A journalist with half a million TikTok followers uses prize money to provide AI tools and mentorship to 14 reporters, fulfilling her pledge to help women journalists reach younger audiences and combat misinformation
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14 UK-based journalists will receive direct support to combat online misinformation, delivering on a trailblazing journalist's promise to pay forward her success.
The Sophiana x Women in Journalism Fellowship represents the first cross-publisher initiatives of its kind in the UK, coming as major US newsrooms increasingly invest in dedicated content coaching roles.
The Wall Street Journal recently advertised for a talent coach to train reporters in content creation, while the Washington Post has hired similar positions lately. The Times appointed Nabihah Parkar as head of TikTok earlier this year.
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Sophia Smith Galer is an award-winning journalist and a successful content creator, with 560k followers on TikTok and 332k on Instagram. When she won the 2024 Georgina Henry Award for innovation, she pledged to use the prize money to help other women journalists combat online disinformation with virality and technology.
She developed Sophiana, an AI-powered scriptwriting and teleprompter tool that converts written reporting into social video-ready scripts, based on her proven methods. She recently claimed her tool helped a BBC documentary increase its views tenfold by honing its hook writing and retention scripting.
Smith Galer was picked as a research fellow at Brown University in 2022 to study the threat of online misinformation. Her research on British teenagers (aged 14-18) revealed alarming rates of media illiteracy: nearly four in five couldn't identify how creators might promote harm. She developed educational programmes with encouraging results - for instance, after completing the programme, 85 per cent of teenagers could identify harmful content patterns (up from 22 per cent).
She told Journalism.co.uk at the time that news outlets were not equipped to deal with the problem and needed to invest in meeting young audiences on the social platforms where they are.
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The Sophiana x Women in Journalism Fellowship delivers on her initial promise. The six-month programme will provide journalists with access to Sophiana and one-on-one mentorship.
Recipients span a diverse range of organisations and career stages, from trainee reporters at local publications to senior correspondents at national broadcasters. The cohort includes journalists from The Guardian, BBC, The Telegraph, LBC, and STV News, alongside freelance reporters and specialists from business publication Sifted and Vogue Business.
Winners were chosen based on their reporting credentials and commitment to countering misinformation while expanding their journalism's digital reach.
For Smith Galer, who is delivering the programme pro bono, the fellowship addresses a gap in professional development for journalists working in digital formats.
"It feels good and it's important to me," Smith Galer told Journalism.co.uk via email.
"I benefited a lot from mentorships in the past, like through the John Schofield Trust and the TV Foundation. Social media journalism and independent content creation don't quite have the same infrastructure or systems supporting anything similar - hopefully this fellowship can be a start."
The programme officially begins in September 2025, with participants set to learn techniques for transforming their reporting expertise into explainer videos designed for social media audiences.
