Reynolds Journalism Institute awards more than $13,000 to top three collegiate teams in nationwide Student Innovation Competition
COLUMBIA, Mo. (April 6, 2023) — The Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute today announced the winners of the RJI Student Innovation Competition, awarding prizes of $10,000, $2,500 and $1,000 to three collegiate teams who came up with the best practical, actionable plans to address a local need in their community through service journalism.
“Eight teams from around the country made it to our final round by not only coming up with an innovative approach, but also crafting a plan to try out with a local news organization,” said Randy Picht, executive director of RJI. “Teams could create anything — a game, an app, an event — that they thought would move the needle for their community.”
The top prize and $10,000 went to Team De Veras, a group of four students from the University of Missouri who worked with the Missouri Independent to produce content accessible to the Latino community in Columbia and surrounding areas, a community that sometimes lacks access to news and information due to language barriers.
“People would reach out to us and say, ‘Hey, what can I do if I need help with this medical issue?’ and we would be able to send them a post — we would have that resource for them, which was really awesome,” said senior Cristal Sanchez of Team De Veras. The other team members were seniors Erik Galicia and Lauren Hubbard and graduate student Sharon Quintana Ortiz.
The top prize and $10,000 went to Team De Veras, a group of four students from the University of Missouri who worked with the Missouri Independent to produce content accessible to the Latino community in Columbia and surrounding areas.
The second and third prizes went to Team Tipbot of Stanford University and Team Diamondgigs of the University of Maryland, respectively. Tipbot created an interactive, news-gathering chatbot in an effort to modernize news tiplines, while Diamondgigs built an online, hyperlocal job board for their local campus community in College Park, Maryland.
The projects were judged by an independent team of working journalists and entrepreneurs who cover diverse communities and civic life for publications in Los Angeles, New York City and Minnesota. Their many years of combined experience went into a decision that potentially has further-reaching consequences than a monetary award: last year’s winner, Dana Cassidy, went on to an internship at the Washington Post that eventually became a full-time job at the newspaper.
“Our judges had a difficult task in choosing the top three projects because each team had merit, from how they implemented their ideas to how they captured and considered voices from the communities they served,” said Kat Duncan, who oversaw the competition as director of innovation at RJI. “Every team has a lot to be proud of for the work they put into creatively addressing community needs with service journalism.”
In a first for the competition, the judges decided that there were too many well-crafted projects to award only three prizes. Two teams — Team Bulletin Board and Team Fat Fish, both of the University of Missouri — received the first-ever Honorable Mention distinctions.
“I was really impressed with the amount of thoughtfulness and research that went into each project,” said judge Andrea Pineda-Salgado, a community reporter at Epicenter NYC. “…I think that each of these projects has a sustainable future ahead of them, and I really hope the students continue to work on them.”
The judges — also including Dana Amihere, founder and executive editor of AfroLA, and Andrew Hazzard, a staff reporter for Sahan Journal — based their evaluations on factors such as the origins of the idea, its implementation and the potential for future sustainability. To learn more about the teams and judges in this year’s competition, read more about them here.
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