Experience Engagement Session Notes

Convened by Michelle Ferrier
Reporter: Stephen Silha

Participants: Mike Green, Jeff Brown, Anne Stadler, Stephen Silha, Lisa Loving, Michelle Bach-Coulibaly, Kaylee Tomay, Ed Madison, Emmalee McDonald

How do we change the focus of journalism from advertising /content to community – whether it’s geographical or interest or university
Stakeholder mapping – ? Journalists, community activists, bloggers

Lisa ~ What about kids as part of the ecosystem? Journalism is the entire ecology from the sky to the ground

Here’s JTM’s mission now: Journalism That Matters (JTM) is a nonprofit that convenes conversations to foster collaboration, innovation and action so that a diverse news and information ecosystem supports communities to thrive. We believe journalism matters most when it is of, by and for the people.

Anne: JTM does its best work when it is experimenting and fostering experiments to serve both journalists and communities.

There’s a new idea about English teachers using journalism to teach English and media literacy.

Michelle: We’re here to cultivate a journalistic sensibility in education, community, etc.
How do we articulate the value proposition?

Should we be more purposeful about training the trainers… and shifting to the unusual suspects?

Lisa: I will be doing “How to be a citizen journalist” class for older people.

Jackie: Kids – you gave me an a-ha moment. I’ve been immersed in the community working at an ethnic grocery store in Phoenix; and at my work at the library, it was a totally different group of people (mostly older, white). When we said, “bring your kid” to the library to do a reading event, we got 50 percent families of color.

Anne: In your mission statement, is convening conversations self-limiting? What about fostering the emergence of the form journalism takes in the evolving society.
Conversation is only one methodology.

Time has come when you have critical mass and outreach.

Anne: I didn’t understand last night’s world café until I went to bed. Then I got it.

Michelle: The developmental evaluation in this gathering will help us illuminate experiments in a deeper way. Why is this project (that emerged from JTM) working?

Lisa: Only one person from Willamette Week here, but nobody from Oregonian and OPB. Why? [Later, she spotted someone from OPB]

Michelle: We’re focusing on a new role for journalists. Ethnographic practices, etc. We are trying to figure out the role. They (MSM) don’t now see this as their role right now.

Lisa: And they don’t see how they can make money by doing that.

Anne: We have a new media ecosystem: more diverse, less mass media, more open. What is a daily newspaper’s role in a metro area?

Stephen & Jeff: At the Benson, no newspapers are visible. But they will provide the paper on your device, they say. I’m not inclined to go there on my device because I have my own sources.

Anne: If tragedy happens, you have to go to CNN.

Jeff: How do we leverage local knowledge? What’s the minimum viable product? I think it’s empowering other organizations.

I’m a business guy. I see you have people talking business models, commerce, economization. But no infrastructure of people who can discuss that from the non-journalism side. Not from the perspective of “I’m crafting the word/message”

Mike Green: I think disruption comes from without. They big guys aren’t here because we’re the disruptors.

Minimum viable product: we work together to thrive. If jtm could be an honest broker.

Jeff: Also value in not playing nice, but breaking shit.

Michelle: If we were to reinvent journalism today, how would we do it?

Jeff: What about a national startup weekend for journalism?

Michelle: That was the intent of the Create or Die series. We had a hip-hop journalist at Create or Die Greenboro. Is he an activist? Yes. Is he a journalist? Questionable.

Public broadcasting Listening Post where people tell their own story – Story Corps.

Jeff: Data journalism is huge, but I haven’t seen one coder here. I don’t think you can commit journalism in the modern age without techies.

Mike: Next year in August, National Associations of Black and Hispanic journalists will meet. Tech companies in DC are interested in media space. What about a startup weekend there?

Michelle: New U has been an effort to bring those folks into the digital age. What can we do differently?

Also bring in open government / transparency people…

Jeff: Could you imagine journalists and technologists coming together to hack government in DC?

You have empire builders and silo-creators who are jealous of their audiences in the tech sector.

Anne: You have people at the edges of the self-satisfied group, who, if they came to a JTM-style gathering would get piqued.

