Elevate Engagement Session Notes

Session Host: Heather Bryant

Participant List:
Amy Wang
Jodi Gersh
Andrew Rockway
Mark Blaine
Stephen Silha
Rodney Gibbs
August Frank
Mark Kellman
Jesikah Marie Ross
Gracie McKenzie
Lauren Katz
Pamela Behrsin
Lillian Mongeau

Notes:

Partner organizations can create value for newsrooms.

Questions:
How/why should newsrooms work with non-newsroom entities (that often have agendas) Note: The reverse may also be true.

How to create partnerships?

How do we find new partners?

How to work with different kinds of partners? Does it mean something different to work with another newsrooms vs activists vs NGOs?

What is the most successful ways to start?

• One organization with a great idea finds good partners.
• Multiple organizations working on similar projects combine forces.

How are partnerships best managed?

What kinds of agreements are necessary?

Benefits and advantages:

• increased geographic access
• expertise sharing
• new audience acquisition
• expanded reach
• new kinds of engagement opportunities

Some communities won’t work with a newsroom unless it’s a newsroom that advocates for that community. How can we find that balance while still being journalists.

Collaboration is an opportunity to surface voices that are least represented so that they can be engaged.

Collaboration doesn’t have to be editorial. Collaboration can be around secondary needs like business needs. Ex. Texas Tribune collaborated with partners to jointly cover the cost of a developer to implement Salesforce and MailChimp.

Collaboration should include the sharing of user data (and direction on how that data can and cannot be used) to maximize the value and the engagement.

What are reasonable asks of collaborative partners?

• User data
• Analytics
• Embedding/Credit etc.

Continue the conversation: bit.ly/collaborativeslack

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to host, Heather Bryant at heather@stanford.edu.

Link to Google doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wfir6cTUMJ4ORDiQDMvIzbx12_PnUG1huKx5YKJ1k4g/edit

Participants: Cole Goins Heather Bryant, Jesikah Marie Ross, Annie Anderson, Burgess Brown, August Frank, Keegan Clements-Housser, Ivan Roman, Paloma Dallas, Rodney Gibbs, Paul Waters, Lillian Mongeau, Kristin Gustaff, Joy Mayer, Joe Barr, Karl Eysenbach, Emily Olsen

Conversation overview: This session focused on how newsrooms should discuss and be inclusive of their own internal values, how they should communicate those values more publicly, and how they should approach engaging communities that may have different value systems.

Individual points and ideas:
Newsrooms don’t talk about our own values and biases, we often pretend that they don’t exist
Our group talked a lot about the tension and value of a reporter’s role in their own community.
“Gray areas” of community-based reporting and the relationships you have in your own neighborhood. What’s meant for the news and what’s not?
You can’t be fully objective about your own community.
Project-based models can help challenge assumptions and values. Think about using discrete projects as experiments that can help inform greater newsroom processes and culture.
We need to think about breaking through the “journo speak” that our audiences and communities may not understand.
For communities or individuals with different values, it can be powerful to seek common ground, rather than differences.
Show, rather than tell, your values.
The Power of Showing Up: Building trust by being present and communicating who you are as a person.
There’s a distinction between “beliefs” and “values.”
We spent time talking about the possibilities and politics of creating “community advisory boards” for stories, communities and projects to be inclusive and respectful of ideas, perspectives and values
How to structure CABs in ways that lend direct feedback on story framing and approaches?
They can work well for projects and mid-size newsrooms, but are harder to scale for statewide and national newsrooms

Questions we asked:

