The Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism received a $150,000 grant for the Ethics & Justice Investigative Journalism Fellowship program from the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation. The EEJF, which announced the winners of the grant on Feb. 3, awarded over $1.5 million. Some of the other winners include InvestigateWest, in Seattle, and Investigative News Network, in California.

According to the program's website, fellowships are awarded to reporters whose goals are consistent with a mission of "reporting and investigating on important public issues of government and corporate accountability, social justice, or human rights." These fellowships will be run by the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism and allow for collaboration with highly experienced and motivated reporters who have a passion for the public interest, according to the program's website.

In an interview with the Justice, Florence George Graves, founding director of the Schuster Institute, explained the application process for the endowment. First, Graves and her associates had to submit a letter to the foundation. In this letter, they proposed the expansion of the institute's fellowship program. The EEJF looked over all of the application letters and invited Brandeis, among the other winners, to submit a finalized proposal with a budget plan. The grant provides the institute with $150,000 to be used over a three-year period.

The awarded money will be used to fund editorial and research support for independent journalists at the Schuster Institute. These funds will also be used to expand the already established collaborative fellowship between Brandeis and the Fund for Investigative Journalism. According to its website, for over 30 years, the Fund for Investigative Journalism has helped "to finance exposes of harmful and wrongful conduct, such as corruption at all levels of government; corporate, governmental and press nonfeasance, misfeasance and malfeasance; abuses of civil and human rights and of the environment; unsafe medical technologies; and improper donor influence on research in academe." Graves is working on the expansion of this program with Schuster's new executive director, Melissa Ludtke.

One example of a project by an involved independent journalist is The American Way of Eating by fellow Tracie McMillan. According to the project's website, McMillan researched her book by going undercover to work in Walmart, Applebees, farms and other similar organizations to learn how difficult it can be for someone with low income to still eat nutritiously.

Graves founded the Schuster Institute in 2004 as a way of revising the financial model of reporting. "All over the country and the world, news rooms were cutting budgets for the kind of watchdog investigative reporting I believe is so central to government and corporate transparency and accountability," Graves explained. Graves went on to say that it is because of donations, funding from donors and grants like this one that the Schuster Institute can continue to be successful.