How about telling your own stories at a gathering?

Innovation, Startups, Disruption are recurring themes.

Jeff: From Think-Tank perspective.

Lisa: The work you do doesn’t fit in a bag or box. If you take stock of what’s happening, then set the agenda.

Michelle B-C: I’m looking at my own community. (Brown University) How do we make a difference? Everybody is siloed, it’s an old boys’ club, glass ceilings are big, they say they look to us artists for innovation, but we’re in an era of metrics. “We have to measure your effectiveness, your ability to communicate.” I came to understand systems.

How does academia look at these ideas of innovation, community engagement. We want to change the system. Education is failing. I’m in the business of building community partnerships, taking students outside the bubble. How do we measure?

Some people say, so what? What happens after you shake up a system? Who are you partnering with and who cares?

How do you measure success? I have more questions than I can even ask.
How do they become learning organisms?

Anne: (to Michelle) Your work is about embodiment. It’s about how do we embody journalism that matters? We need this to plum the depths of our systemic system.
Stephen:

Stephen: Some alternative futures for JTM:

• SWAT team for communities in crisis

• Continue taking “targets of opportunity” to convene gatherings

• Fostering emergence in the journalistic ecosystem and finding ways to create income (consulting with media orgs, etc)

Are we doing the work that’s meaningful within the community?

Anne: What’s urgent in the field that might give us something to focus on?

Jeff: What’s the “big pain” – the pain point?

Michelle: I started a Facebook post to honor women journalists of color – now a list of 100+ journalists who have been midwives to this story, holding a place for them …

That small acknowledgement helped affirm many people’s desire to move forward. How can we support one another?

Stephen: Sounds like Media Giraffe Project.

Lisa: We don’t have enough journalists on the ground. When the Oregonian laid off a photographer, I thought, this is a pain point. The heart & soul of our community is gone. They laid off people, then hired all these new people without institutional memory.

Michelle: How do we build a SETI system?
How can we improve journalism by giving the power away?

Mike: The pain point: Journalists often think of themselves as employees of someone else’s business. I think journalists have important networks, institutitonal knowledge, skills, that other people don’t have. They don’t have entrepreneurial skills.

If they did, they could produce their own product.

Changing the mindset of journalists may be the best thing that could happen. There is opportunity, but we’re not thinking about it that way. JTM could be the training platform.

Lisa: Putting the knowledge on the shelf. Training. Holding space for people who have done this work, not recognized.

Jeff: Society no longer values the work of journalists, yet the need for traditional journalistic values is greater than ever.

I don’t think you can pidgeonhole yourselves. You can be stewards of institutional knowledge, the think-tank for institutional journalism.

Can you respond to major media crises? Wrap it in mission. You could have revenue legs.

If there were another mass shooting situation, in many areas you don’t have journalists with local knowledge. The coverage is from the national level down. It needs to be local. How do you find and put those people out there so they are able to provide that context. Who pays? Local government?

Being at the front line…

Lisa: I can’t imagine a local government doing that. To push media literacy to local government seems impossible.

Mike: We need to pick up the phone and find out.

Anne: Suppose you’re in open space. Each who steps up can take responsibility. The system is diverse and chaotic. You work from : taking responsibility for what you care about.

Mike: What if several entities in Roseburg were interested in facilitating conversations in open space? No one is bringing the community together in a safe space.

Jeff: SWAT team seems like a program. How are you going to survive another year?

Michelle: A-ha: Part of my dissertation work is how we make communities visible. I developed a way to do that by using a quilt metaphor.

Thinking about this when Katrina hit I was so frustrated by the media’s portrayal of what was happening. From a distance, I used this to have people create a piece of fabric to identify who you are … people could put in their photo and

What emerged was the counter-narrative.

Jeff: Are you interested in serve people or organizations. B to B B to C?

Michelle: B to E? business to emerging – our “customers” have not emerged yet in the system.

Anne: You could crowdsource. The quilt metaphor is huge. Facing homelessness, using tight shots of homeless people where they can write something about what they need. There’s a power in this medium to bring in some revenue stream. You have to have a setting where people come in to expect that.

