RJI Partnership projects are collaborations with organizations and individuals to build guides, resources, tools and programs that tackle current needs, challenges and gaps in journalism. These resources need to be actionable, useful, free to utilize and open source. We aim to build resources that are beneficial to community-centered small and medium newsrooms and journalists.

These partnership projects are collaborative by design. Project partners meet weekly with RJI to create resources that directly address newsroom and journalism challenges. All costs of the project are shared between RJI and the partner.

RJI support for partnership projects include: 

Project management: 

• Keep the project on schedule, progressing and hitting deadlines
• Schedule and run weekly project working sessions 
• Help identify action items, assign responsibility for them and send out wrap-ups after meetings to ensure we are all on the same page and communicating clearly
• Help identify potential hurdles to tackle them before they become problems
• Keep the project within mutually agreed upon budget 
• Provide a structure for the project from ideation to promotion and impact reports which help the project not only be built, but successful and impactful

Partnership: 

• Collaborate on research, communications, interviews, design etc; i.e. all work for the project are joint tasks 
• Share cost of project with partner to help cover expenses such as development, design, research, promotions and event building
• Facilitate access to RJI resources + work with Mizzou students, staff and faculty

Interested in collaborating with us? Apply at bit.ly/RJIPartnership

Questions? Email Innovation Project Manager Sriya Reddy: sreddy@rjionline.org

Check out our innovation hub which has our tools, platforms and guides built through past partnership projects: bit.ly/innovrji

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Partnership projects launched this year: 

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Frequently asked questions: 

What types of projects do you look for? 

RJI Partnerships are for ideas that address a gap or challenge in journalism. Our primary audience is small to medium sized newsrooms in the United States. Projects can be anything from tools that integrate into a newsroom’s workflow, like the Source Auditing Tool, to a workshop series such as our Report like an Anthropologist or Vertical Storytelling workshop. 

Check out our Innovation hub for examples of past partnership projects. 

What is the difference between partnerships and fellowships?

RJI Fellowships are for more independent projects that can be built within the 8-month time period using the given budget. These projects are good for those with a clear vision for their project, timeline, and budget who just need to meet once a month to check-in and want to work within a cohort of Fellows. 

Partnerships are often projects that don’t squarely fit into the parameters of the fellowships on time, support or budget needs. RJI provides project management and shares project tasks such as research, interviews, design and editing. These projects are good for those who want to collaborate with and receive more one-on-one support from RJI. 

Are RJI Partnerships open to those outside of the United States?

Yes, we work with international partners. The main consideration is that the project end result is also useful to US newsrooms in addition to the international communities we partner with.