NAB and Reynolds Journalism Institute announce partnership on COVID-19 vaccine education messaging

Partnership will provide guidance for regional approach to public health education Washington, D.C. — The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) and the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute today announced a nationwide research project to identify effective COVID-19 vaccine education messaging. The research findings will be used to develop tools and resources for local radio and … Continued

Newsroom Notes: Covering pandemic, protests provides three valuable reminders

KOMU News is the nation’s only teaching laboratory inside a commercial, network-affiliated TV station. The challenges are no different from other newsrooms—just layered on top of the challenges facing the next generation of journalists. We’re providing a first-hand view (and maybe a little advice) from an industry veteran who agreed to lead the KOMU Newsroom during a faculty search process—just as the COVID-19 crisis began unfolding.

Readers can help you plan your next move

The beginning of the coronavirus pandemic brought with it a surge in engagement and traffic to the Spanish materials we publish on our site, Documented Semanal.  Within weeks, we had built an ecosystem where our readers, using our WhatsApp app, had guided us to create certain stories which would then draw in more subscribers who … Continued

Production studio at RJI receives facelift

The production studio at the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute at the Missouri School of Journalism has received a facelift. Thanks to the upgrades, staff will now be able to deliver a product more in line with what audiences are accustomed to seeing online and on television in the 21st century, says Travis McMillen, senior … Continued

Looking for a subscription success story? Try Scandinavia’s Schibsted

Scandinavia online readers lead the world in paying for online news, with 26% on average in Nordic countries answering affirmatively to the 2020 Reuters Digital News Report question, “Have you paid for online news content?”  In Norway alone, the percentage of readers who pay for online news is 42%, up eight percentage points from 2019. … Continued

Mapping COVID-19 cases in Observable with Vega-Lite

Choropleth maps show how data varies across a geographic region, a visualization technique used often to present a wide variety of data, including economic data, election results and, more recently, the prevalence of COVID-19 cases and deaths. I recently created a choropleth map that pulls live county-level COVID-19 case data from the Missouri Department of … Continued

A pop-up newsroom goes digging on Facebook to share its COVID-19 news

When COVID-19 first hit, the Missouri School of Journalism quickly realized local newsrooms everywhere would be struggling to keep up with news about the virus. So the school created a “pop-up” newsroom called the Missouri Information Corps. We spent the summer reporting issues related to the pandemic and distributing stories and information to news outlets … Continued