Early Childhood Reporting
Do you want to learn more about reporting on early childhood?
Click the button to apply for this once-in-a-career program
Early Childhood Reporting Institute -- Application deadline May 29!
The Early Childhood Journalism Initiative, a project of the Global Center for Journalism and Trauma, is offering a three-day training program and reporting grants for 25 journalists and content producers across Australia. This program will deepen participants’ knowledge of early childhood development and increase their capacity to undertake science-informed ethical reporting on young children and caregivers. Following the in-person program, reporting fellows will pursue projects, receive editorial mentorship and be awarded a $3,000 story grant.
Organised in partnership with the Centre for Journalism and Trauma Asia Pacific (CJT), this program will be grounded in Australian culture and context and will draw on regional and international expertise. It will be the first program of its kind in Australia with a focus on trauma-informed and culturally-aware reporting on children and caregivers from Indigenous, non-Indigenous and newly arrived contexts.
The program will take place in Melbourne November 11-13, 2026. The deadline for applications is Friday, May 29, 2026 at 10:00 AM Australian Eastern Standard Time (AEST).
Journalists and content producers who understand early childhood development are better equipped to report on issues that shape society before children enter school. The early years influence lifelong health, learning and equality, and are closely linked to areas already being reported on, such as housing, child-care, health, disaster recovery, workforce participation and social policy. Without a bio-psycho-social understanding of the early years, reporting can oversimplify complex issues, place undue blame on families, or frame young children only as victims rather than as individuals shaped by systems and policy decisions. This program aims to equip reporters to cover these issues in a more informed, nuanced and innovative way.
This three-day reporting program will bring together journalists for panels, workshops, and skills-based sessions led by researchers, clinicians, child development experts and those reporting in new and innovative ways. The program will explore how to translate complex research and policy debates into rigorous, compelling journalism, and how to approach these topics with care and trauma-informed practice.
The program will offer a forum for knowledge-sharing, source development, and peer-to-peer exchange, and strengthen a global network of journalists committed to reporting on young children and their caregivers with accuracy, depth and sensitivity across Australia.
After the program, participating journalists will receive a $3,000 grant to carry out a story focused on early childhood. They will also receive editorial mentorship over a period of six months as they report on the story.
The Early Childhood Journalism Initiative is a multiyear program that offers journalists around the world access to knowledge, skills, financial support, and other resources to expand and deepen reporting on the youngest children and their caregivers – particularly at the intersection of inequality, education, public health, and social and economic policy.
The Early Childhood Journalism Initiative is made possible through the support of the Van Leer Foundation (Netherlands), Minderoo Foundation (Australia), Fundação Maria Cecilia Souto Vidigal (Brazil), and The Two Lilies Fund (United States).
Eligibility Criteria
This is a once-in-a-career opportunity
Early Childhood Faculty
Irene Casellis - International Program Lead & Story Coach
Irene Caselli is a multimedia reporter and writer with over two decades of experience across radio, television, and print. Her work now focuses on early childhood, caregivers, and reproductive rights. She directs the Early Childhood Journalism Initiative at the Global Center for Journalism and Trauma and is a 2026 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, where she focuses on how media cover early childhood.
For more than a decade, Caselli worked as a foreign correspondent in Latin America, reporting for outlets including the BBC, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and The New York Times. In 2019, she began covering early childhood for The Correspondent. Two years later, she launched The First 1,000 Days, a newsletter exploring the foundational period of life often overlooked in public discourse and journalism.
Caselli has received fellowships from the International Women’s Media Foundation, the European Journalism Centre, and the Solutions Journalism Network, among others. She speaks six languages — English, Italian, Spanish, German, French, and Portuguese — and is currently learning Greek
Mary Gearin - Australian Program Lead & Story Coach
Mary Gearin is an award-winning journalist, broadcaster and presenter with more than three decades’ experience across television, radio and digital journalism in Australia and as the ABC’s Europe Correspondent. She's reported extensively on major international and national events, with particular expertise in social justice issues and human-centred storytelling.
Jack Latimore (Birpai–Thungutti) - Story Coach
Jack Latimore (Birpai–Thungutti) is a Melbourne‑based writer and journalist and the current Enterprise Fellow for the First Nations Journalism Scholarship Project at the University of Melbourne. From 2021 to 2024, he became the first Aboriginal journalist to cover the Indigenous Affairs round in The Age’s 170‑year history.
Before joining The Age, Latimore held senior editorial and reporting roles across Australian media, including Digital Managing Editor at NITV, columnist for Guardian Australia, correspondent for the Koori Mail, and daily editor at IndigenousX. His journalism and essays have appeared widely, including in GQ, Rolling Stone Australia, NME, Meanjin, Inside Story, Griffith Review, SBS, ABC, and the Guardian Weekly.
His work also features in numerous anthologies, and he has received multiple awards for Indigenous affairs reporting.
Dr Cait McMahon OAM - Australian Project Consultant
Cait McMahon is a psychologist and international expert on the intersection of trauma and journalism. She was the founding Managing Director of the Dart Centre for Journalism and Trauma–Asia Pacific (2003–2021), a project of Columbia University, where she delivered psychoeducation across 30 nations and advised global media organisations on mitigating work‑related trauma exposure.
McMahon has worked with journalists since 1987, beginning as staff counsellor at The Age newspaper, and completed one of the first studies on journalists and trauma in 1993. Her doctoral research examined post‑traumatic stress and growth in media professionals. She now serves as a director and consultant for the Centre for Journalism and Trauma Asia Pacific.
She helped establish peer support programs at the ABC, NUJP, ARIJ and The Washington Post, and received an OAM in 2016. In 2024 she was awarded a joint Churchill Fellowship to explore wellbeing supports for Indigenous journalists.