts, newsletters, and short documentaries. Content in such formats should still be “in the spirit of journalism”: it should adhere to journalistic standards like truth-seeking, independence, and fairness. We also need to see how such content will reach a large or important audience.

Your grant money can be used for any costs incurred in producing the story, including the costs of your time and labor. This is true for both freelancers and staff reporters. You can also use the money for other reporting expenses, such as travel, API usage, or purchasing data sources.

Yes, teams of journalists are very welcome to apply. Please submit a single application, and in the “about you” section provide information for each team member.

No. Everyone who reads your application is bound by our Pitch  Integrity  Commitment, which bars them from using or sharing non‑public information in your application until your piece is published or 12 months have passed, unless you explicitly waive the embargo. This safeguard lets you include enough detail for us to fairly judge originality and feasibility without worrying about being scooped.

Yes, you can submit multiple pitches (up to 3).

We encourage applicants to apply with a letter showing interest from the editor of their publication-of-choice, but this is not strictly required (see template letter). If we want to support your piece but you don’t have a letter of interest, we’ll ask you to secure a letter of interest from a fitting outlet before we disburse funds. We also sometimes award “seed grants” to enable exceptional freelancers to do more digging and sourcing before approaching outlets.

This round of Tarbell Grants is generously supported by our donors. Our donors have no involvement in the grant selection process. If you’re interested in supporting the next round, you can donate here or get in touch.

Yes, we welcome applications from journalists anywhere. Some focus areas (like AI in governments and militaries, or accountability reporting on frontier companies) are global by nature. Others, like AI policy and politics, skew toward jurisdictions where frontier AI companies are headquartered. But we’ve funded reporting from India, Taiwan, Brazil, and Kenya and remain interested in strong reporting from anywhere.

We ask that all stories published as part of a Tarbell-funded reporting project include the following line: “This story was supported by a grant from the Tarbell Center for AI Journalism.” If you share your Tarbell-funded story with other outlets for co-publication, please request that they also include this disclosure. Let us know if this is an issue.

Yes. We welcome applications for a reporting series, rather than just a one-off piece.