How can we be transparent in our values? Both as individual journalists and as newsrooms?
Being transparent with sources and communities about your motives helps build trust and expectations for the relationship.
How can we design systems that let us get input from communities on story framing, language we use, questions to ask, etc.?
How could we approach political affiliation as a form of diversity in our newsrooms and organizations?
Geography and location deeply affects your values. How can newsrooms better connect and increase representation of outside communities?
How can we outsource / incorporate outside expertise?
How can we create a culture of inclusiveness in our own newsrooms? Better listening to the experiences, insights and values of the people across our organizations.
How can we create internal “gut checks” on our stories, framing and the language we use?
How can we respond to broken promises? Articulate the process for response if we violate our values or trust.
How do you engage with people who hold deep-seated beliefs based on false facts?
Listening as a form of understanding
Ask: why do you hold that perspective, and ask about the experiences that have informed those perspectives, rather than just asking their opinion.
Get to the root of the ideology, not the mechanics of it.
There’s a balance to consider when elevating different views, especially ones that may be rooted in hate. Ex: Richard Spencer and white supremacists

Hosted by Alisha Saville and Simon Nyi

Attendees:
Bob Stilger
Andrew Rockway
Lisa Loving
Shawn Poynter
Khari Johnson

Q: How can we start new civic media initiatives that amplify unheard voices in rural areas while building on the work that’s already being done within communities there?

Alisha wants to start a project in Corvallis, OR. Tons of good ideas; people she’s connected with who are totally bought into the idea but not going to be the convener; she has to come in and start the ball rolling. What are ways to do that?

Intros:

Andrew Rockway: Jefferson Center’s mission: how do we create or strengthen opportunities for Americans to participate in civic life?

Democratic deliberation – get a diverse microcosm to learn about things in-depth and come up with their own solutions.

Lisa Loving: writing a book on citizen journalism

Bob Stilger: from Spokane, works for New Stories, nonprofit that does a platform for engagement and people that do good stuff to do their good stuff

Shawn Poynter, Daily Yonder

Khari Johnson – writes for Venturebeat by day, does a project monitoring crowdfunding platforms, Through The Cracks

His community project in Imperial Beach, CA: he leans left, open to ideas from anywhere, most of community was not – the way he got over that was coffee shop newsroom approach – it’s about being available. Eventually people talk to you

Shawn: we call it the Dairy Queen newsroom approach

Khari: the most engaged people are not the whole, but can make a lot of progress to the wider group of people you want to reach

Alisha: Corvallis is a university town that’s half university, half town. Big divide between the groups, not comfortable mingling – big Muslim population that she doesn’t see anywhere except campus – something truly inclusive that’s not just showing off diversity.

Lisa: her dream is teaching everyday people journalism. Trained citizen journalists, plugged them into jobs. She trains these people to do great stuff, but where can they go? Has a dream about University of Washington’s News Lab – would love to see a news service staffed by citizen journalists, relationships with local media that already exist.

Shawn: rural gets blamed a lot for Trump. Here’s The Trump Voter, here’s why he won, when by numbers, more people on Long Island voted for trump than in the whole state of west Virginia

Andrew: trying to find shared narratives between rural and urban communities facing similar challenges of economic inequality, climate change, trying to grapple with finding solutions separately when journalism has a key role to play in developing shared narratives between rural and urban

Alisha: have any of you had experience with a smaller non-metro area? Maybe it’s a homegrown thing. Small group of citizens that have come together around an issue, that’s then spiraled into a more robust local information environment

Lisa: has worked at little newspapers. Not everybody takes in news the same way. Native American communities are traditionally connected to radio. There are great radio stations with fabulous programming that are totally under the radar. Possibly Latinx community as well. Not everyone’s gonna sit there and read the paper. Lots more communities are likely to sit and read their phone. Think about where people are at. Take the temperature. Some people are embattled.

Think about the small businesses that would love to host your event. Small businesses love it when you bring people in

Start with the people you want to serve. What would connect you, make you want to sit in a room with other people?

Khari: In his project in Imperial leaned on local community college freelancers. Also had not been a daily paper or publication in the area. It was showing up at those things. Some newsrooms are working with Facebook Live editorial meetings.

Khari: Engagement doesn’t have to be used to grab old communities, it can be used to build new ones.

