Hosted by Alisha Saville and Simon Nyi<\/p>\n
Attendees:
\nBob Stilger
\nAndrew Rockway
\nLisa Loving
\nShawn Poynter
\nKhari Johnson<\/p>\n
Q: How can we start new civic media initiatives that amplify unheard voices in rural areas while building on the work that\u2019s already being done within communities there?<\/p>\n
Alisha wants to start a project in Corvallis, OR. Tons of good ideas; people she\u2019s 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?<\/p>\n
Intros:<\/p>\n
Andrew Rockway: Jefferson Center\u2019s mission: how do we create or strengthen opportunities for Americans to participate in civic life? <\/p>\n
Democratic deliberation \u2013 get a diverse microcosm to learn about things in-depth and come up with their own solutions.<\/p>\n
Lisa Loving: writing a book on citizen journalism<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
Shawn Poynter, Daily Yonder<\/p>\n
Khari Johnson \u2013 writes for Venturebeat by day, does a project monitoring crowdfunding platforms, Through The Cracks<\/p>\n
His community project in Imperial Beach, CA: he leans left, open to ideas from anywhere, most of community was not \u2013 the way he got over that was coffee shop newsroom approach \u2013 it\u2019s about being available. Eventually people talk to you<\/p>\n
Shawn: we call it the Dairy Queen newsroom approach<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
Alisha: Corvallis is a university town that\u2019s half university, half town. Big divide between the groups, not comfortable mingling \u2013 big Muslim population that she doesn\u2019t see anywhere except campus \u2013 something truly inclusive that\u2019s not just showing off diversity.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s News Lab \u2013 would love to see a news service staffed by citizen journalists, relationships with local media that already exist. <\/p>\n
Shawn: rural gets blamed a lot for Trump. Here\u2019s The Trump Voter, here\u2019s why he won, when by numbers, more people on Long Island voted for trump than in the whole state of west Virginia<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
Alisha: have any of you had experience with a smaller non-metro area? Maybe it\u2019s a homegrown thing. Small group of citizens that have come together around an issue, that\u2019s then spiraled into a more robust local information environment<\/p>\n
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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
Think about the small businesses that would love to host your event. Small businesses love it when you bring people in<\/p>\n
Start with the people you want to serve. What would connect you, make you want to sit in a room with other people?<\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
Khari: Engagement doesn\u2019t have to be used to grab old communities, it can be used to build new ones.<\/p>\n
Khari: Different groups \u201cmet\u201d in the comments section. The two opinions met each other because he was willing to report on whatever<\/p>\n
Alisha: Also interested in cultural organizing across communities that already exist. Can media\/storytelling performance be one space to do that?<\/p>\n
There are a bunch of different communities that exist in Corvallis, there\u2019s a town gown divide with no real community center. If you\u2019re not into sports, how are you going to see people that you don\u2019t self-select for?<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
Rural Minnesota climate change: brought together people that were half deniers, half believers and other differences \u2013 what is climate change for our community and what can we do about it? Had them listen to local \u201cexperts\u201d \u2013 \u201cI don\u2019t think about climate change but I know we\u2019ve had a lot of heavy rainstorms in the last few years\u201d<\/p>\n
Do that for a number of critical issues in the community. Have those folks discuss the things they\u2019re seeing, then put in that frame: \u201cI\u2019ve seen this change and didn\u2019t know it was climate change\u201d \u2013 ultimately produced a set of recommendations for challenges and opportunities, here are the actions we want to take as a community to do \u2013 all their streetlights now are LEDs, they signed a climate protection partnership with a city in Germany that produces renewable energy \u2013 shared, co-created document<\/p>\n
Getting and maintaining buy-in: pay people and value their time for their work \u2013 make sure you can get people in who face barriers to participation, also motivated by the process of connecting with people they don\u2019t interact with \u2013 see how much they value their community even though they\u2019re different, they all love a lot of the same things about their community<\/p>\n
Situate in context of other partners in the community that are receptive to that<\/p>\n
Bob: what I like about what Andrew\u2019s 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<\/p>\n
Old style in community engagement was \u201clet\u2019s have a town hall meeting\u201d \u2013 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 \u2013 can they help people in community figure out how to do that \u2013 journalism as a partner in community change, rather than apart from it?<\/p>\n
Khari: \u201cshared narrative\u201d 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\u2019s a story that\u2019s not always available to us<\/p>\n
Shawn: focused on issues that cut across rural communities. But even from town to town, it\u2019s 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<\/p>\n
They\u2019re published by the Center for Rural Strategies; manage the National Rural Assembly (collection of rural nonprofits) \u2013 manage\/edit citizen journalists<\/p>\n
Andrew: liked the Daily Yonder article on SNAP, with story templates.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s the percentage<\/p>\n
Andrew: if you look at circulation of all those little orgs you send it to, it\u2019s bigger than the LA Times circulation.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Lisa: issues of connectivity itself. How many people out there actually have the internet? Who\u2019s left <\/p>\n
Andrew: community energy survey. How do you map energy poverty in our community?<\/p>\n
Andrew: big question. How do you produce local information if you don\u2019t have a local news outlet that\u2019s doing that?<\/p>\n
They\u2019re working with newsrooms across Ohio to address the dynamic: issues presidential candidates talked about aren\u2019t the issues people in Ohio talked about<\/p>\n
People who don\u2019t have news outlets rely on right-wing media or something that explains their situation, makes them feel like people care about what\u2019s happening even if it\u2019s untrue<\/p>\n
Hope is to do community engagement as a way of funneling up those narratives, bring that up to the state level \u2013 create a sense of \u201cPortsmouth is not different from Akron\u201d \u2013 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?<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
Khari: to play devil\u2019s advocate: what if he built a bot to send a news desert 4 stories a week via Facebook?<\/p>\n
Knows about using bots to reach people who have low data in their lives, low bandwidth<\/p>\n
Alisha: for places that don\u2019t have local news outlets \u2013 it\u2019s a lack of some group that can provide context and say \u201coh we care about you\u201d<\/p>\n
Through The Cracks \u2013 Crowdfunding and Journalism Facebook page<\/p>\n
Lisa: if you were gonna start a platform for civic engagement in a rural area, would you just do it on Facebook?<\/p>\n
Khari: you could use a bot with automated communication, with the option to speak to a human<\/p>\n
Bob: terminologies: building\/engaging community vs. reporting on community<\/p>\n
Journalists aren\u2019t gonna build\/engage community in their own silos<\/p>\n
Andrew: gotta be a balance between distribution\/coverage and who\u2019s 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\u2019s about actionable information<\/p>\n
Khari: and local is where you can see the results. That\u2019s super important in terms of building citizenship<\/p>\n
Alisha: curious about existing arts, theater, music, cultural spaces as avenues for action, as ways to bring together existing communities who don\u2019t connect yet<\/p>\n
Bob: one of the most awesome things in engaging people across difference: Cycle Oregon<\/p>\n
It\u2019s that combination of traditional journalism and a different way of engaging<\/p>\n
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)<\/p>\n
Bob: what takes all of the stuff that\u2019s going on here and gets it to another level?<\/p>\n
Khari: heard about a lot of projects that made him think they should be working together<\/p>\n
Bob: the fabric is there. How do you use it differently?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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\u2019s … Continue reading