Applications for 2024-2025 RJI Fellowships, during which the fellows will create and test open source tools and resources that journalists and newsrooms can put to practical use, will close on Feb. 4.

Each fellow receives a $25,000 stipend over the course of the 8-month fellowship, which can be completed remotely as an individual or as an “institutional fellow” on behalf of a company or institution. A residential fellowship is also available, which provides up to $100,000 for a fellow to work on-site at RJI in Columbia, Missouri, and collaborate with staff, students and faculty.

Past fellows have built a Slack-based SEO tool, a toolkit to work with incarcerated communities, a real estate development tracker and a guide to starting a community-based publication, to name only a few. All of these and many more are easily accessible on the RJI Innovation Hub.

“RJI Fellows create projects that are ready to use in newsrooms and in journalists’ workflows as soon as they are released,” said Randy Picht, executive director of RJI. “If you want to take an idea beyond theory and actually see it implemented for the benefit of the industry, this is a fantastic opportunity.”

In addition to building their projects, RJI Fellows also post updates to rjionline.org throughout the process to offer insightful commentary on their processes and help other journalists and organizations implement similar projects. The current 2023-2024 class of fellows is in the thick of that process, with all of their updates to date available here.

“The results of this fellowship program over the years speak for themselves — every year, the fellows find important new challenges to tackle,” said Kat Duncan, director of innovation for RJI. “I’m excited to see which projects stand out in the coming year.”

Learn more about the RJI Fellowship and apply here.