Khari: Different groups “met” in the comments section. The two opinions met each other because he was willing to report on whatever

Alisha: Also interested in cultural organizing across communities that already exist. Can media/storytelling performance be one space to do that?

There are a bunch of different communities that exist in Corvallis, there’s a town gown divide with no real community center. If you’re not into sports, how are you going to see people that you don’t self-select for?

Andrew: different approach to producing information: producing narratives, rather than having one journalist try to create a narrative from bits and pieces. Seeing media as a process through which to bring together diverse communities

Rural Minnesota climate change: brought together people that were half deniers, half believers and other differences – what is climate change for our community and what can we do about it? Had them listen to local “experts” – “I don’t think about climate change but I know we’ve had a lot of heavy rainstorms in the last few years”

Do that for a number of critical issues in the community. Have those folks discuss the things they’re seeing, then put in that frame: “I’ve seen this change and didn’t know it was climate change” – ultimately produced a set of recommendations for challenges and opportunities, here are the actions we want to take as a community to do – all their streetlights now are LEDs, they signed a climate protection partnership with a city in Germany that produces renewable energy – shared, co-created document

Getting and maintaining buy-in: pay people and value their time for their work – make sure you can get people in who face barriers to participation, also motivated by the process of connecting with people they don’t interact with – see how much they value their community even though they’re different, they all love a lot of the same things about their community

Situate in context of other partners in the community that are receptive to that

Bob: what I like about what Andrew’s saying/what brought me to this circle: feels like some of the questions being asked by the kind of journalists in this room are the same ones being asked by people who work with/in community

Old style in community engagement was “let’s have a town hall meeting” – that, and also the old style of journalism, neither work anymore. Can they partner in new ways? Journos helping people working on nutrition in the community – can they help people in community figure out how to do that – journalism as a partner in community change, rather than apart from it?

Khari: “shared narrative” has something in common with the idea of the solutions journalism network. Something you could spend 20 years exploring ad nauseam. Different forces in this country that appreciate the shared narrative but it’s a story that’s not always available to us

Shawn: focused on issues that cut across rural communities. But even from town to town, it’s so different. Find those big issues and make them localized to your subject. Part is finding people who live in these tiny communities who can write about their experiences

They’re published by the Center for Rural Strategies; manage the National Rural Assembly (collection of rural nonprofits) – manage/edit citizen journalists

Andrew: liked the Daily Yonder article on SNAP, with story templates.

Shawn: created a big Excel doc, each county had a code attached. Basically like Mad Libs: he wrote a story: members of x county were more/less likely to be on SNAP, here’s the percentage

Andrew: if you look at circulation of all those little orgs you send it to, it’s bigger than the LA Times circulation.

Khari: Pew did a survey of online journalists that found that 40% worked for 20-30 publications, the rest tended to work for pubs that were new and small.

Lisa: issues of connectivity itself. How many people out there actually have the internet? Who’s left

Andrew: community energy survey. How do you map energy poverty in our community?

Andrew: big question. How do you produce local information if you don’t have a local news outlet that’s doing that?

They’re working with newsrooms across Ohio to address the dynamic: issues presidential candidates talked about aren’t the issues people in Ohio talked about

People who don’t have news outlets rely on right-wing media or something that explains their situation, makes them feel like people care about what’s happening even if it’s untrue

Hope is to do community engagement as a way of funneling up those narratives, bring that up to the state level – create a sense of “Portsmouth is not different from Akron” – then how do you get that info back to folks in small towns without long-standing news outlets? What are the mechanisms for people in the communities that are disconnected in a lot of ways?

Newsrooms need to do the hard work of building their audiences again and not try to take the quick fix of putting it on Facebook

Khari: to play devil’s advocate: what if he built a bot to send a news desert 4 stories a week via Facebook?

