The Challenge

Newsrooms are always searching for new methods to increase revenue and deepen relationships with their communities. One avenue that has been growing across the country is newsrooms designing unique, sometimes funny or clever, but always community-centered,  merch.

Whether it’s the $100k that Block Club Chicago raised with their gator watch shirts, the $7000 raised by LOOKOUT with their quick whip up of the Don’t be Patty shirts, or newsrooms building collaborative merch with local community artists – we’ve seen what results in successful merch: designing something that highlights a unique, fun or timely topic in the community that the newsroom is serving. 

So this year’s challenge is for student teams to find a newsroom partner and come up with a new merch idea.

Register: Student Competition Q&A July 14 or August 19

Part 1

Find a news partner! Work with a local-to-you newsroom to outline a plan for how you’ll design, produce and sell a new merch item. Each team will submit this plan as their entry for the student competition. Deadline to enter is September 13, 2026.

Our selection committee will pick 10 finalist teams nationwide and those teams will get to create and sell their merch!

Part 2

If selected as a finalist, your team will be notified by September 16. RJI will provide $500 reimbursement funding to each team to kickstart their merch idea. Teams will have until November to design and sell the merch with their partner newsroom. 

Each team will then deliver a 10 minute presentation detailing how they came up with their idea, how they measured success and feedback from the community. Presentations will be recorded by the RJI production team remotely on Nov 19 & 20. These presentations will be watched by the judges prior to their Q&A with each team on Dec 3 & 4.

These presentations will also be viewable by the public who will vote for their Fan Favorite team. The Fan Favorite team wins a special prize: RJI covers each team member’s registration, room and flight to the US based journalism conference of their choice. 

Our judges will join us at the Reynolds Journalism Institute for the competition judging to watch the presentations, have a Q&A session with each team and be a part of our live awards ceremony from the RJI Studio where we announce the winners!

Prizes

First place: $10,000

Second place: $2,500

Third place: $1,000

Fan Favorite: RJI covers your registration, flight and hotel to a US based journalism conference.

Eligibility requirements

• A team can be an individual student or up to 4 students.
• Teams cannot apply for or accept additional funding from their school or other organizations for their idea until after the competition is complete. All finalist teams will be reimbursed up to $500 by RJI for pre-approved project materials during the implementation phase. Reimbursement will occur in one payment at the conclusion of the competition.
• At least one person on each team must be a journalism or communication student.
• Faculty from the student’s school can advise but cannot be involved in the implementation of the idea — students must do all of the actual work.
• Final presentations must be in English and recorded by RJI. Each team will have their presentation recorded by RJI remotely, with a time limit of 10 minutes. If student teams go over their time limit on their first recorded presentation – they will be given two additional tries to record within the 10 min limit. If they go over the allotted 10 min on all 3 recordings, only 10 minutes of the final recording will be shown to the judges and public.
• All team members must be a part of the presentation and the Q&A with the judges to qualify for the top 3 prizes.
• The competition is open to all college students attending school in the U.S. All team members must provide verification of their US college enrollment status in the team application.
• If you are here on a student visa, please note that your winnings will probably have to be distributed as a scholarship through your university. We will require you to plan ahead and make the necessary arrangements with your university for us to transfer your potential winnings.
• All money and prizes will go to the students who participate in the competition, not to any faculty, news partners or collaborators.
• The competition will not assert any IP or ownership over the projects or outcomes.

Judging criteria

Projects will be judged on four main criteria:

1. Idea: How did the team come up with the idea? How is it relevant, timely or unique to the community it was made for?
2. Implementation: Did the team and news partner work together to produce and sell the merch?
3. Success: How did they measure success? What feedback did they get from the community?
4. Sustainability: Was the merch idea built and implemented in a manner that supports continued management, revenue and/or growth for the newsroom?

Awards Ceremony

January 2027: Join us to see the top 3 teams learn who won the First Place $10,000 prize. It will be live streamed on the RJI Fb page.

Questions? Director of Innovation, Kat Duncan Duncank@rjionline.org