RJI sponsors the Business Idea of the Year Award

The Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute (RJI) at the Missouri School of Journalism has a history of working with a broad swath of the media industry to help ensure journalism has a bright future. And RJI Fellows have been able to work on research and innovation projects while at their newsrooms or while in residence at the University of Missouri. So we are honored to have RJI as a presenting sponsor for our Business Idea of the Year Award at the inaugural LION Publishers Awards, taking place on Friday October 25 at the LION Summit in Nashville (get your tickets today!).

The finalists for Business Idea of the Year are:

The Batavian: Video sponsorship
“The Batavian introduced the Video Sponsor position on its custom-built video player (embeds either YouTube or Vimeo videos in a widget that includes ad code for video sponsors). Typically, news sites rely on overlay or pre-roll or mid-roll ads to monetize video. The unique video sponsor position ensures all readers are exposed to a sponsor message even if they don’t watch the video.”

Racine County Eye: Eye on Employment
“We partnered with Zip Recruiter to start a jobs board but embedded the job listings into our content, our targeted email newsletter around employment, and our employment podcast. What is really unique is the content, however, no one else is deep-diving into these topics like we are doing.”

SpokaneFāVS: FaVS Center
“This year, as a way to fund local journalism, we opened a community center – specifically, an interfaith community center. We cover religion and now our audience can rent our building for their own events, and we can use the building for our offline events as well. Having a brick and mortar building increases our chances for grants and also increases community engagement with our readers.”

Presenting the award at the LION Publishers Awards will be Randy Picht, executive director at RJI. In his time at RJI, Randy has overhauled its fellowship program, created a capacity to invest in media startups, helped RJI become an incubator for new journalism organizations, and launched several new tools for reporters and editors.

We look forward to having Randy present the Business Idea of the Year, and thank RJI for its sponsorship of the LION Summit!

-Mark Glaser