DEADLINE: RJI Student Innovation Competition

The Reynolds Journalism Institute (RJI) Student Innovation Competition deadline is October 17, 2025.

News influencers, newsfluencers or news creators – however you label them –  are  transforming how current events get shared and understood by the public. They build trust and reach with audiences who feel disconnected from traditional journalism and who prefer to consume information on social platforms. According to a report from the Pew Research Center, one in five Americans get their news from these news influencers, with a significantly higher percentage among adults under 30.

The Reuters 2025 Digital News Report highlighted this as one of the biggest trends this year, where “an accelerating shift towards consumption via social media and video platforms is further diminishing the influence of ‘institutional journalism’ and supercharging a fragmented alternative media environment containing an array of podcasters, YouTubers, and TikTokers.” 

This year’s challenge is to work with a local-to-you newsroom to help it embrace these current trends and expand its reach and community relationships by working in collaboration with local influencers (we use the term ‘influencer’ here to mean anyone in the community with a strong connection to the community, trust, and platform where they share information – but they aren’t a journalist.) These projects should meet an information need in the community while building a collaborative relationship between trusted ‘influencer’ individuals and the newsroom. 

A team can be an individual student or up to 4 students. The competition is open to all college students attending school in the U.S.

• First prize is $10,000
• Second prize is $2,500
• Third prize is $1,000