Ten teams of college students from around the country have been selected as finalists in the Reynolds Journalism Institute’s 2026 Student Innovation Competition. The teams will work to develop the best collaborative project between a local newsroom and local influencers, reflecting the ever-increasing importance of social media and trusted community voices in the local news ecosystem.

“Building the future of community journalism means adapting to meet audiences where they are, which is what this year’s competition is all about,” said Randy Picht, executive director of RJI. “It’s clear from the teams’ proposals that these students have a passion for finding new, practical solutions that bridge gaps between audiences and news organizations, and I can’t wait to see their bold ideas become reality.”

The open-source projects will be tested in local newsrooms near where each team is based. In April, an independent panel of industry experts will pick the top three teams, including the first place winner taking home the grand prize of $10,000. Second and third place teams will win $2,500 and $1,000, respectively.

Meet the judges

Team Alestle Influencer Amplification Project

Solomon Omondi, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville

Solomon Omondi will help The Alestle, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville’s student-run newspaper, to create brief videos and Q&As in partnership with influential peers and class leaders.

“The goal is to turn quick social media discoveries into well-informed actions,” Omondi wrote in his application. “…By working with campus influencers, we can maintain accurate information while reaching more students and building stronger relationships.”

Omondi plans to encourage audience interactivity with polls and direct messages to help the Alestle connect in concrete ways with its readers.

Team Block Club Chicago

Jake Cox and Riley Moulton, DePaul University

Jake Cox and Riley Moulton will work with Block Club Chicago, a nonprofit newsroom delivering hyperlocal coverage of Chicago’s neighborhoods. In collaboration with immigration lawyers and community groups, the outlet will share updates on immigration issues and migrant communities in the city in the form of social media videos and a newsletter.

“By partnering with established community voices who already have strong digital reach and credibility, Block Club can meet audiences where they are, build trust through collaboration and transform awareness into action,” the team wrote.

As current interns at Block Club Chicago, Cox and Moulton will be able to guide the project’s implementation and track its success through metrics and audience feedback, culminating in a report for the news organization that will help it conduct similar collaborations in the future.

Team The Feed

Jazmin Goodwin, Arizona State University

Jazmin Goodwin will collaborate with The State Press, Arizona State University’s student-run news website, to create a partnership that allows both journalists and influencers to learn from each other.

Influencers will co-produce short-form video content for social media that adheres to ethics and content guidelines, while student journalists at The State Press will undergo training to combine community-driven storytelling with platform-native techniques influencers use to maximize engagement.

“We are building the first creator newsroom inside student media because student newsrooms are uniquely positioned to lead the next wave of journalism,” the team wrote. “This pilot empowers student media to embrace influencer-era collaboration now instead of playing catch-up later.”

At the conclusion of the project, the team will put together a toolkit to help other newsrooms replicate the collaboration.

Team Geek Squad

Chloe Koster, University of Missouri

Chloe Koster will develop “ReportID,” a platform where journalists and influencers can work together to share community news. The platform would place a premium on trustworthy information, using a verification rating system to boost posts that contain supporting evidence and verifiable information. Influencers who have accrued credibility on the platform through repeated posts of trustworthy information would also see greater visibility on their posts.

Journalists at KOMU-TV, the Missouri School of Journalism’s NBC affiliate, can then use the posts to inform or inspire stories that will resonate with digitally engaged audiences.

“Regardless of how much credibility a news influencer has acquired on the app, there will always be a line between influencers and professionally trained journalists,” Koster wrote. “Professional journalists can use citizen journalism and their judgment to decide which stories are relevant and credible enough to be transformed into traditional journalism.”

Team MIN

Mia Nuñez, University of Southern California

Mia Nuñez will work with LAist — a nonprofit, multiplatform newsroom serving Southern California that includes the largest NPR-member station in Los Angeles — to host monthly “journalism bootcamps” designed to help influencers deliver information more ethically and factually to their audiences.

“The goal…is not to make influencers become journalists but to give influencers who want to make an impact in their community the tools to do so,” Nuñez wrote. “The workshops will allow influencers to have more ethical practices and hopefully inspire other influencers to use their content in the same ways.”

Nuñez will analyze the influencers’ content after the bootcamps to determine the impact of training in research methods, information verification, ethical guidelines and more.

