RJI Innovation

Resources, tools and guides

Playbooks & Toolkits

Tools & Platforms

Fellows Projects

Experiments

VERDAD

A free-to-use tool that helps journalists investigate mis/disinformation spread on Spanish language radio.

VERDAD uses state-of-the-art audio transcription and AI translation technologies to capture and process audio streams. This allows for highly accurate, simultaneous monitoring of multiple radio stations across the country.

A project of RJI and Martina Guzmán

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The Defender Handbook

A practical guide to creating a community-centric and digital-first media organization. This handbook is aimed to provide resources and guidance for upcoming BIPOC media professionals, but can be utilized by anyone. We aimed to centralize the wealth of knowledge and traditions from the Radical Black Press, making it easily accessible and serving as a resource for those who wish to innovate and reinvent journalism in a way that best serves our communities.

A project of RJI and The Kansas City Defender

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A toolkit to build sustainable and successful collaborations

This practical toolkit will give you the guidance and resources for a successful collaboration.

Based on interviews with 38 newsrooms and input from 100+, this toolkit provides project manangement, funding and a database to find partners that align with your mission and goals.

A project of RJI and INN

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A toolkit and model that disrupts the way advertisers invest in diverse communities

Our model prioritizes community engagement over clicks, responsiveness over CTRs, and behavioral changes that uplift communities of color while honoring an advertiser’s need for scale. We seek a new approach to quantifying the value of diverse owned-and-led media.

A project of RJI and URL Media

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Agenda Watch

Agenda Watch is a free to use platform that harvests the documents that public agencies must make available, like notices of upcoming discussions (agendas) and records of their meetings (minutes).

Agenda Watch collects those documents on a daily basis from agencies across the country and provides them to journalists.

A partnership project of RJI and Big Local News

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ARENA

This is a toolkit for journalists on how to partner with ham radio operators in the aftermath of a natural disaster. Trained and equipped, ARENA members stand ready to deploy their radio communication skills and resources to ensure communities remain informed when it matters most. ARENA helps reporters to work internally or in tandem with ham radio operators to disseminate critical information and alerts.

2023 RJI Fellow Maria Arce

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Source Diversity Tracking Tool

Chalkbeat and RJI joined forces to build this tool for newsrooms to track the diversity of their sources. Source tracking helps newsrooms know how equitably they are serving their communities.

This free, easy to use tool draws from research of 78+ journalists and organizations on how to track source diversity. Best practices, language and methods.

A partnership project of RJI and Chalkbeat

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Prison Journalism Navigator

The Prison Journalism Navigator provides resources to train and collaborate with your local incarcerated community to produce journalism.

It includes sections on Communicating with Prison Journalists, Contacting People Inside by State, Incarceration Data and Other Resources, A Reporter’s Glossary of Prison Jargon and more.

2021 RJI Fellow Yukari Kane

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The YESEO app

This Slack based app is free to use and installable in any workspace.

This tool utilizes slash commands in Slack to gather actionable SEO information and insights from your articles and content.

Workshop headlines, view SEO data and identify trends. Available in English, French, Spanish and Portuguese.

2022 RJI Fellow Ryan Restivo

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Black News and Views

Black News and Views is a platform built with NABJ to provide news about Black communities by Black journalists.

BNV also aggregates content from Black journalists at a wide range of news partners, including Black-owned media and national media such as the Washington Post, USA Today, Bloomberg, ESPN, NBC and CNBC.

A partnership project of RJI and NABJ

Playbooks & Toolkits

Tools & Platforms

Fellows Projects

Experiments

Innovation in Focus is a series experimenting with new tech, tools and methods of storytelling for journalism. We interview experts, test ideas and provide our findings on a different topic each month.

Sign up for the Innovation in Focus Newsletter to get the monthly delivery of experiments in your inbox.

🧰 Partnership projects

💡 Do you have an idea that addresses a current gap, challenge or need in journalism? Pitch your idea for a partnership project with us!

Crafting an engaging news quiz: “Help people feel that there is a human heart beating behind the in-depth news”

As the Innovation in Focus team experimented with strategies and tools for creating news quizzes, we spoke with Holznagel to hear what he’s learned while writing the widely-shared quizzes for The Conversation.

Emily Lytle, IIF Editor

Reaching multilingual communities starts with listening and collaboration

The Innovation in Focus team spoke with Abdullahi to learn about her experience engaging multilingual communities and any guidance she could offer for community news organizations looking to translate news stories into different languages.

Emily Lytle, IIF Editor