I’ve never been much for celebrating Valentine’s Day. Love, the whole reason for its existence, tends to get overshadowed by the pressure to consume and role-play romance through flowers, chocolates, date night, even Galentine’s girl dinners.

But the idea of celebrating love and friendship in the depths of winter is a good one, and this Valentine’s Day, you can flip the heteronormative script and show some love to your community and your career.

No grand gestures are necessary. It can be as simple as sharing a friend’s story on social media, helping them build their audience and increasing the impact of their work. Or send a short email to a creator whose work you’ve admired, telling them why. Reread and post one of your favorite stories to remind yourself that yes, you’re good at this work and deserve to celebrate it.

If you have the bandwidth, you can show love and support in other ways. Subscribe to an independent creator or local news publication that’s doing good work. Consider supporting fundraisers for journalists working in Minneapolis or Washington Post journalists who were laid off last week. You can even donate to fund free IIJ conference registration for former WaPo journalists. Any donations received before March 5 will fund free registrations for former WaPo journalists. (If this is you, please also take advantage of our layoffs resources, as well as these guides from News Revenue Hub, Motherboard, and IIJ founder Katherine Reynolds Lewis.)

Don’t forget to show yourself some love, too. These are tough times, and many of us have had to tap deeply into resilience. That’s important. But love—proactive, caring, tender love—has its own healing power. Celebrate not just your ability to withstand hard times, but your kind and courageous heart.

The best way to get love is to give it. So show yourself and your peers some love this weekend.

~ Sara

You don’t need fancy equipment or a background in filmmaking to make social media videos audiences will love—all you need is your smartphone and a few key skills.

Freelance journalist Victoria Lim and Port of Entry founder Jennifer Chowdhury shared some quick and easy ways to level up your content game in our Feb. 6 webinar, and now you can access the replay for free! Click below to learn how to make engaging content that builds your audience and boosts your reporting.

This is your last chance to enter your next great story idea into the IIJ’s first-ever Pitch Fest! Submissions close this Friday, Feb. 13. Six lucky winners will be selected to present their pitch live in front of a panel of editors at this year’s IIJ Freelance Conference next month, hosted on SoundPath.

Your judges are:

The IIJ Conference on March 5 and 6, hosted by SoundPath, has 12 live, virtual sessions designed to help you strengthen your freelance business and build community. Tune into the keynote session with Karen Attiah, former Washington Post columnist and founder of the Resistance Studies Series. Pitch Fest won’t be your only chance to meet editors; meet the people you need to pitch at the New York Times, HuffPost, Condé Nast Traveler, and more!

Plus, all participants receive access to more than 12 hours of recorded Q&A’s with editors, pitch guides for outlets such as National Geographic, PCMag, and Bon Appétit, and a freelance toolkit full of resources! All this for only $89 if you register before Feb. 27.

Support for the IIJ Conference comes from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Democracy Fund, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

We’re pleased to share a new resource developed in partnership with our colleagues at Religion News Association: a crowdsourced database of opportunities for freelance journalists! Browse fellowships and grant opportunities from the Fund for Investigative Journalism, International Women’s Media Foundation, Pulitzer Center and more! You can also submit opportunities for your fellow freelancers. We are deeply grateful to collaborate with RNA to provide this resource for our shared communities.

Journalists interested in learning more about food systems and public health can apply for the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future yearlong fellowship. Participants attend an in-person intensive training in Baltimore, followed by a year of support through mentoring, networking, and educational webinars. Fellows can also apply for reporting grants. Learn more and apply here. Deadline: Sunday, Mar. 1.

Rosalynn Carter Fellowships for Mental Health Journalism provide reporters a year of support to complete projects related to mental health. 💰$10,000, plus expenses paid for two trips to The Carter Center in Atlanta. Learn more and apply here. Deadline: Friday, Apr. 3. Karen Ladley, senior associate director of the Rosalynn Carter Fellowships for Mental Health Journalism and Media, is speaking at this year’s IIJ Conference!

The Daniel Singer Prize honors Singer, a committed socialist who served as the Nation’s foreign correspondent for 20 years. This year, the prize will be awarded to a published essay that addresses the following questions: Why and how have ethnonationalism and anti-immigrant politics become a central response to the crises of inequality, climate change, capitalism, and war? What forms of resistance have emerged? 💰$10,000. Learn more and submit here. Deadline: Sunday, Mar. 1.

