Innovation

The Defender Handbook, built in collaboration with the KC Defender, provides resources for newsrooms to become a social and community first news organization.

The Collaboration Toolkit, built in collaboration with the Institute for Nonprofit News, provides resources to help small and community-centered newsrooms and journalists break down the barriers and challenges to successful, impactful collaborations to better serve their communities.

The Currency of Impact model, built in collaboration with URL Media, provides templates, case studies and guidance to help newsrooms disrupt how advertisers invest in diverse communities.

Agenda Watch, built in collaboration with Big Local News, is a free, full-featured platform for journalists that provides the ability to research past agendas and minutes as well as subscribe to alerts based on topics and keywords relevant to a reporter’s beat. Read more about the project. Launched June 2023.

Black News & Views, built in collaboration with NABJ, is a platform for coverage of Black communities by Black journalists. Read more about the project. Launched June 2022.

The Diversity Source Tracking Tool, built in collaboration with Chalkbeat, is a free to use tool for newsrooms and journalists to use to track the diversity of their sources and utilize the data to make impactful change in their processes to better serve and reflect their communities. Launched October 2022.

RJI News Founders was a program distributing $300k in funding to threeTiny News Collective founding newsrooms. The awarded newsrooms were The People’s Beat, Project Optimist and Four Points Press. The funding and support was to help them become sustainable newsrooms serving their local communities. Over those two years I provided training, guidance, resources and regular coaching to these newsroom founders to assist them in their goals and mission. This project was 2021-2023.

JSafe app, built in collaboration with the Mizzou engineering school, is an app for marginalized journalists to report harassment, doxxing and abuse online. It was given to the Coalition for Women in Journalism to maintain and use to help journalists access the free resources and assistance they need from the Coalition. Launched 2019.

Optimizing paywalls for readers – partnered with Bangor Daily News, we tested a dynamic paywall that charged readers based on the frequency, type of content they access and platform they use to access the content.

The Innovation in Focus series, which I created in 2017, tackles a new idea, storytelling method or tool each month with a partner newsroom. From AI editing tools to community listening efforts, this series helps newsrooms innovate, try new things and experiment to better serve their communities.

The Women in Journalism Workshop, which I founded in 2017, was built to be an accessible, affordable and cutting edge skills workshop to help female and female identifying journalists access key training and skills building they need to be safe, successful and innovative in their daily work. I provide 2 meals a day, flight/housing scholarships, all materials for sessions and any accommodations needed for attendees to take full advantage of this opportunity.