Lisa: I keep chewing on the Roseburg idea. You can’t parachute in. Can you reach out to small dailies, weeklies, offered to amplify what they are doing.

Mike: They don’t have money.

Jeff: By the time you get there, the conversation would have changed.

Lisa: MSM are desperate. Can you try to build community with them?

Anne: you have a collection of innovators now, people working the edges. There’s something about JTM that caused them to come here. Not just friendships. I think JTM needs to wake up to what has attracted this group, and

Jeff: If you want to be the leader in innovation, that’s cool. And you could monetize that. But it doesn’t fit your brand now. JTM IS the thought-leader for innovation in journalism.

Universities are placing innovators and entrepreneurs in residence. You could be the glue that binds those programs together. That may be your best income stream.

Michelle: Teaching educators about that system. At Ohio we are bringing in entrepreneurs to teach, and to get new ideas for the enterprises.

Hack journalism, academic – and entrepreneurs.

Journalism schools are potential customers / partners.

JTM provides connector that enhances the impact.

Anne: Treat this as a microcosm – this is the Agora – public square where people come in an have conversations.

Lisa: When you need something call us.

Jeff: There’s no lack of help. There’s a lack of revenue. I would look at a membership model. I’d pay a fee to have access. Would pay a fee for conference.

Host: Jerry Millhon

Participants:

Celeste Hamilton Dennis, Bill Densmore, Sheetal Agorwal, Emerson Malone, Jackie Hai, Lee Vandervoo, Elaine Cha, Dan Archer, Mitch Fantin, Marissa Grass, Michelle Bach-Coulibaly, Laura LoForti, Melia Tichenor.

How can journalists connect with artists and filmmakers, and those on the ground in communities, to gain a deep understanding of community challenges and successes.

Jerry: Concerned about this conference. People tormented about how to do good work and not knowing how to do it. How can we find deeper points of collaboration?

He has been doing video work in communities. He has done 26 videos from Portland to Vancouver about NGOs doing interesting work as best-practices. Usually it is women over 40 who make things happen and usually the don’t have money but they have community capital – they have friends.

Every community has pockets that are thriving, the core is how to connect them.

Sheetal is a former journalist now academic and community organizer.

What can artists do to connect better? What is that process?

Michelle: I have worked with journalists but it was always a swoop in and swoop out, write what they write and there is no engagement. Or I’m swooping in somewhere, changing the atmosphere and swooping out.

Elaine: An example. She does and doesn’t identify as a journalist. She works in public media in St. Louis. What is the difference between public radio and TV. Nine Aloud – free five week course offered to members of the public. It is free so it is not cost-prohibitive. Thinking about how to make it available to people who can’t get to the broadcast center. It is learning how to do video communications. She talks about an arts organization working with a journalist organization.

Mitch (get what he talked about)

Dan: It is about follow through. Is this going to be a one-off. Want to create an art space where people can come in. How can we make it relevant, but not just to the artists and the creators but to a bigger audience. Is engagement a wiki style that grows and grows?

Jerry: He has over the years thought about inviting journalists to meet with them; they just provide a platform the journalists to find stories and take it from there. I’m talking about something I’m guilty of not thinking about – an invitation in.

Lee VanderVoo – That would be helpful. I want more art in my (journalism) projects. I’m an appreciator. I love music and art. I browse an art museum. Thse things enrich my life and I think of writing as very much an art form except what I do in journalism. No fiction and the format swe work in are constraining. I just want to break the product all the time. She is blown away by what the Center for Investigative Reporting has done.

Laura Lo Forte — Could it be a collaboration to translate what you are writing as a journalist into something artful. I create teams for myself. Creating teams for certain stories. I know what I can do and I can learn.

Jerry: The question is so we need each other. Why do we need this connection.

Michelle: I feel as an artist attempting to make an impact on a community, only the people that show up are going to fell it. If it has something of value to the community I believe journalism is an important way to do it. We have to reinvent existing communication vehicles to further the work. Live performance is ephemeral, it is live and then done and then it will never exist again in the same way. It is through that social archiving that performing artists are struggling with. How do we keep something alive that has a longer life. As somebody who does this all the time I’d really like to have some kind of continuity or collaboration that extends the life of a work.