Knows about using bots to reach people who have low data in their lives, low bandwidth

Alisha: for places that don’t have local news outlets – it’s a lack of some group that can provide context and say “oh we care about you”

Through The Cracks – Crowdfunding and Journalism Facebook page

Lisa: if you were gonna start a platform for civic engagement in a rural area, would you just do it on Facebook?

Khari: you could use a bot with automated communication, with the option to speak to a human

Bob: terminologies: building/engaging community vs. reporting on community

Journalists aren’t gonna build/engage community in their own silos

Andrew: gotta be a balance between distribution/coverage and who’s creating the content, why are they invested in doing that, what does that mean for bringing folks together in their community to do something? It’s about actionable information

Khari: and local is where you can see the results. That’s super important in terms of building citizenship

Alisha: curious about existing arts, theater, music, cultural spaces as avenues for action, as ways to bring together existing communities who don’t connect yet

Bob: one of the most awesome things in engaging people across difference: Cycle Oregon

It’s that combination of traditional journalism and a different way of engaging

Khari: Purple is another one. Started by text, also on FB Messenger. They send messages about the news, then people can talk back to them (a human)

Bob: what takes all of the stuff that’s going on here and gets it to another level?

Khari: heard about a lot of projects that made him think they should be working together

Bob: the fabric is there. How do you use it differently?

hosted by Ariel Zirulnick

• hashtag campaigns: the key is combining easy use of technology with a moment that is ripe. Example, #votingbecause in Seattle in the days and weeks leading up to November election. So many residents yearning to share their hopes/fears and used a meme generator that was seamless.

• Led to discussion on tools that are accessible to shoestring orgs such as: Vox meme generator which is open source; lunchbox; NPR’s audiogram

• Facebook convo starters: modeling is one good way to stir conversations. Example, a popular author book giveaway, asked readers to fill in: “Seattle is home for me because…?”, we had the author fill in the first entry and I filled in the second, before we even opened it up to readers. Led to more comments bc we models what a response might look like.

• don’t be shy about having colleagues, friends and stakeholders to share posts on FB

• Choosing partners that have existing audiences

• A painful fail: A public radio outlet that was asked by a network to partner on a panel about a local ethnic community. But there was no homework on, or questions put to, community in question, leaving a lot of frustration and even anger in the local community after the network left. Which local station now has to heal. Underscores need to know why you are meeting. What is the point; what specifically do you hope to gain.
• partner with nonprofits and other partners with their own valued audiences
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• Have the confidence to push back
• Engagement/digital should not be relegated to the end of the chain
• We need to create an information pipeline with the editors
• Pitch meetings, get looped into the pitch process
• The type of engagement needed is baked into the storytelling process, this falls on reporters over editors
• We need time for this engagement
• Have a proof of concept for your story
• Having a facilitator who can work with stakeholders for a story

Notes by Taylyn Washington-Harmon
Social Media Editor
O: 617-929-2816
M: 708-368-6051
@TaylynHarmon

Session Host: Prism Pantaz; Simon Galparin
Session Reporter: Michelle Ferrier

Participants: Burgess Brown, Payton Bruni, Mike Green, Fiona Morgan, Christine Whitney Sanchez, Andre Natta, Amber Rivera, Stephen Silha, Keegan Clements-Hauser

Changing economic model in U.S., loss of service jobs, what does this mean for our economy? Can we create a journalism model that is sustainable?

How do you define a “community”? Problem using existing structural inequalities (political lines, municipalities, school districts) and replicating in new system. Broaden focus to regional level and tying into economic development plans of the region.

Using regional economic level as they are accountable to development plans; and community foundations. Underserved communities continue to be disenfranchised regional economic development. Community foundations are partners in the process.

Must neutralize the politics of geography and create the actual community ownership; community foundation as fiscal agent for local journalism. Can pull together stakeholders; convener of conversations.

Portland Metro – represents three counties; business tax; goes into fund for mass transit; garbage collection; hotel tax; business tax. (tax funding).

