RJI Innovation

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.

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.

College Media Playbook

Helping student newsrooms be more efficient, sustainable and innovative

We researched three topics: finding sustainable sources of funding, continuing progress through high staff turnover and divesting from print. This playbook includes examples, guidance, templates and tips for addressing these challenges.

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.

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.