Elaine: In my community outreach work people ask how can I sustain this. Rather than think about the arts reporter or journalist as the target or who you want to show up – think outside that characterization. It can be really helpful. As who among th ereporting staff has an interest in something might be more productive. So that not all the arts stories are being pitched just to the arts people.

Marissa Grass – She is a city planner, she sees a lot f groups that do talk backs. The one I participated in was we hosted the event. After we had folks who came to a panel and then from there they did committee work with block grant money. If someone leaves there groove to do something that is the best time to say to them you can partner in this way. There was an immediate way to use the information.

Bill: So would it be better if a collaboration had a specific outcome.

Melia: Helped run something at the Portland Playhouse. There was a performance involving both actors and community people. The audience was involved in the performance and at the end of the evening some of the money went to these poverty-fighting efforts in the city. What was built into that was a donation. Some of the admission was a donation toward poverty fighting. Then you got to vote on one of five strategies. Every night a different strategy might win. Everyone left with not just their program but had blurbs about every nonprofit or community organization. It was a really cool collaborative. I work at a volunteer center, three out of five people don’t’ come back and volunteer unless asked by somebody to do so. There wasn’t that ask. It would have been cool to see how that could be incorporated. It was a good model of taking people who might come inside a door because they like theater.

Mitch: Wondering how I get coverage from journalists.

Jerry: That’s the basic question, what actually excites journalists?

Bill: Focus not on getting the limited number of arts journalists to cover you thing. Instead, use social media and other methods to make such a splash for what you are doing that the mainstream journalists will be embarrassed not to cover it.

Michelle: You have to work at this. You want the high-level criticism and engagement of a scholarly journalist who understands what they are seeing and communicate it. It is a crucial relationship. And it still is the normative. Blogs are everywhere but it is crucial relationship building. NYT, newspapers, NPR covering the artist is still so important for furthering of the art form.

Jerry: Shifting – is there anyone who is a journalist from Portland know Bee Line (the bike blog). He has filmed the story. They collect food on the way back to the store to drop off at Good Harvest. That story is happening under the eyes of everyone. Franklin James started with two bikes and now they have 15. When the deliver the food, the trucks say thank God. This is such a cool story and Franklin is such a great guy and he says the bikes. http://www.thrivingcommunities.org near 2013, communities that form together, businesses that work together – six of them videos taken in Portland.

Bill: He doesn’t need publicity but publicizing what he does could cause it to be replicated elsewhere.

Jerry: All these stories that are really cool can be unbelievably simple and profound.

Celeste: She has worked at intersection of journalist and NGOs for years.

Melia: Important to make the personal connect, the facts follow.

Lee: What does the press add and how if you produce a great story like Jerry does. What does the press add to write about it?

Jerry: Because it invites the question, why would someone do this. It provokes deeper. We skim the top, so people get a sense of we can do this. Now there is some really good stuff that is beginning to happen. Why is it advancing. You need to know your market. It is a great almost human-interest story.

Dan: Having previously done comics and animation, people say the medium is not sufficient. NO, my intention is that it embellish a feature piece. Journalists need to see how their story can be served in different ways and to different audiences, to make archives work with older pieces, bring them to life more.

You can have isolated journalism here and this community ervice organization there, but how can you make those connect to each other.

Dan: At the procedural level, thinks like this conference work. People are separate without the bandwidth. The role is so unappreciated role – the person, the strategic head who can marry the talent with the audience and the story.

Celest: It takes a few years go find those people in the nonprofit space.

Mitchel: It’s a great conversation but it seems grounded in an ideal context. Everyone wants increased awareness and visibility, I’m sure there is a much deeper conflict and so many other factors journalists are dealing with then going out and seeking that personal and unique story within the story that captivates an audience.

