Scholarships for SRCCON
We want to help you attend SRCCON. OpenNews offers a limited number of scholarship tickets and travel or caregiving scholarships.
About the scholarship process
There’s no separate application. We offer two scholarship options:
- Free scholarship tickets - these will be available directly on our registration page, no application necessary. After you fill out our call for participation, if we’re able to invite you to attend, we’ll send a link to register on Eventbrite. On that page, there will be an option to pick up one of a limited number of free scholarship tickets.
- $500 travel or caregiving scholarships - these scholarships are to compensate for travel or caregiving costs. The scholarship can be applied toward your own travel costs or to bring your loved ones to Minneapolis, or help care for them back home while you’re at the conference. Recipients of this scholarship will also receive a free ticket to SRCCON. The application for this scholarship closes along with the deadline for session proposals.
Who should apply
- Anyone in the journalism-tech community who is unable to purchase a ticket to attend—in particular laid-off, unemployed, and freelance journalists.
- Tickets are prioritized for members of communities underrepresented in journalism and technology, such as journalists of color, and journalists from smaller and non-coastal newsrooms.
How to apply
The travel and caregiving scholarship application is part of our call for participation form. This application closes along with the deadline for session proposals.
When notifications go out
Notifications for scholarships will go out alongside other notifications as part of the call for participation.
What happens after SRCCON
You tell us how it went! We’ll send you a short followup survey and will be excited to check out anything you write or build coming out of your participation at SRCCON.
Why are you offering this scholarship?
We want to make sure that SRCCON is an event that includes the diversity of the communities we serve—geographically, demographically, experientially, and more. We know that travel and caregiving costs can be a hardship, and offer this scholarship as a way to help mitigate that.
How do you decide who will receive a scholarship?
OpenNews staff reviews all applications. We prioritize applications from members of communities underrepresented in journalism and technology and from smaller and non-coastal newsrooms.
Do I still need to purchase a ticket to SRCCON?
If you receive a scholarship, you will get a link to pick up a free ticket.
When will I receive my scholarship?
When we notify scholarship recipients, we will include information about how to receive the scholarship funds. In short, you will need to fill out a form and send some tax paperwork for our administrators to process the payment. It may take a month or so for check processing.
What if I need more than $500 for my travel?
We’re able to offer $500 scholarships at this time. Luckily, Minneapolis is a relatively cheap city once you arrive, and we are happy to help share information between attendees who want to coordinate ways to save on their travel budget. (So if you, say, wanted to create a room-share spreadsheet, we’d be happy to help spread the word!) You can email us with any suggestions.