Using sale of public airwaves to fund journalism. Fund for civic information. Community information fund: tax-based.
Post-capitalism.

Value, not attention.
New ascertainment structure (Fiona Morgan needs to flesh out)

Enterprise Zones → structure already in use to bring jobs to region.
Built environment → makes a difference.

Start from gnarly issues; large philosophical, structural decisions are difficult to grasp.

New Earth Movement: opting into an idea of a cooperative community.

On Flip Chart:

Increase engagement in a new system.
1. Employees have 10 percent of work paid time to engage.
2. Work in the community you live in.
3. Time is the key issue
4. Make decisions for communities you live in, not others/outsiders.
5. Create systems to mitigate the bullshit.
6. Choices for engagement.
7. People doing what they love Play to strengths.

Regina Lawrence opens the day with reflections on yesterday. She felt there was a powerful theme on Friday that needs to be named. About frustration, anger, disillusionment, felt by whole swaths of our society who feel they have been left without a voice, or without an equal voice and they don’t have the opportiunities that others have to be heard, or that they havebeen represented for years over a generation of time. I thought that need to be named, and recognized and acknowledged.

So what do we do? And I say tht with appropriate humility that these problems have been created over generations, they won’t be fixed over a weekend.

She compares it to the situated reported by NPR about the foam in the Challenger shuttle disaster.

The visual artist decribes her perceptions of the first two days

STUDENT REFLECTIONS

Seven University of Oregon and other journalism students talk about what they’ve learned in the first two days.

Matt Yitty, junior, SOJC, biggest takeaway, I need to always stay in a place where I don’t know what I’m doing because if I ever come out of this humble and scared place, then I’m not learning anymore and that doesn’t do anybody any justice.

Matt, third-year journalism student: In community-level journalism he was frustrated about the institutional view vs. the actual role of the journalist – the for-profit business model being part of that. His biggest takeaway is he has met incredible people, heard incredible talks – there is no magic bullet or instant cure for how to get journalists back into the community and do the job successfully. I’ve heaerd great small answers that will build into something sustainable. Something we can look forward to.

Pan Bruni, sophomore, SOJ: This has been an awesome experience, an awesome group of people talking about ideas you are passionate about. I never thought I would be a part of something like this, growing up. That is humbling. Any work you have to do to be part of this community is 100% worth it. There are so many people who regardless of how they grew up or came from, all have these similar ideas and goals they want to work toa chieve and that is amazing to hear. Regardless of where you came from you can have the same goals and wants to achieve those, and canb e willing to do what you want to achieve those. How do you reach out to all these different demographics and connect with them? This right here is a great example of how you do that – bring people together who wouldn’t ordinarily talk to each other.

August, senior, SOJC: His small takeaway – learning how to interact with community. Staying trurthful to the core truth of journalism. A lot of small takeaways that will empower my journalism as I go forward.

Emily, grad student in SOJC, master’s program. I could write for days about all the things Ive learned here. Above all else we need to listentoo peoplel’s lived experience.

Sophomore, SOJC: It’s OK to be uncomfortable and the best stories come when you break past your own borders and the definitiosn to already have.

One of the biggest takeaways Thursday night – there are a lot of doers in the room. I’m going to pose the irst question we got.

Q: How do we feel about the media industry in flux:

(ANSWERS FROM VARIOUS STUDENTS, NOT IDENTIFIED HERE BUT ON THE VIDEO TO COME)

I can’t speak for the group. Does anyone else feel excited about eh crumbling of the institution of traditional journalism? (I think this is Matt’s question) What if we started thinking about the community as your newsroom. When you need reinforcement or validation, what about thinking of the community as the place where we do that? WE learn the structure of the institution of jouranism. I would like to encourage anyone else who is dealing with the industry in flux, maybe it is time to think of a post-industry journalism – moving it away from the institution.

Q: How does this sconference conflict with orjive with what we’re learnin in the J-school?

