RJI Innovation

Resources, tools and guides

Playbooks & Toolkits

Tools & Platforms

Fellows Projects

Experiments

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

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

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

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

Attention ↹ Action Journey

Creating community-driven journalism that encourages civic engagement

This guide will walk journalists through The Green Line‘s original theory-of-change models, its Attention Funnel and Action Journey.

Help your news publication increase loyalty and engagement among audience members, as well as motivate your audience to take action on issues that matter to their communities.

A partnership project of RJI and The Green Line

Better Hiring Practices Playbook

For early career journalists, it can feel intimidating to enter local news, especially for those who fear a lack of agency amid layoffs, cutbacks and a swiftly changing industry.

It can also feel overwhelming to find the right person to bring into your organization, especially if you’re under pressure to hire quickly.

This playbook will guide you through better hiring (and being hired) practices from a collection of experts.

A partnership project of RJI and CISLM

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!

10 things to build community in your remote or hybrid news organization

From playlists to brainstorming sessions, here are some examples of what's working in news orgs to build community and camaraderie.

Emily Lytle, IIF Editor

How to gain buy-in and knowledge before building a news product

At the Star Tribune, we will be creating a Slackbot to generate audience analytics reports. These reports can better support the newsroom as they learn about their online performance and adjust their content strategies.

Emily Hood, Student Innovation Fellow

Are you ready for source tracking? Here’s a practical playbook to know.

This practical playbook will help you work through if your team and/or organization is ready to start source tracking.

Based on DEIB best practices from Emma Carew Grovum and Sisi Wei, and the Source Diversity Tool research from 78+ journalism orgs by RJI and Chalkbeat.

A project of RJI, Emma Carew Grovum and Sisi Wei

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.

2022 RJI Fellow Amy L. Kovac-Ashley