Lee: In an idea scenario, I’m looking for a story to bring to a conversation that gives people more information. My role is to help people function in a democracy, anything that comes outside of that often there is an expectation that comes my way that I’m there to tell their story and if I’m not telling their story I’ not doing my job. And I see myself less as the megaphone and more as observing and trying to bring the pieces that people in the community need to make democracy function. When I think of art, print journalism is confining. I want a way to ground up story production with people with different skill sets – audio, video, print, coloring book. I like the idea of trying.

Jerry: I have no idea what goes through journalists minds. What goes through your mind in terms of stories that are essential to put together that are local.

Elaine: There are a lot of times when in my past role I’ve wanted to really cover something and do it in person engagement form, like a life event and got shut down and told you can’t do that. There are reporters and editors interested in doing a piece on an arts organization and they get a no from the powers that be. And it is kind of done at that point.

Mitch: I’ve seen the other side of the coin by my parents being in journalism. I have so many friends in organizations who get increasingly frustrated when they are not covered but don’t here that perspectige. By not being covered this mis-understanding is snowballing.

Bill: Mitch tell your friends to collaboration a WordPress blog which covers all this stuff journalistically and sooner or later the Mercury and Willamette Week and the Oregonian will cover some of it.

Elaine: Ask is it timely, newsworthy. Or maybe pick something not dependent on a particularly date or event.

Celeste: A real challenge doing a story about Camp TentTrees. An LGBT camp. She realized somebody from the camp at to be doing the story.

Laura: I can share stories in a journalistic sense. But the stories produced by survivers are shared in the field by social workers. Deals with children in the foster-are system.

Carrie Watters and Steph Routh

Participants: Mike Fancher, Jodryn Holman, Elissa Schuler Adair, Lisa Loving, Steph Routh, Miro Merrill (left early), Jeff Brown, Emerson Malone, Elaine Cha, Media Tichenor, Bill Densmore.

(Jeff Brown, formerly All Headline News)
Jeff Brown said that All Headline News, which began as an aggregator and moved into providing some original content, is interested in setting up relationships with college in which the instructors determine what can go on the wire. All Headline News would provide the infrastructure and return some money in the form of micro-payments for stories that attract audience.
http://www.ripoffreport.com/r/All-Headline-News-AHN-Media-W-Jeffrey-Brown/West-Palm-Beach-Florida-33409/All-Headline-News-AHN-Media-W-Jeffrey-Brown-Checks-bounce-higher-than-chimpanzees-on-279406

What do we mean when we talk about citizen journalis? How do we create institutions for journalism without the barriers of higher education. Can we use libraries – look at the Knight libraries challenge.

How do we identitfy those who already are functioning as journalists in their community and how do we support them?

—– running notes —

Now in the How do we develop citizens journalists session:

Lisa Loving, Skanker: We need more people from the communities of color. Coud we create a portal that encourages folks like that. Figure out a way for people to learn how to be a journalist without going to the University of Oregon.

Jeff: Look at Knight Libraries challenge.

Steph: What do we mean by journalism and how to we create institutions that don’t have barriers.

Elissa Adair: has taught community lay health educators. The question has evenr been how do you identify groups already playing the role of citizen journalist and then support what they are doing with training, resources, tool, access to referrals. In a community lay help model. How do you advocate on their behalf for resources they do. Until the health system changes enough that you can get money for that role to people, you have only gone so far. So partly it is advocating for the professionalization of that role.

Jeff: SpotUs doesn’t exist. It was a crowdfunding portal. You could be a journalit st o rnon-journlaist. You could have consensus for a team around that it. Spot.us. Purchased by American Public Media for $2.5M or $3.5M and APM didn’t know what to do with the platform and killed it. Stories that exist are often not told because there is no way to pay for the resources to do it.

• Differentiate between unpaid, volunteer journalism and paid accountable journalism.

Carrie: There are lots of people out there doing journalism but it is not very good. Any thoughts about how we make citizen journalism better?

Miro leaves the room.

Loving: Not about the Queen’s English.

Bill: Struck by the opportunity to learn how to identify people with journalism instincts as displayed in everyday life and then cultivating them and exposing them to non-accredited, non-traditional academic training.

