Mike Fancher devoted his fellowship to the question, “What is the Journalist’s Creed for the 21st Century?” His research explored how shifting elements, such as the relationship between journalists and the public, affect the values and principles of journalists today and in the future.

Our research is giving us valuable insights into their current behaviors and the ability to shape news and media products that will be appealing to young audiences and thus important to citizen civic knowledge and participation.

Densmore’s “Information Valet Project” at RJI starts from a premise that news organizations must cultivate deeper, one-on-one trust relationships with consumers as stewards of their privacy and curators of their information needs. From this premise, Densmore proposes the creation of a multi-industry, shared-user network for trust, identity and information commerce. Densmore’s paper: “From Paper to Persona,” calls for creation of an independent, public-benefit Information Trust Association initiative to create the network marketplace framework.

The intended purpose of the annual RJI Mobile Media News Consumption Surveys is to gain insights into who uses mobile media and how their uses for news may change over time.

Connor Sheets, statewide investigative reporter for AL.com, will create, implement and evaluate techniques that recognize, train and engage members of Alabama communities in pitching stories and concepts they believe should be part of the mainstream news agenda. He will lead a series of targeted seminars intended to generate a base of news “deputies” to serve … Continued

Michael Morisy, co-founder of MuckRock, will improve and deploy his nonprofit’s latest tool, MuckRock Assignments. It’s a simple, re-usable crowdsourcing platform that helps newsrooms manage user submissions while helping turn raw documents into clean data sets.

Jarrad Henderson chairs the Visual Task Force for the National Association of Black Journalists. During the fellowship he will develop a digital resource guide offering best practices, ethical considerations and tools for visual journalists bridging the gap between editorial video and documentary filmmaking.

Working with teachers, RJI’s network of news experts and the iCivics team, Kelly Whitney will develop classroom tools to help high school students find reliable, journalistically sound information when conducting online research.

Thomas Seymat is an immersive journalism and VR editor at Euronews in France. While in residence at RJI, he will develop a tool to gather research on how audiences respond to 360 videos and other VR content. This information will allow news organizations to improve their immersive stories and advertisers to monetize this type of content more effectively.

Nicolette Gendron, a freelance writer and strategist at The New York Times, will evaluate the barriers to news access at small-town high schools while in residence at the Missouri School of Journalism.