RJI Innovation

Freelancing Quick-Start Guide

Data Sonification Toolkit

Algorithmic Literacy for Journalists

This resource helps develop journalists’ ability to understand the functions, consequences, and ethics of algorithms in a digital age. A core focus of the resource is helping independent journalists and newsrooms whose digital content has been subject to shadowbanning, demonetization, and other forms of online speech filtering that restrict them from reaching a wider audience.

Article as Homepage Toolkit

This resource helps local news publishers rethink the article page to better serve today’s audiences and better meet business needs. The system of design helps you present reporting in rich, multimedia formats, provide audiences with the utility once held in homepages, and include pathways to collect first party data and encourage conversions to deeper forms of support.

Excellence.is

Excellence.is, a tool to help news leaders build better strategic operations for independent news organizations by identifying needs and gaps in their current structure and process.

Visual Toolkit

The toolkit includes sample contracts (photographer, videographer and illustrator databases, ethical stock resources, a list of reputable resources on ethics, what information to include for assignments and examples of opportunities for using visuals to promote newsroom engagement and fundraising.

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.

A bilingual guide for journalists covering Latino and Spanish-speaking communities

A toolkit to combat mis and disinformation affecting these communities in the United States, providing 17 practical tools and methods to combat misinformation and reduce information deserts affecting these communities.

Getting Started with Sensitivity Professionals toolkit

A toolkit to assist newsrooms in sourcing, selecting, compensating, and working with editors whose responsibility is to prevent the marginalization of specific communities and identities.

Community Sports Reporting playbook

A local sports community engagement guide that provides step by step instructions for newsrooms to work with community reporters through SMS communication to produce high-value high school and community league sports coverage for newsrooms with limited resources.

The Pop-Up Community Newsroom: A practical guide

A local sports community engagement guide that provides step by step instructions for newsrooms to work with community reporters through SMS communication to produce high-value high school and community league sports coverage for newsrooms with limited resources.

How to Build a Browser Extension for Your Newsroom’s Style Guide

A how-to guide that shows you how to build your own chrome extension version of your style guide including their open source code and step by step directions.

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.

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.

Youth Media Starter Guide

A toolkit for public radio newsrooms ready to invest in youth media programs.

We aim to support newsrooms as they create or expand youth media programs to train and invest in the next generation of journalists, as well as engage future listeners, leaders, and supporters of public media.

Data Unit Guide

This is DUG, an organizational guide to data journalism for small-to-medium and non-profit newsrooms.

Does your newsroom want to build a data team? You've come to the right place. DUG will guide you through getting started, fundraising, tech, tools and more.

Journalism Source of Safety

Journalism Source of Safety (J-SOS) is an online toolkit that offers trauma-informed and identity-aware journalist safety checklists, tips, gear advice, and other necessary security information for all journalists, including freelancers and students, with an emphasis on equity and ethics.

Disability Matters

A toolkit for newsrooms to better serve the disability community.

This toolkit was produced as a starting point for journalists or news organizations looking to improve coverage of disability and the accessibility of news products.

The first half of this toolkit is focused on improving coverage of disability. The second half is focused on making journalism more accessible.

News Executive Leadership Transition Guide

Get started with this guide to start your succession planning and be ready for leadership transitions.

This planning guide was created for small, independent local nonprofit and for-profit news organizations to help them grow into mature, thriving businesses that serve their communities and transition gracefully past their founding, startup stage.

How to turn private conversations into public resources through community consent

Many times, it is only because a conversation was off the record, that we are able to learn the most — and after learning it, we realize that the broader community could benefit from learning it too.

So how do we share knowledge from conversations we all agreed would be private, in a way that builds more trust instead of tearing it down? This guide shares one possible process.

Guide: Build a local real estate development news app with airtable

This guide will show you how to build a reader engagement-fueled news app to track and map local real estate development. It is hosted on a blank, open-source template site you will be able to customize to build a tracker for your city, using open-source or freemium tools.

It is designed for small, local news publishers with limited resources who want to bootstrap a news app, but anyone is welcome to try it out. Read the guide to learn how and get started.

Solutions Journalism Toolkit

If the missing parts of the public conversation include “What could be done about this? Who is doing a better job handling this problem?” then it’s a good candidate for a solutions journalism piece.

This toolkit will help you learn the basics of solutions journalism and how to utilize it in your newsroom for the benefit of the communities you serve.

The Fundamedios Paygap Toolkit

A toolkit for Latina journalists and training sessions to reduce the pay gap.

Through eight months of research we found that latino journalists do the same job as their white peers with fewer resources, and less pay. In addition, the intersectionality of race and gender results in cumulative discrimination against female journalists who are of Latino origin, who earn on average 37% less than their white male peers. To address this issue, Fundamedios created a toolkit to train journalists to improve their negotiation skills.