Elaine: How do we find a way for those people to make a living. Identifying those people who have potential. It happned to her. She started doing community engagement for a brand-new platform. She came from a formal academic writing style – it took a long time to overcome it. Distinguish between those who would have to start from scratch and those who have some background.

Bruce: There is a magic to trying to get the effect you want. Because we have so much journalism out thtere, there isn’t a widely known job description, we just have people who say if I write it down I’ll change the world. Yea!

• Include in grant proposals funding for skills development. Ethics and credibility are components

Melia — How do we distinguish spheres people are involved in – advocacy, working in the community. Developing citizen journalists is creating citizen bridge connectors so we are not isolated in those spheres. So each sphere has connections among others. We have strengths but how do we make sure we are community ant connecting up with those strengths?

Elaine: The term citizen journalist – at what point does the one overtake the other? There are people with different levels of education and experience and there are real journalists. I worry is there a poin at which when you’ve identified someone who has the capacity to become a CJ, does that at some point hurt the relationship that the person has with their community.

Bill: That poses the question – can we apply the principal of “radical transparency” to allow for a new reole definition of journalist who is not required to give up their passion for their community interest.

Carrie: Works for the Arizona Republic. My fear is that CJ were back of the book filler and I don’t want to see back of the book filler. I think they should be something more than that. How do I better train folks to do this work so they are not second stringers.

There is another issue – the pay is also a question we are faced with. Do you think they need to be paid. Is that something we should be striving for?

Jordyn: Yes. It changes the quality of the work if you are paying for it.

Fancher: There is a challenge with not paying contributors and paying journalists. We’re not trying to save any particular form of journalism. WE are trying to save the functions and democratic purposes of journalism. We don’t need to save journalism, we need more journalism done by more peole on more platforms. All these ideas have merit and potential.

Jeff: How are we using engagement to inform societies. Why does these citizen journalism people exist wthin your organization?

Carrie: The biggest problem is convincing legacy editors to play CJ stuff on the website. The challenge of trying to improve the product. Can’t train or they are an employee.

— break in continuity —-

Elissa: Explains experience at Consumer Reports where they couldn’t get people to participate in a funded experiment.

Steph: A big challenge is how do you help peole to understand that thyey are the laders people want to hear from and that they have a voice and a platform that is available.

Lisa: I agree. How do you let people know that they have a messages? Foiguring out who is worth is not that hard, who shows up on week two is the challenge.

Elissa: Step up or step back. Journalists need to think about when they step and and step back.

Steph: Systemically a lot of the jornalismt places are places where a lot of people are not comfortable meeting. Social spaces. Dominant culture nonprofits. Journalism spaces, newsrooms. It is not enough to invite people to the table it is how do you reset the table. Journalism is power, a power structure. Power is not deferred. It has to be etaken or rebuilt. You need to build new power centers with citizen journalism.

Melia: What is your readership.

Bill: Moments of changing the world inspires people.

Nathan: Those moment are happening Twitter, SnapChat and other places now. Example Black lives matter. Two of the best reporters on Black Lives Matter are not signed by a major network. That is where the illuminating moments are happening on Twitter. The legacy TV networks are not catching up. But ther eare so many reportesr now who think Snapchat is beneath them. The technology that keeps getting implemented for one reason or another. All this tech that starts out these silly fluffy things turns into sources of amazing information, very quickly. And you’ve got to be on the cutting edge on some of these.

Jeff: If you have a hacks and hackers chapter, support and engage them. Partner with a techie and launch one. It is out of those collisions between those two groups.

Nathan: These two reportesr are both citizen journalists, independent journalists.

Mike Fancher: They developed themselves. How did that happen and how does it replicate.

Jeff: The real currency of the professional journalist is cloud and power.

Mike Fancher: We are seeing more journalism all the time. We need to witness it, celebrate, figure out how it works.

Jeff: In the legacy media business that would not ever fly, they would say why should we support that it is not ours. Maybe the role in the new journalism is to curate that hash tag and wrap a product around it.

