• Grants are available to journalists, including freelancers, who are either working for local news organizations with target audiences in the metro St. Louis area, or have a publication/broadcast plan for the project that targets audiences in the metro St. Louis area.
• Applicants must articulate the relevance and the importance of the project in the grant application.
• Priority will be given to projects unlikely to be undertaken or completed without this funding, which have a high likelihood of being published and/or aired and which have considerable local impact.
• Projects should be local or regional in focus but may include a statewide, national or international scope.
• Applicant’s news organization will be actively encouraged to supplement the fellowship award.
• Applicants must submit a budget outline broadly defining the costs associated with their proposed project, noting which parts of their project would require funding from the fellowship. The outline should list the categories associated with the cost of the project such as labor, travel (air, train, car), accommodation, meals, production, translation, editing, telephone, and/or project materials and provide an estimated cost for each category.
• Applicants must agree to credit the St. Louis Press Club in the published piece for helping to fund the reporting of the project.
• Projects that require less than the maximum $2,500 that can be awarded will receive special attention.

• Either full-time working journalists working for local news organizations or freelancers, who live or work in the area, may apply for the fellowship.
• There is no age restriction.
• Current Press Club board members and Enterprise Journalism committee members are not eligible. Former members must be off the board for at least a year before they may submit a proposal.

• Grants are awarded by a committee of the St. Louis Press Club board.
• Applicants will be notified of the status of their proposals within one week of the Press Club’s receipt of the application.
• Published projects will be linked on this webpage. 

The St. Louis Press Club recognizes that without outside funding, many great stories will go unreported.

In 2009, then-Press Club President Richard Weiss and his wife, Sally Altman, provided $5,000 to seed enterprise journalism grants in memory of Weiss's late parents, Richard M. and Helen Weiss, both of whom were active in local media. The Press Club matched that amount with $5,000 from its treasury.

Over the years, the Press Club has funded more than a dozen stories and documentaries that have been published or aired in newspapers and stations across St. Louis.

The fellowship program was offered at a time when the region's media outlets were suffering through the worst recession in decades and had cut their staffs and reporting budgets. More than decade later,  that is still the case.

Any journalist is eligible to submit a story idea and apply for a grant. The program is open to both full-time employees at area media outlets and to freelancers. The objective is to increase the number of enterprise stories readers and viewers will see in local media.

"Great journalism is both labor intensive and at times costly," Weiss said in 2009. "If we want to see reporting that genuinely improves and enhances civic life, we will have to find a way to pay for it. One way to do that is to reach into our pockets and make a donation just as we do for other civic assets, such as the Saint Louis Symphony, Art Museum, and Forest Park. In this case, the assets are our region's talented journalists."

A Press Club committee reviews applications from area journalists. Selection criteria includes the applicant's demonstrated commitment to reporting stories with a strong local interest, the impact the proposed story will have on the community and a determination of which candidates most need the resources. Proposals are considered as they are submitted so that the stories can be produced on a timely basis.

The enterprise grants have spawned the following stories:

• Ready or Not? Can St. Louis cope with catastrophe? by Nancy Fowler, St. Louis Beacon. An investigation into St. Louis’s lack of disaster preparation.
• Water tower down: Icon's demise breaks ex-Chrysler worker's link to past by Mary Leonard and photographer Jerry Naunheim. An examination of the region's shrinking middle class. St. Louis Beacon.
• Under the Radar by C.D. Stelzer, Focus Midwest. An  investigation into East Side player Gary Fears, his diverse business associates and their ties to a mysterious Ukrainian aircraft. 
• Ten Years Later Are We Safer? by Jason Rosenbaum and Mike Sherry, Midwest Center of Investigative Reporting and St. Louis Beacon . Series examined how federal anti-terrorism funds were spent in our region.
  • As Anti-terrorism Funding Shrinks, Controversy Grows Over How to Spend It
  • Federal Funds For Hiring Firefighters — Anti-terrorism Program or Employment Subsidy?
• Immigration
• Missouri now 'destination state' for immigrants by Philip Dine, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 2010. A project that examined how St. Louis has become a hub for Bosnians, Hispanics and refugees from around the world.
• Flanagan South Pipeline Raises Concerns by Tina Casagrand, St. Louis Public Radio and St. Louis Beacon, 2016. A report on how a pipeline project much like the controversial Keystone project has been flying beneath the regulatory radar.
• A Town and Country doctor dedicates life to orphans in Indiaby Stephen Deere and photographer J.B. Forbes, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 2014. A special report that chronicles the efforts of Dr. Subbarao Polineni , a wealthy St. Louis hand surgeon who is determined to build a school that will house and educate orphans in India for decades to come.
  • India: Two worlds
  • A safe place
• St. Louis Children's Hospital: Where treating gunshot wounds is part of taking care of kids by Stu Durando, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 2018. Special report that chronicles the efforts of St. Louis Children's Hospital to help children and their families deal with gun violence in our community.
• 63106 Project, effort led by Dick Weiss by multiple reporters, published and broadcast by multiple organizations, 2020 and 2021. A special project that examines how the COVID-19 pandemic is disproportionately hurting underserved and vulnerable families in the St. Louis region.
• 33 and Counting: The Patty Prewitt Story by Aisha Sulan, 2020. A documentary about a 70-year-old grandmother from rural Missouri serving a life sentence for a murder she says her rapist committed.

Past Press Club President, Richard Weiss along with Eric Mink and Roy Malone on St. Louis on the Air with Don Marsh discussing our Enterprise Journalism Fellowship program. You can listen to or download the podcast Here.