MTC @ Medill
Executive Fellowship Program
A yearlong executive program built around solving your biggest challenge
Most executive leadership programs give you a curriculum and hope something changes when you return to work.
The Media Transformation Challenge Program turns that model around. MTC is built around your real, urgent, measurable performance challenge inside your organization. Fellows don’t merely study strategy, innovation, leadership, audience growth, business models or organizational change. They apply first-in-class tools directly to one of the most important challenges they are already responsible for solving.
Since 2007, nearly 450 senior media leaders have used MTC to deliver measurable results, strengthen their leadership, build lasting professional relationships and drive meaningful change across journalism and media.
$32,500
Overview
- Identify and pursue a high-stakes organizational challenge with direct business and audience implications.
- Work closely with experienced coaches and a trusted peer cohort to test ideas, solve problems, and sustain momentum.
- Apply practical tools for strategy, innovation, organizational change, and leadership directly to your work.
- Build the habits, systems, and leadership capacity needed to drive change beyond the program itself.
- Participate in four in-person convenings and ongoing virtual working sessions throughout the year.
- Join a lifelong alumni network of nearly 450 leaders across journalism and media.
Enrolling five or more people?
Check out MTC Services.
How is MTC @ Medill different?
MTC’s core belief is simple: the best way to build leadership and organizational capacity is through the pursuit of real-world, transformational performance challenges.
MTC Executive Director Charlie Baum facilitated group work during an MTC session at Poynter in September 2022.
Each Fellow selects a challenge with direct business, audience, editorial, sustainability or organizational implications. That challenge becomes the yearlong case study for the program. Everything else, including tools, coaching, curriculum, peer accountability and the alumni network, is designed to increase the odds of meaningful progress.
MTC’s performance-driven, challenge-centric approach, pioneered by Doug Smith, Charlie Baum and coaching colleagues, is unique in the media industry. It gives Fellows a common language, practical tools, disciplined habits and a trusted community they can use throughout their careers.
Many now-common journalism innovations either began or accelerated through the program, including NPR’s Code Switch, CIR’s Reveal, the News Revenue Hub, NAHJ’s Palabra, Report for the World, ABC News’ use of one-person bureaus, Columbia Global Reports, the AP Video Hub, the Pulitzer Center’s education arm, Hearken, The NewStart Alliance, Subtext, News Product Alliance, El Tímpano and others.
The MTC value proposition:
Increasing the odds
MTC helps Fellows increase the odds of success on the challenges they and their organizations most need to achieve.
Fellows begin by clarifying a “from/to” performance challenge, identifying early wins, and testing real-world action within weeks of the opening session. Those early wins build insight, momentum and confidence for larger-scale change.
Throughout the year, Fellows move through a design/do loop: designing smarter approaches while also doing the work required to produce measurable outcomes. Additional tools and concepts are introduced in absorbable, just-in-time modules, aligned to each Fellow’s progress on the S-curve of change.
By the end of the year, Fellows leave with more than a completed program. They leave with a stronger leadership practice, a reusable set of adaptive tools, a clearer sense of how to move complex work forward, and a lifelong community of peers and alumni.
2024 Fellow Fisnik Abrashi, Director of Global Customer Engagement for the Associated Press, presents his performance challenge update.
What Fellows Learn to Do
With guidance from experienced coaches and deep engagement with a trusted peer cohort, Fellows learn how to:
Apply repeatable tools and frameworks to drive performance, innovation and organizational change.
Build leadership capacity in real time by leading a high-stakes challenge inside their organization.
Use practical approaches to strategy, audience growth, innovation, racial equity and personal leadership.
Move beyond theory and planning to measurable outcomes and sustained organizational impact.
Lead adaptive change with greater clarity, resilience and confidence amid industry disruption.
Coaching & Peer Support
Each Fellow receives individualized coaching from experienced professionals deeply grounded in performance-driven change. Coaches help Fellows select and refine their challenge, apply MTC tools, identify obstacles, build momentum, and strengthen their leadership effectiveness.
Coaches also serve as confidantes and connectors, helping Fellows draw on the experience of the broader MTC alumni network and the knowledge of peers confronting similar challenges.
Peer support is central to the program. Fellows work in small groups, share progress, offer feedback and hold one another accountable. The cohort becomes a trusted circle of collaborators during the year, and often long after the program ends.
Coaches can:
Fellows from the Class of 2024 hike above Park City, Utah.
Help Fellows select the most appropriate performance challenge for their MTC experience.
Offer just-in-time assistance with the program tools throughout the year, geared to S-curve progress.
Serve as confidantes regarding Fellows’ own leadership style and effectiveness.
Hold participants accountable for their commitment to meaningful results and personal learning. — well beyond what could be achieved without the program.
Connect Fellows to the MTC alumni network and alumni of similar performance-driven programs.
How and When the Fellowship Unfolds
MTC Fellows meet five times over the course of the Fellowship. 2027 sessions are tentatively scheduled to take place January 10-15 and March 15–19 at The Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida; June 14–17 and September 13–16 on Northwestern’s campus, and wrap up January 8–10, 2028 again at Poynter.
Between sessions, Fellows complete assignments designed to drive progress against their performance challenges. They also participate in coaching calls, virtual small-group sessions and optional pop-up sessions on specific topics.
Poynter president and MTC alum Neil Brown (center) talked with his MTC coach Karen Gordon (left) and executive director Charlie Baum (right) during the an MTC happy hour at Poynter in 2022.
January: Fellows learn MTC’s core tools and language, apply them to their initial challenge, and identify early wins.
March: Fellows debrief early wins, sharpen their performance challenge, and build momentum with just-in-time strategy and leadership tools.
June: Fellows share progress, confront obstacles, deepen peer problem-solving, and identify the “crux” required for continued success.
September: Fellows consolidate progress, connect the tools more fully, refine their approach, and begin looking toward their next challenge.
January: Fellows present results and insights, receive their certificate, and name their next performance challenge.
Applications are open for the 2027 Media Transformation Challenge Program.
Apply now to bring your most important challenge to MTC.
FAQ
Executive Fellowship
How is MTC different?
Most programs focus on curriculum. MTC focuses on performance. Fellows work on an urgent organizational challenge with coaching, tools, peer support and accountability throughout the year.
What is a performance challenge?
A concrete, outcome-based business, audience, editorial, sustainability or organizational challenge that matters deeply to your enterprise. It is not a pitch, idea or side project.
What does it cost?
Tuition is $32,500, including coaching, in-person and virtual sessions, MTC tools, faculty access and the alumni network. Travel and lodging are additional.
What coaching is provided?
Fellows receive individualized coaching from experienced leaders in journalism, strategy, innovation, racial equity, organizational change and leadership.