Eden Dinneen is the new Innovation in Focus Editor at the Missouri School of Journalism’s Reynolds Journalism Institute. Starting July 1, she will collaborate with the School’s Missouri News Network of professional newsrooms and other local news organizations around the country, conducting short-term experiments for the Innovation in Focus series designed to address challenges facing the community news industry.

Dinneen comes to RJI from The Kansas City Star, where she served as an audience development strategist in her hometown of Kansas City.

“I’m thrilled to welcome Eden to RJI, and I can’t wait to see her help newsrooms develop tools and strategies that contribute to successful, sustainable community news,” said Randy Picht, executive director of RJI.

Since earning her journalism degree from Kansas State University in 2023, Dinneen has made a career of collaboration across a variety of mediums and locales. She served as an audio and visual producer with Common Ground Berlin in Germany for more than a year in addition to other roles at German marketing organizations, and in her time as a freelance journalist she has worked with both international and local organizations to tell meaningful stories.

With The Kansas City Star, she worked to implement social-first and newsletter strategies while also creating opportunities for journalists and audiences to connect in person. She started a trivia night that allowed reporters to meet community members in a fun and relaxed setting, complete with prizes contributed by The Star.

“My passion is to strengthen and deepen connections with communities. Journalists aren’t behind this invisible wall — they’re part of a community, and they’re people you can have a dialogue with.

Eden Dinneen

“My passion is to strengthen and deepen connections with communities,” Dinneen said. “Journalists aren’t behind this invisible wall — they’re part of a community, and they’re people you can have a dialogue with. So I’ve always approached my work in that more conversational, collaborative way, and I’m so excited to do that at RJI.”

Innovation in Focus regularly features new open-source experiments, expert interviews and other actionable guidance drawn from real-world testing and experience. Together with a collection of fellowships, workshops and other programs, it’s a key part of RJI’s Innovation Team.  

“I’m thrilled to have Eden joining the Innovation Team,” said Kat Duncan, director of innovation at RJI. “Her background in community-centered engagement and passion for experiential learning makes her a great fit for RJI’s Innovation in Focus series. I am looking forward to the new ideas and opportunities she brings to collaborations with news partners and students.”

Having worked at organizations large and small, Dinneen also has insights into how newsrooms with shoestring budgets and little time to spare can still incorporate innovation and experimentation into their workflows.

“Doing an innovative project doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to be a huge time commitment; there are projects and trials we can do that can be implemented into the work we’re doing every day,” Dinneen said. “Whether you’re launching a newsletter or doing a community trivia night, can you partner with another local organization? Are there responsibilities that can be shared?

“And sometimes it’s less about adding more onto our plates and more about doing a thing better than we were before. I’m excited to help newsrooms refine some approaches that might make their workload more manageable.”

An additional element of her role at RJI will be working with students, who — through Innovation in Focus — help news organizations experiment with new strategies and resources while also contributing articles to the series and its monthly newsletter. Dinneen will also foster collaborations with the Missouri School of Journalism’s student-staffed Missouri News Network newsrooms, including community newspaper the Columbia Missourian.

Dinneen, who had her own firsthand experience with student journalism in her high school broadcast class, said she will relish the opportunity to forge mutually beneficial partnerships with students devoted to the School of Journalism’s Missouri Method of hands-on learning.

“Something that really drew me to this job is all the work we’re doing to invite the next generation of journalists to be part of the solution,” she said. “We’re testing, we’re learning, we’re refining, and then we’re sharing that with others. I think that’s so valuable for students. I’m excited to support them in their growth.”

When she isn’t hiking along Columbia’s thousands of acres of trails and nature areas, Dinneen can be reached at edinneen@missouri.edu.

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Cite this article

Fitzgerald, Austin (2026, June 24). Introducing Eden Dinneen, RJI Innovation in Focus Editor. Reynolds Journalism Institute. Retrieved from: https://rjionline.org/news/introducing-eden-dinneen-rji-innovation-in-focus-editor/