Best practices
Build a real-time dataviz bot (for free!)
When it’s not busy playing host to cryptocurrency scams, Twitter remains a widely adopted platform for the distribution of bite-sized information. For that reason alone, it’s well-suited to sharing real-time data—especially via charts and graphics.
Getting started as an independent journalist
Hannah Yoon, independent visual journalist, Mason Trinca, documentary and editorial photojournalist, Sarah Fritsche, independent food writer and editor, and Maddie McGarvey, independent photographer, joined our discussion on how to succeed as an independent journalist. We talked about healthcare, building your client base, making time for personal projects, invoicing & contracts, how to prepare for slow months … Continued
Facing the pressure to unpublish
This project represents my commitment to helping the industry solve a problem that editors say is rising in importance: how to respond to requests by members of the public to “unpublish”—typically meaning deleting or significantly altering—online news content that identifies them in a way that they would rather forget. Often, but not always, the request … Continued
The Missouri Info Corps COVID-19 widget
What is the COVID-19 widget? And why should I want it on my news site? This widget is a free and easy way for your news organization to display Missouri Info Corps COVID-19 stories on your news site. If your news organization has taken a hit in resources and reporters over the past few months, this … Continued
Redefining local journalism: What is news?
Since the advent of the Internet, many people have increasingly wondered: What is “news” in a universe of infinite information? What is a journalist’s role when anyone can publish a story and report the “Truth”? David Caswell, Executive Product Manager of BBC News Labs, asks the most urgent question of all: “Does society still need news publishers … Continued
5 lessons from creating my first AMP story
Caroline Watkins is the RJI Student Innovation Fellow at the Chatham News + Record in North Carolina. This summer our student fellows will be sharing dispatches from their fellowships in newsrooms across the country as a part of Innovation in Focus. As part of my RJI Student Innovation Fellowship, I created my first-ever AMP story for The Chatham News + Record. I … Continued
RJI Fellowship to help newsrooms handle unpublishing requests ethically and practically
Fellow pursued doctorate in pledge to help news organizations, including one she once worked for, tackle issues related to unpublishing
We’re meeting our audience where they are. Now what?
Early on in our existence we realized we were facing a challenge. Our reporting was about city, state and federal immigration related policies and how they were failing the New York residents they were aiming to serve. However, our metrics told us our stories were not always reaching the people the stories were about. I … Continued
Credibility and trust: A project to prove value of strong photojournalism
Every day, you swim through a sea of visual junk on the internet — selfies and mug shots and stock photos that could easily be interchangeable. Then, you come across a photo that resonates. It’s a moment captured with rare perspective. Maybe it’s a video explaining something you didn’t know about your community—or a photo … Continued
The promise of environmental data journalism
Over the course of this RJI fellowship, I’m working with the nonprofit environmental magazine Grist to think through what it’d mean to build out a national environmental data-journalism unit—and, in turn, to take what we learn at Grist and translate these lessons into guides for other small or nonprofit newsrooms that might find themselves interested in similar work.