BOSTON, MA — June 3, 2025 — FRONTLINE (PBS) welcomes Jala Everett as its 2025-26 journalism fellow from Columbia Journalism School.

Everett represents FRONTLINE’s 11th round of journalism fellows from Columbia University. Her year-long fellowship, generously supported by The Tow Foundation, aims to expose emerging investigative journalists to FRONTLINE’s award-winning approach to documentary storytelling, immersing fellows into all phases of the series’ reporting and production process.

Joining FRONTLINE as a Tow Journalism fellow, Everett holds a Master of Science degree from Columbia University’s School of Journalism, where she focused on narrative longform, broadcast and video production. Previously, Everett held editorial and production roles at SiriusXM, ABC News, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Lemonada Media and Harvard Business Review. She is a graduate of Spelman College, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in English with a minor in Film and Visual Culture.

Her reporting has spanned a wide range of topics — from the impact of erratic weather on farmers’ livelihoods, to the unique appeal of Bronx-based hair salons, to trends in how Americans manage their finances and the influence of AI on electoral processes. Everett has also reported on the lives of burn survivors, the effectiveness of gunshot detection technology, the humanitarian crisis on Rikers Island, and generational trauma within the criminal justice system.

Over the course of her fellowship, Everett will have the opportunity to work alongside FRONTLINE’s filmmaking teams and aid in the development of the series’ acclaimed documentaries. This work will include contributing to the research and development of stories, reporting out leads, wrangling and analyzing data, helping set up interviews and shoots, as well as various tasks as documentaries undergo editing, vetting and post-production. She will also have opportunities to contribute to FRONTLINE projects on other platforms — including pursuing and crafting digital stories for FRONTLINE’s website and working with the series’ Local Journalism Initiative partners — local news outlets producing investigative journalism projects.

“For the past decade, our FRONTLINE/Columbia fellows have played a vital role in our newsroom, enriching both our documentary reporting and storytelling. We’re excited to welcome Jala to the team and look forward to collaborating with her over the next year,” says Raney Aronson-Rath, editor-in-chief and executive producer of FRONTLINE.

“We are grateful to The Tow Foundation and Columbia Journalism School for supporting this fellowship, which continues to provide invaluable, real-world experience to the next generation of journalists,” added Aronson-Rath, who is an alumna of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism herself.

“Frontline is one of the most indispensable news organizations in the United States and we are thrilled to further our partnership with them through this program. This is among our most vital collaborations and we look forward to seeing Jala Everett learn from and contribute to Frontline’s incredible tradition of groundbreaking news documentaries,” says Jelani Cobb, dean of Columbia Journalism School.

About FRONTLINE
FRONTLINE, U.S. television’s longest running investigative documentary series, explores the issues of our times through powerful storytelling. FRONTLINE has won an Academy Award® as well as every major journalism and broadcasting award, including 108 Emmy Awards and 34 Peabody Awards. Visit pbs.org/frontline and follow us on  Facebook, Instagram and YouTube to learn more. FRONTLINE is produced at GBH in Boston and is broadcast nationwide on PBS. Funding for FRONTLINE is provided through the support of PBS viewers and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Additional support for FRONTLINE is provided by the Abrams Foundation, Park Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the FRONTLINE Journalism Fund, with major support from Jon and Jo Ann Hagler on behalf of the Jon L. Hagler Foundation, and additional support from Koo and Patricia Yuen.

About The Tow Foundation
The Tow Foundation was established in 1988 by Leonard and Claire Tow as a way to give back to the communities that shaped them. Its five primary impact areas are equity and justice, medicine and public health, arts and culture, higher education, and civic engagement. Grounded in its decades of work in Connecticut and New York and based in New Canaan, CT, the Foundation supports visionary leaders and nonprofit organizations to find and enact innovative solutions to persistent inequality. It works to ensure people can become full participants in their communities, achieve transformative and lasting progress, and develop approaches that allow everyone to reach their full potential.

About Columbia Journalism School
 For 112 years, the Columbia Journalism School has been preparing journalists in programs that stress academic rigor, ethics, journalistic inquiry and professional practice. Founded with a gift from Joseph Pulitzer, the school opened in 1912 and offers Master of Science and Master of Arts degrees, as well as a Master of Science in Data Journalism, a joint Master of Science degree in Computer Science and Journalism, The Knight-Bagehot Fellowship in Economics and Business Journalism and a Doctor of Philosophy in Communications. It is home to the Columbia Journalism Review, and several world-class research centers, including the Brown Institute for Media Innovation, The Tow Center for Digital Journalism, The Ira A. Lipman Center for Journalism and Civil and Human Rights, The Simon and June Li Center for Global Journalism, the Craig Newmark Center for Journalism Ethics and Security, and the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma. The school also administers many of the leading journalism awards, including the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award, the Maria Moors Cabot Prize, the John Chancellor Award, the John B. Oakes Award for Distinguished Environmental Journalism, the Dart Awards for Excellence in Coverage of Trauma, Paul Tobenkin Memorial Award, the Mike Berger Awards and the WERT Prize for Women Business Journalists.