Mariann Martin is building the Civic Memory Project, a platform that provides an issue-based, shared documentation workspace—allowing newsrooms nationwide to collaborate more effectively and serve their communities with deeper, more nuanced reporting. It will provide a shared record infrastructure that allows outlets to collectively share and organize public documents, interview transcripts, FOIA results, legislative timelines, … Continued

Arya Surowidjojo is a 2026 RJI Professional Innovation Fellow. He and Margaux Maxwell are building a journalist-run cooperative digital publishing platform for independent and creator journalists doing investigative and community reporting across the country. It includes a shared publishing layer that allows journalists to publish on their own domains while relying on collectively governed infrastructure, … Continued

Margaux Maxwell is a 2026 RJI Professional Innovation Fellow. She and Arya Surowidjojo are building a journalist-run cooperative digital publishing platform for independent and creator journalists doing investigative and community reporting across the country. It includes a shared publishing layer that allows journalists to publish on their own domains while relying on collectively governed infrastructure, … Continued

Ashley Woods Branch is a 2026 RJI Professional Innovation Fellow. She and Nina Ignaczak are building an AI-powered platform and tool that will help local newsrooms systematically connect journalism to civic participation by analyzing their articles and generating sidebars showing readers how to take action. The sidebars feature upcoming meetings, comment deadlines, organizations, and officials … Continued

Nina Ignaczak is a 2026 RJI Professional Innovation Fellow. She and Ashley Woods Branch are building an AI-powered platform and tool that will help local newsrooms systematically connect journalism to civic participation by analyzing their articles and generating sidebars showing readers how to take action. The sidebars feature upcoming meetings, comment deadlines, organizations, and officials … Continued

Nikita Roy is a 2026 RJI Professional Innovation Fellow. She is building Newsroom Radar, an AI-powered audience intelligence system that proactively surfaces editorial insights, audience risks, and coverage opportunities. Local newsrooms already have audience data from newsletter signups, survey responses, article comments, donation records and website analytics. Newsroom Radar connects these and unifies them using … Continued