One ething we have to take into account is the intent or purpose behind these institutions. CNN, MSNBC, Fox are entertainment organizations.

Lisa: Should we call this independent journalists not citizen journalists. Can you write off an entire generation. When I was a kid, who delivered the newspaper? Kids did. They were part of the news economy. And that did something. I know loads of people who had a paper route. If we could figure out a way to wrap kids into this stuff. We are screwing up. If we don’t figure out a way to reach people when they are younger, we never will. Newspapers used to have a kids page. There is something to that. Most people now don’t even want the news. They want Don Lemon.

Jeff: People want the news now more than every, but not in one place, they want it in the bits and pieces that the want at the moment.

Friday 2:30pm

Session Host: Sarah Loose
Reporter: Jana Thrift
Participants: Sarah Loose, Jana Thrift, Sami Edge, Jackie Hai, Laura Lo Forti, Elissa Schuler Adair

Welcome/Backgrounds:
Jana—activist looking for tools and practices to help share info in an engaging way.
Sami—journalism interest to correct injustices
Jackie—came to conference to reconnect with roots. Drawn to journalism to find people who care about creating justice.
Laura—traditional journalist in past. considers herself recovering journalist. From Italy. Creating justice was not the reason for the newsroom and became disinterested. She works with helping people tell their stories. Excited to use skills for social change.
Sarah—a community organizer and activist. Also an oral historian. Not identified as journalist. Recognizes today’s journalism as being very much about getting the soundbite and her effort is to tell the longer story of individuals. What does journalism have to contribute to the longer oral historian’s efforts.
Elissa—Researcher of media polls and works with public health services. Very interested in tools and practices because having the structure is half the work.

In what way does community engagement address issues with goals of social justice.
Working with people in multiple communities is a way to reach goals for justice.
There is so much information it is hard to engage with the community—what is of interest to you, what is worth shining a spotlight on? Sometimes the process is organic or accidental.
Spontaneous reactions are often the beginning of the issues that go viral.

Go back to “what is a good story”? The way the story is shared is very important. How do you make the story beautiful—to reach the people you want to reach.

Solutions based journalism is very important. Share story of the successful effort to fix things, rather than focusing on the problem.

Accuracy vs. objectivity. Telling the story with objectivity can be difficult when there is a specific point of view you might want to share. Give the facts with passion and commitment. Be articulate about your point of view. A specific agenda that you focus on.

Allow the community to have enough information in order to act or not. Fit into a larger narrative.

They did a research project about diet plans but they had difficulty with the range of data and whether it would meet the goals of the group’s information sharing effort. People have different opinions about how to present data. Have enough different viewpoints to get diverse input.

Think credibly about viewpoints that may be missing. Try hard to poke holes in your own argument. Consider alternative viewpoints. Shows you did the work to lay it all out to be evaluated.

Get both sides of the story but be sure the story is related accurately still. Where is the balance between truth and opinion? Awareness of the weight of difference of opinions is very important.

Sarah was doing an oral history about immigrant mothers feeding habits. An incredible community health provider was involved. He was alienated from a dula program but was a father that played a very important role in his babies feeding habits. It was seen that including men in their exhibit was an important factor to include.

There are so many answers to some stories, it can be easy to lose sight of what the story was in the beginning. Some stories can change in the end.

The type of journalism practiced is a big role in how the story should be told. Limitations of deadlines and space play a large part.

Balancing the need for simplifying and complicating the details in a story is important. Get to know your story well and communicate with the source, so they understand fully your intention.

There are many levels of readers—provide a simple story and then give the tools for diving into the deeper parts of the issues.

If your goal is to get someone to take an action, you need to simplify. You have to have a message that is straight forward enough to help someone know what they can do exactly.

Whose experience am I asking the reader to live for awhile? Then the reader can decide if they are moved to action.

Read quotes back to people but Sami never allows them to read the story before it is done.

Contextualize a voice–let source make corrections but not change things generally.

Close collaboration with subjects helps a story be told well. Good story telling creates action.

What platform can you find to further your cause? How you distribute a story is important. A good story can bring serious attention, even without a call to action.

Decide format and market, etc.—to reach the audience you want to reach.

Sami sharing—Experience with police language alienating youth. The community felt the survey did not seem to be for their benefit. She suggests to do a case study about the community before you survey them. What is the best platform for giving out information?

A photo journalist researched worldwide people living on $1 per day. She captures individual strengths, etc. At the exhibit they are making an app to learn more about the people’s personal stories. They also provide an action that viewers can take right there at the exhibit. It is about accountability. Journalists get excited about solutions but you need a process to hold people accountable–by giving them an action to take immediately.

Adding solutions components is a common theme. Investigative journalism is a very big part of that.

Align your stories with existing forces/movements—to get natural support for your effort. Tune in. “Voice for the voiceless” vs. “ears for the deaf”

Friday 10:30am group:

Session Hosts:
Ashley Alvarado
Amber Rivera

Reporter/Note taker:
Meghann Farnsworth

Participants (sorry for butchered names! hard to read some of them)
Joellen Green
Susan Gleason
Jesikah Maria Ross
Thomas Schmiolt
Caitlin Moran
Rachel Damgen
Michal Wilder
Vanessa Vancouver

We all put words on the page about what we considered Engagement to be.

When I say engagement I mean . . .
When I talked to groups outside the newsroom I mean . .. . .
When I talk to my newsroom I mean .. .

Conversation:
Diversity of language and who is in the newsroom
Sustainability both as a financial issue and also as an ongoing conversation
Metrics/impact: How do we better understand what has been done and what we’re trying to do

Engagement is about making a certain kind of connections. You are valuing people and having a two-way conversation. It’s authentic.

What do you have to give up as a journalist up in order to have a true authentic engagement.

Letting people know we know who they are. Giving them tickets to something that we know they would enjoy.

ENGAGEMENT IS . .

Breaking up who we’re actually trying to engage — – donors versus newsroom versus particular sections of the newsroom .

WHO:
Donors
Works
Funders
Community: Existing and potential
Social change movements
NGOs
Community of interest
Voters
Policy makers
Millientials/ Different Generations
Members
Blind Spot audience
National
Newsroom/Organization

WHAT:
Content creation
Quality of dialogue
Behavior of change – attitude/action
In person . .. events, conversation
Social media/digital/on-air
On-air/broadcast

WHY:
Social capital
Content generation
To create dialogue
Funders want to know
Mobilize action – model for other communities
Create new members
Social change goals
Be a centering institution, public space
Improving our journalism
Human connection
*Illustrating our value

DEFINITIONS:

As for someone who researches engagement:
Those aspects of audience interaction with media that go beyond exposure in ways that represent meaningful social outcomes.

From the a young person (Millennial):
About a mutual kind of exchange of value. News is valuing what I have to say and they care about what I am saying. And it’s something that you’re actually interested in.

To the newsroom:
I take our reporting into the community to make it more meaningful.

Finding the story that a community needs and giving it to them in the space that they already at. The right story at the right time at the right place for the right people.

To a journalist:
How to be more relevant, how to keep revenue up, get people to care more about your reporting.

More explanatory journalism. How we got there versus making it more source based and easier to digest. Making it more accessible in how the story is even produced without being condescending.

Education lab:
The story was the starting point. Engagement is keeping the story going, the tail going.

Magazine – Internally to the newsroom:
Engagement is recognizing and inviting the collective smarts and wisdom of our readership/audience. And realizing that we are not the holders of the solutions but that they are coming from the communities.

I am helping my client find and be able to speak to its audience.

Engagement is a way to infuse journalism with community conversation at the start and ensure that there is an audience for your work before it actually comes out.

Engagement involves going to the preferred physical space or platform and language of the community who is most affected by the issue that you cover. It allows for a more meaningful relationships so that you are creating that between the community and the newsroom. I am not a fan of the voice to the voiceless, giving a platform to the voices that are not heard. So that your authentically responsibility and respectfully sharing their stories and their needs. It is not poverty porn. Not swooping in and out.

How do you fact check communities about what is going on? What is the difference between a community as a whole and an individual?

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