Team The News Checkers

David Cheung and Marina Roman, Columbia University

David Cheung and Marina Roman will develop the “News Check” app, which will allow users to fact check information in social media posts. The app will link to relevant reporting from a trusted news source, helping influencers, journalists and the public ensure that facts win out over misinformation.

The team plans to partner with New York-based news organizations like Documented, Gothamist and City Limits to test the app.

“In a world where influencers are becoming the main medium people get their news and information from, it is now more important than ever to ensure that the content out there is based on credible reporting, factual evidence, contextualized research, and relevant data to avoid the spread of misinformation,” the team wrote.

The app will check social media posts against reporting in 41 news sources ranked as the most fact-based and unbiased news organizations in the Ad Fontes Media Chart.

Team The Newsfluencer Academy

Taylor Nicole Price, Lizbeth Solorzano, Maricruz Villalobos and Rosaura Wardsworth, University of Southern California

This team will create a curriculum — “From Desk to Feed” — designed to train journalists in social media content creation, audience engagement, ethics and personal branding. Partnering with the Los Angeles Sentinel, one of the oldest and largest Black newspapers in the country, the team hopes the curriculum will help the newspaper better incorporate social media video production into its digital strategy.

“This presents a unique opportunity to…help one of the nation’s most historic Black newspapers expand its reach, strengthen community engagement and position itself for long-term sustainability in a rapidly evolving media landscape,” the team wrote.

The project will end with the launch of a public version of the training and a showcase featuring a few examples of the influencer-style content that arose from the training.   

Team News Dawgs

Shad McMillan and Makenna Reavis, University of Georgia

Shad McMillan and Makenna Reavis will develop a website for WSB-TV, an ABC affiliate news station in Atlanta, that will host a training program for influencers. The program, known as “Bridge,” will give influencers an overview of the station’s code of ethics and guidelines around the production of news content, and successfully completing the program will enable the use of an official WSB-TV watermark in social media content.

“This is an idea that can be recreated and replicated for any other newsroom,” the team wrote. “They can redesign the learnings and include their own code of ethics, or leave it as is and obtain access to the network of creators who go through and complete the training.”

The team hopes Bridge will offer value to the newsroom and influencers alike, offering influencers an endorsement of the quality and veracity of their content while allowing WSB-TV enhanced access to younger audiences who rely on influencers for their news.

Team OpenMissouri

Wei He, University of Missouri

Wei He will build a website with the Columbia Missourian — the Missouri School of Journalism’s community newspaper — that uses AI to make Sunshine Law records requests more user-friendly for influencers. One goal is to encourage non-journalists to make use of records requests to obtain more factual information rather than resorting to rumors and misinformation. At the same time, the AI-assisted formatting of Sunshine Law requests will help journalists request records more efficiently.

Missourian staff will also be able to see patterns in records requests made by non-journalists.

“This system not only empowers residents to better exercise their right to public information but also helps journalists identify emerging issues that matter to community influencers, creating a continuous feedback loop between public interest, transparency of the public records and newsroom action,” He wrote.

He hopes the project will help lower the barrier of entry for influencers and the public when it comes to records requests, which often lack concrete means of enforcement and are governed by laws that vary from state to state.  

Team Spread

Lauren Harris and Jake Klingensmith, Columbia University

Lauren Harris and Jake Klingensmith will work with the Brooklyn Eagle, which serves Brooklyn residents with in-depth reporting. Leveraging the TikTok Shop, an internal TikTok marketplace that connects brands with creators, the team plans to help the Brooklyn Eagle market its content through creators on the platform.

“This system also offers a way for [TikTok] creators producing news content to build relationships with established newsrooms,” the team wrote. “This relationship promotes the newsroom’s reporting while also bolstering the quality and legitimacy of the news influencer’s content.”

The project aligns with increased emphasis in recent years on news product development, an audience-focused approach to building a sustainable and engaged newsroom.

For more information about the competition, follow along on rjionline.org for updates at the teams build and test their projects.

“This year’s challenge is exciting because the finalists are going to get to learn from and work with trusted community leaders outside newsrooms, whether those people are in vertical spaces or working at the local food bank or a block captain in their neighborhood,” said Kat Duncan, director of innovation at RJI. “They will get to see how information is communicated and utilized in different methods that journalism can adapt and grow from.” 

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Cite this article

Fitzgerald, Austin (2025, Nov. 5). Finalists named in 2026 Student Innovation Competition. Reynolds Journalism Institute. Retrieved from: https://rjionline.org/news/finalists-named-in-2026-student-innovation-competition/