Author: Eric Meyer

Your final project, which will be the key determinant of your course grade, will consist of a well-researched report and class presentation.

Your written report should be posted here, in the Responses:Project category, no later than 9 p.m. Dec. 3, the Thursday after Thanksgiving break. Each class member should then review and post insightful comments (which also will be graded) on all of the reports no later than 11 a.m., two hours before class begins Friday, Dec. 4. At that time, each student will make an approximate half-hour presentation and lead a discussion of his or her report. Attendance that day will be mandatory.

The report should be a comprehensive examination of the challenges faced by two other news organizations that are not particularly familiar to you. One should be a campus newspaper at a campus of similar size and stature to the University of Illinois and the other should be a professional newspaper with a circulation similar to that of the Daily Illini.

You should plan to interview more than one editor, more than one line-level staff member and more than one audience member for each of the newspapers after first obtaining several weeks worth of issues, both in print and online, and evaluating their content. Your evaluation of their content should lead you to specific questions you will ask of the human sources. In addition, you should ask the sources about any challenges they have faced similar to those we have discussed at the Daily Illini.

Topics may include your specific areas of responsibility at the DI but should not be limited to those areas. Broader questions about overall missions and challenges should be included. Pay particular attention to lessons, both positive and negative, that can be learned from the other publications. Don’t limit yourself to their internal operations but include evaluations of how well they serve their communities, which is why you also will be talking to typical readers as well as editors and staffers.

To give you more time to prepare your report and presentation, we will not meet as a class Friday, Nov. 20. You will be graded on the depth of your research, the value of insights you have been able to glean, and the quality of how you engage the instructor and your classmates with both your written presentation and whatever you present orally and visually in class, sharing your screen with others.

There is no formula for how to do this or magic number of words, interviews, or topics covered. Be thorough and especially insightful. Don’t be predictable, boring or formulaic. Make it clear you have learned something and prove that you know how to gather and evaluate original, unexpected information and insights useful to your own news organization as a whole as well as to you individually within that organization.

Do the same in the comments you post about your classmates’ reports.

Saturday is the deadline for entering this year’s Student Innovation Competition, sponsored by the Reynolds Journalism Institute. Perhaps we should take this week to think about ways to increase audience engagement for a special class of extremely challenged news organizations — student media. If we can collaborate to come up with some interesting ideas, perhaps we could write up a plan we could submit by Saturday in hope of becoming a finalist and earning a grant to help implement the plan at the IMC.

Below is the official announcement of the contest. Before class Friday, see what inventive ideas you might have to offer to include in a proposal to the contest judges. Post your ideas and comment on others’ ideas in the Responses:Engagement category.

Here the submission link.

Reynolds Journalism Institute’s 2021 Student Innovation Competition

News organizations are struggling nationwide for many reasons. Whether it’s that subscriptions have dropped, trust is low or corporations are buying them and chopping them down to their bones – no one problem is the cause of current struggles, nor will one solution be the saving grace. One unfortunate result of the challenging environment: newsrooms are finding it harder to stay connected to their audiences and communities. We want to help news organizations find new methods of engaging with their readers and viewers. Research regularly shows that news organizations are critical to the vitality of the communities they serve and critical to all aspects of democracy. So, this year’s challenge is a two parter:

PART ONE: 

Research a local news organization and come up with a new way for them to engage with their community. The outlet can be any type – TV, radio, newspaper, non-profit, weekly, online only, monthly, etc. And your engagement idea can be anything! Be creative and think outside the usual avenues for that outlet, brainstorm with them to see what they’d be interested in trying with you.

Create a plan on how you would work with them to implement your idea over a three-month period. You will need to detail the necessary steps, milestones and how you plan to measure success at the end of your three months. Submit this idea below by October 31, 2020.

If you need help finding a news organization to pair with please email Director of Innovation, Kat Duncan Duncank@rjionline.org  before September 10th and she will help you reach out to possible partners. 

Our selection committee will pick finalists from the submissions based on the strength of planning, potential for success and creative out of the box thinking. Those ideas will then move to the next phase.

PART TWO:. 

If selected as a finalist, you will have 3 months to implement your idea with the news outlet before creating a google presentation detailing the idea, the implementation and results. Your team will present on Zoom in front of a panel of judges and the public on February 26th, 2021.  

PRIZES

First place: $10,000

Second place: $2,500

Third place: $1,000

ENTRY RULES

Part 1 ideas must be submitted through the form below by October 31, 2020 to be considered. Late ideas will not be considered, no matter how amazing they are.

If your team is chosen as a finalist you will be notified by November 13, 2020 giving you ample time to implement your idea before presenting. 

ELIGIBILITY REQUIREMENTS 

• A team can be an individual or up to 4 people. 
• At least one person on each team must be a journalism or communication student. 
• Presentations must be in English. 
• The competition is open to all U.S. undergraduate and graduate college students. All team members will need to verify their enrollment status if chosen as a finalist. 
• If you are here on a student visa, please note that your winnings will probably have to be distributed as a scholarship. We will require you to plan ahead and make the necessary arrangements with your university or college for us to transfer your potential winnings. 

JUDGING CRITERIA & TIMELINE 

Projects will be judged on four main criteria:

1. Idea: Did the team look at the history, audience and abilities of the news organization they partnered with to create a new, innovative idea to help them connect with their community? 
2. Implementation: Was the pilot implementation successfully launched? What was learned from the results? What would next steps be for the idea?
3. Engagement: Did the project actually help the news organization engage with people in their community and how well? 
4. Reach: Is this idea something that could be implemented at other news organizations and be successful in aiding them too? 

This year’s judges

Julia Chan KQED News Adriana Lacy Axios

Forrest Milburn Miami Herald Hannah Wise NY Times

Please write up two separate, persuasive proposals for how you and your fellow DI staff members might better:

• Differentiate material intended for print vs. online vs. social media.
• Train new staff members.

Try not to just parrot what the instructor said during class discussion Oct. 16. Free free to offer solutions other than those he provided. But in any case, make sure you document the reason how you believe the procedure you outline would improve current situations and write it enthusiastically and persuasively enough that it might get others in the newsroom to enthusiastically support your plan.

Post each of your two proposals separately in the Responses category.

In class this week, we’ll also be discussing these photographs:

And we’ll refer to these breakdowns: