Reynolds Journalism Institute partners with Apple and AT&T for second annual new media student competition

COLUMBIA, Mo. - It's now down to the final four, but in September more than 70 University of Missouri students started the competition to develop, test and market native iPhone apps.  Each interdisciplinary team includes at least one student from the Missouri School of Journalism and one student from another college or school on campus.  Judges will pick the main prize winner but the team that wins the People's Choice will keep the coveted iPhones.

Until 6 p.m. Thursday April 30, 2009, the polls are open and the public is invited to vote. Which deserving students get to keep the iPhone 3Gs?  

The main prize winners will attend Apple’s 2009 Worldwide Developer Conference in San Francisco.  Judges are: Lex Akers, MU College of Engineering; Mike Bombich, Apple, Inc; Mark Glaser, MediaShift.org;  Ben Kruse, AT&T; Jane Stevens, fellow, RJI.  On May 6 the winners will be posted on rjionline.org. 

Mike McKean, associate professor at the Missouri School of Journalism and director of the Futures Lab at RJI, spearheads the annual student competiton. "It’s an opportunity to harness the entrepreneurial spirit and technological expertise of Missouri students in order to reinvent media content, format and delivery systems," he says. “Last year’s successful RJI-Adobe AIR Competition was a great example of how to marry youthful ideas to an industry hungry to find them.”

Seen as a win-win, University students get to work on cutting-edge products and apply skills learned in the classroom to real-life problems. Meanwhile, private companies are able to get a leg up on finding young talent and identifying potential employees.

This year’s competition was sponsored by the Reynolds Journalism Institute in partnership with Apple Inc. and AT&T, as well as MU’s Journalism School and Colleges of Engineering, Business, Education and Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources.

Founded in 2004 with an initial grant of $31 million from The Donald W. Reynolds Foundation, the Reynolds Journalism Institute (RJI) has launched more than 60 journalism projects, most of them in collaboration with the nation's leading private media companies and professional journalism and advertising organizations.

For more information contact:
Kelly Peery, Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute, peeryk@rjionline.org; (573) 884-9121