Two Yalies are inaugural New York Times journalism fellows

Yale senior David Yaffe-Bellany and alumna Amelia Nierenberg ’18 have been selected for the inaugural class of fellows at The New York Times for 2019-2020. The New York Times Fellowship is a one-year work program aimed at “cultivating the next generation of journalists.”

The two, who both wrote for the Yale Daily News during their time at Yale, were selected from among some 5,000 applicants for the fellowship, which is for recent graduates of college and graduate school.

“The Times has long been passionate about cultivating journalism’s next generation,” said Theodore Kim, director of newsroom internships and fellowships. “We regard that process as both sacred and an obligation. We built the Times Fellowship with these principles in mind.”

The 12-month fellowship, which begins in June, will incorporate reporters across a wide range of sections, as well as journalists in photo, visual investigations/video, graphics, news design, audio, Opinion, and The New York Times Magazine. It replaces the summer fellowship the newspaper has long offered to aspiring journalists. The year-long fellowship will incorporate speakers and training opportunities, and the young journalists will receive feedback on their work.

Yaffe-Bellany has been named a David Carr Fellow at the New York Times. After he graduates from Yale with a degree in English, he will serve as a business reporter for the Times. At Yale, he was managing editor of the Yale Daily News. In 2018, he interned at The Texas Tribune, covering the aftermath of the family separation crisis at the United States-Mexico border. His freelance work has appeared in The Atlantic, The New Republic, and Columbia Journalism Review.

Nierenberg will report on food as a New York Times Fellow. She earned her both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in history at Yale in 2018. Her undergraduate thesis on religious identity in post-colonial France won the John Addison Porter Prize. As an Overseas Press Club Fellow, she spent six months reporting from Dakar, Senegal. She was the opinion editor for the Yale Daily News, and has also worked at The Boston Globe and The Pittsburgh-Post Gazette.