What if poverty coverage was more personal? Instead of throwing abstract numbers and figures around, what if stories showed people living under the poverty line? People clearly had stories to tell during such uncertain times. Thus began an engaged journalism project.
Documented engages with its sources through a mobile app called WhatsApp. Users are able ask questions and raise concerns and can get professional answers quickly.
19 pandemic affected the educational system in New York City, New York, and Newark, New Jersey. Reporters spent months with families to build trust and tell the stories of those who provided education to children during a pandemic. Univision 41 partnered with Chalkbeat to do pandemic-related projects.
In 2016, the University of Oregon student magazine FLUX hosted a community conversation on race and identity, inviting participants to help shape the student magazine’s spring issue. The event drew about 60 staff and community members, and spurred a lively conversation about racial issues.
Community in Unity, created by Alaska Public Media, invites residents of Alaska to sit down and participate in face-to-face discussions in order to tackle relevant community issues. Recorded for radio broadcast, the group conversations have included topics ranging from homelessness to race and identity with the hopes of getting people who wouldn’t normally meet together.
Newly established National Trust for Local News works “with communities to catalyze the capital, new ownership structures, and business model transformations needed for established local and community news organizations to thrive and remain deeply grounded in their communities.”
In early 2016, San Francisco public radio station KALW started using the engagement tool Hearken to interact with its audience and create relevant stories. The collaborative reporting project, called Hey Area, has yielded about 15 long and 15 short stories so far — all based on ideas generated by audience members.
The 2020 Election Roundtable was composed of twenty-four diverse voters from Pennsylvania. These individuals participated in a series of six open, virtual conversations about what is important to them. The prompt for each conversation was often inspired by the day’s news.
TalkBox is an old pay phone that New York Public Radio (WNYC) retrofitted as a neighborhood listening station. It launched in 2015, one year after Eric Garner died in the chokehold of a NYPD officer on Staten Island, New York. WNYC placed TalkBox inside the St. George Ferry Terminal on Staten Island and invited the community to share thoughts about Garner’s death.
Under the banner of Informed Citizen Akron/Your Vote Ohio, The Jefferson Center organized three, three-day deliberative events that were part of a broader effort to improve election narratives in Ohio. That effort included conducting four statewide polls to determine residents’ top policy concerns.
In early 2020, Reveal launched Seeing 2020, a national collaborative reporting initiative to help newsrooms around the country find ways to improve their coverage of the 2020 Census.
Pathways program addresses racial and ethnic gaps in the journalism industry by providing opportunities for journalists from immigrant and other marginalized communities to report on immigration and learn from professional journalists.