I talked about this a bit. I’m just starting as a J-student and the hardest and biggest roadblock is to try to remove myself and be objective. But I’ve learned from this conference that my identity as a journalist matters and it is more important to be transparent as objective.

Q: What makes you most uncomfortable?

What makes me most uncomfortable is feeling you’re the only person in a room. If you feel like you are not with people that you have a connection with or some kind of shared suffering with. If you are with people you don’t have a connection with that is a hard experience and hard to break out of your shell ot have a conversation.

I would second that in that I think a lot of us are introverts by nature and for me something that has been a learning experience is going to those uncomfortable situations because that I what we are all here to do, to see the people that we don’t have that recognizable connection with to begin with. And our job is to find and share that connection. As hard as that may be for us, I think we have to all be uncomfortable throughout our entire career and that’s a good thing.

What makes me most uncomfortable is the idea that I don’t know what I’m doing. A shot in the dark.

Q: How do you change your idea of journalism, of what journalism should be doing or can be doing at this conference?

I don’t know if this speaks to the J school ro just me but I came into this conference not knowing what journalism is or should be; we haven’t had a consistent definition of that in my generation and this conference has showed me thatit is more open than I imagined, there are all these possibilities. End of the day journalism is losing a definition and that’s the best thing for it.

My view hasn’t changed. We hear buzzwords especially. That’s the personification of the idnsutry, people are throwing out words and seeing what sticks and we are all trying to figure out what this looks like a year from now, two years, 10 yars. But the mission ahsn’t changed. Once you strip away the mechanisms the role doesn’t change. In our hearts we are essentially activists. They way we choose to do that, that should be in flux. But this one of work – serving a community – that does not change.

Q: Do your parents support your career goals or do they think you’re nuts?

They do support me in my career choices. I’m their third child so by the third they are kind of OK. Anything I want from the people here, I graduated one month from yesterday and I still have a job.

Coming from two engineers and sthree siblings in the STEM field my parents do think I’m kind of psycho in this field. I had an itnresting conversation yestray wyt Taylan andher group trying to balance this new social marketing and story telling with for-profit and not trying to commercialize stories for peoples lives. I’m excited. And I want a job too!

My situation is that my parents don’t support journalism necessarily. Anytime I talk to a family member, so what are you studying, they say, “Oh, hmm.” They are also very supportive in that myself and my siblings are the first generation in my family that are actually going to college so they are very happy that even if it is not something that they would like to see, they want to see me go out and get a degree in science at be a millionare, but that doesn’t sound very fun. But they are very supporting in that I am doing what I love now and if you do what you love you never work a day in your life. Also, I want a job.

I’ve got one parent who thinks that like many that the media isn’t trustworthy and one parent who refuses to turn on the TV or read the paper because it is too much so for me it ahs been about trying to educate them on what I’m learning and doing and sometimes that’s disappoint for them, and sometimes exciting. But all the time it hs been a way for me to learn from them because so many people who aren’t in this room aren’t engrained in the environment, have the same feelings they do. If we surround ourselves by everyone in this room, we don’t get to see that.

I’m not a kid. I’ve been to college once already. Do my parents think I’m crazy? This is my second time in college. My dad didn’t graduate high school. My dad stopped trying to figure out what I’m doing with my life 8-9 years ago. What matters to him – whether we disagree, he is proud of me for doing something I’m passionate about, that I care about . . . I hope that you are at the end of the day doing something you are passionate about.

I was an undergraudtae English major. My parents are delighted that I’ve picked a direction. I’m not the typical example. I feel that pressure from a lot of people who want to know what you want to do. It has never gotten easier. As far as what we need outside this room. People tell you there is room to engage, but on the other side it is so competitive. I don’t know how to reconcile those. We need to insert ourselves in the newsroom but I don’t know if there is a space for that. These big newsrooms take one intern. We’re the future. We’re your readers. I don’t know why we’re not welcome at the able.