Collaborative community ‘zine’ wins top news engagement idea at RJI Student Innovation Competition

A student team that partnered with L.A. Taco, a digital-only news source in Los Angeles, to create a collaborative community ‘zine’ (short for magazine) to help with engagement, won the 2020-21 RJI Student Innovation Competition. “Remains to be Zine,” which was made up of Caitlin Hernandez, Astrid Kayembe, Laura Gonzalez and Melody Waintal of the … Continued

RJI names Kat Duncan its new director of innovation

RJI Senior Editor Kat Duncan has been named the new director of innovation at the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute at the Missouri School of Journalism. Her appointment is effective immediately. Duncan, who joined RJI in 2017, will continue the duties she took over as the interim director including organizing and leading innovative projects in … Continued

Kapwing: Tips and tricks

This month I tested Kapwing Studio, a free online editing tool where users can make videos and GIFs with original news content for social platforms.  Overall, my experience with Kapwing was positive. I set out to utilize Kapwing’s tools to create factual guide videos for Missouri voters for RJI’s social feeds. I experimented with various features … Continued

Your first web-scraping project will be easier than you think

Last week, a colleague emailed me with a data request. She was working on a story about the shifting sands of Republican congressional rhetoric on climate change and was wondering if GOP voting records had seen any corresponding shifts in recent years. She pointed out that one good measure of environmental voting comes from the … Continued