Making it easier for small publishers to bolster their subscriber base

As an RJI institutional fellowship managed by Rebekah Monson, WhereBy.Us is partnering with the Institute for Non-Profit News and the Information Experience Lab at the University of Missouri to build-out an open source app that helps small publishers grow our subscriber lists. Our new UX developer lead, Michael Schofield, is overseeing the design and development phases of the project, and has written the following update to share what we’re learning from user testing prototypes and how that’s affecting what we’re making now.

When crafting your social media strategy, watch out for the curveball

Hannah Sandfield, Taylor Banks and Drew Matheiu Everything seemed to be going along quite nicely with our project to create a social media strategy for the monthly Cincinnati magazine, until it wasn’t. We then compiled research on Cincinnati Magazine’s competition and best-in-breed other city magazines, and on the social media platforms themselves and how to … Continued

Fact-checking: What’s true and false? Columbia weighs in

We interviewed residents in Columbia, Missouri, to see which claims they felt were true or false before we showed them the results of our fact-checking. Does the public feel that fact-checking websites are useful? Watch and see. And explore our fact-checker files in GitHub.  In our expert segment, we speak with Angie Holan, editor of PolitiFact, about her work and advice … Continued

Potter Digital Ambassadors visit five weekly newspapers to boost outlets’ multimedia, social media

The Potter Digital Ambassadors program recently paired five college journalism students with rural Missouri newspapers to help implement multimedia and social media strategies. This was the inaugural year of the program, which is underwritten by Missouri School of Journalism alumnus and newspaper editor Walt Potter. The ambassadors, all from the Missouri School of Journalism, had … Continued

RJI Fellow launches Deputy Program as free newsroom engagement tool

My goal as a 2016-17 Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute fellow was to help news organizations keep tabs on the communities they serve using available and often limited resources. The result of my efforts is the Deputy Program, a simple, cost-effective way to boost news-gathering capacity by harnessing the power of community networks via text … Continued

Science Friday 2017–2018 RJI Institutional Fellowship

Christian Skotte, co-director and head of digital of the public radio show Science Friday, will put together short and shareable informative resources from scientists to help listeners and others combat misinformation on social media. Skotte then wants to measure how much impact the resources have, and share those results and resources with the news industry.