Host: Megan Garvey, LAist

Participants: Scott Klein, The City, Kimi Yoshino, Baltimore Banner, Alayna Hutchinson, Temple U grad student

Discussion

Premise: By listening with more intent to communities we will find stories that would otherwise have gone uncovered, including watchdog stories that can have an impact.

Why it matters: Advancing the adoption of engaged journalism in more meaningful ways — taking the practice of siloes and making it integral to how we practice the trade in all ways — requires a shared understanding that the best practices of engaged journalism leads to stronger, more diverse stories that have an impact.

A key question we heard in another session: How do you get buy-in from top newsroom leadership for this work?

As top newsroom leaders (and a student journalist who asked great questions) we think this is at least the beginning of a road map.

The bottom line for metrics driven orgs: Connecting with communities of trust that already exist also creates an audience for your journalism that will share your work.

Some case studies:

The City in NY did open newsroom sessions, setting up tables in Queens libraries. Those morphed into public events around themes that included programming and listening.

For example:

WBEZ in Chicago is currently focusing on four areas traditionally not served by public radio. This focus includes in-person conversations that give communities members to talk about anything they want to and include some directed questions about their impressions of WBEZ (including if they have none or if it’s negative). Out of these conversations, the engagement team creates reports that allow them to ID themes in terms of issues and concerns raised. One example shared in another session: In one area several people mentioned a proliferation of vacant lots, which became a tip for the newsroom.

The Baltimore Banner ahead of launch tapped the space in local libraries to convene people from hyper-local neighborhood associations, bringing five orgs together at once. Through these listening sessions they asked:

· What kind of coverage are you looking for?

· What are the resources you’re looking for?

They then summarized the listening tour and had smaller listening sessions bringing people back for additional conversation

From those conversations, a new newsroom was able to create direct lines of contact between community members who have continued to be both resources and sources.

Question: How do you advertise these events? How do you get people who might not traditionally come to these events?

•  Libraries may help put up fliers
• Church fliers/bulletin boards
• The City has used something called EDDM, a USPS marketing service, every door direct mail. Used it after identifying areas with a high density of buildings that should have been under rent control but seemed to have been destabilized. CTA “come and see if you’re building should be rent stabilized (Note: this outperformed a FB ad, used a QR code to track respondents.)

Question: A lot of local organizations are middle level – almost secretive – we talk about how do we gain the trust?

• One of the answers is we work with people who already have that trust or are within the organization already.
• We can, through the bounds of journalism ethics, befriend them.

Example: Resolve Philly uses information hub captains  who work with community and ID people who already are leaders in their community.

Example: In New York, former city employees have very active online communities. The City has heard from them asking why they’re not doing more to cover retiree healthcare. In turn, The City has seen significant readership to stories that dive into topics raised as a concern by this group.

Example: One of the Baltimore Banner’s most successful impact stories was about SNAP fraud – and it ultimately resulted in millions of dollars being routed back into stolen benefits. They got on to the story because a reporter found a local FB group complaining about having those benefits stolen which opened up a whole community of sources.

Example: Another story about the death of a child in a hit and run crash led a reporter to a Facebook group that became a source of information and also drove an audience to that coverage.

Key takeaways:

• Finding pre-assembled groups who have already assembled around a common enemy or a common cause can both help you find stories and to make sure there’s an audience to follow them.
• There are stories people want to tell and no news organization has ever bothered to ask them questions. Sometimes just showing up is enough to get them to tell us.
• How we listen matters. We talk a lot about newsroom diversity. Reminder that it’s part of how we listen, to have people who can connect with communities has a direct impact on the kinds of stories your organization can and will cover.
• You can’t conflate doing engaged journalism is just making communities happy – whether they want the story done or not. Example from The City: They investigated a poorly run program for people who had been released from prison. The person running the program was popular in the community, but he was also effectively defrauding that same community.
• People don’t expect journalists to be community centered. You need to make being part of the community central to your mission and how you report and assign stories. In the Baltimore Banner’s case that meant intentionally writing “good” stories about neighborhoods — particularly in areas where people felt past coverage was not multi-dimensional. It’s foundational work and also impact work.