The Media Law School, hosted by the University of South Carolina College of Information and Communications and the University of South Carolina Joseph F. Rice School of Law, brings journalists to Columbia, S.C. for training on civil and criminal law. 💰$500 for travel expenses, plus lodging and meals. Learn more and apply here. Deadline: Friday, Feb. 13.

The Pulitzer Center will award grants for environmental stories that focus on transparency and governance. Stories will expose how governments and corporations manage natural resources, including harmful practices, corruption, and the impact on biodiversity, human rights, and climate. 💰$5,000 to $15,000 in funding, depending on the project scope. Learn more and apply here. Deadline: Saturday, Feb. 28.

📖 When the Department of Homeland Security dispatched over 3,000 ICE agents to Minneapolis, national media swooped in to cover the operation, especially in the wake of the deaths of Renée Good and Alex Pretti. But, as Project C points out, local independent journalists with decades of experience and relationships were out there already doing excellent work: “Community-rooted independent journalists aren’t just filling gaps left by legacy media contraction. They’re providing coverage that institutional media literally cannot replicate – because trust is earned over years, because access depends on relationships, because some communities will talk to independent journalists but not to outlets.” In this story, they share a number of creators to follow, including Georgia Fort, who was briefly arrested after this piece was written.

📖 Not sure what investigative journalism is? Well, UNESCO has all the answers. It recently released a new edition of its manual for investigative journalists. Mark Lee Hunter, who founded the Global Investigative Journalism Network, is the principal author. Bookmark this one, as it’s 187 pages. However, it’s very readable and genuinely inspiring, such as this comment on how investigative reporting can change the reporter: “You will become stronger, because you will know yourself to be capable of finding the truth on your own, instead of waiting for someone to hand it to you. You will learn to master your fear while listening to your doubts. You will understand the world in a new, deeper way.”

📖 One of the more exciting developments in media over the last few years has been the rise of worker-owned coops, such as Defector and Hell Gate. This structure appears delightfully rosy: no corporate oversight, consensus decision-making, higher salaries and benefits for all involved. What’s not to love? Well, as Neel Dhanesha of Nieman Lab learned in speaking to members of five media coops,it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. As Nick Pinto of Hell Gate told Dhanesha, “All of the clichés about movement organizing are true. What does it mean to herd a bunch of cats into all running the same direction? There are only so many models of that. And they all involve a lot of meetings. We spend a lot of time doing that stuff, and that’s time that we could be spending doing journalism.” But overall, the journalists who spoke to Nieman found their jobs more rewarding and fulfilling both financially and emotionally.

🗓️ Thursday and Friday, March 5 and 6 - Join us for Solo Together: a conference for independent journalists and creators to find community and build thriving businesses. Speakers include Jeremy Caplan, director of teaching and learning at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism; Paige DiFiore, deputy editor at Business Insider; Alberto Mendoza, managing director of the John S. Knight Fellowships at Stanford, and more. Grab your spot for only $89!

🗓️ Wednesday, April 22 - The IIJ is presenting a panel on “Creating Entrepreneurship Systems That Work For You” from 3-3:50 p.m. ET at ASJA’s 2026 online conference. Hear from IIJ leaders Katherine Reynolds Lewis and Ann Marie Awad, as well as independent journalists Olga Lucia Torres and Clayton Gutzmore. Register for the conference here.

🗓️ June 2-5 - IIJ leaders Shernay Williams and Benét Wilson will be presenting a session on creating entrepreneurship systems that work for you at the Education Writers Association National Seminar in Baltimore, MD! Learn more and register here.

⏪ Webinar: Mobile Reporting: Tools for Making Content on The Go

▶️ Podcast: For $1/word, Science Friday wants enterprise stories that spark curiosity

⏪ Webinar: How to Pitch High Profile, National Media

▶️ Podcast: Pitch Sentient Media stories about how the sausage is made

▶️ Podcast: How to pitch Mongabay stories on climate and Indigenous communities

⏪ Webinar: Save Time, Money, and Clients with Clear Project Scoping