Thank you to the 112 of you who filled out our community survey! The feedback you shared will help shape how Gather evolves. The Gather admin team are still sifting through the insights, but today we want to share four early themes from what you had to say.
- Gatherers are brought together and bound together by a shared belief that engaging with communities and audiences matters to journalism—and is even vital. We are a friendly, welcoming, informal bunch, who are very willing to ask each other questions and to offer what we know. As practitioners, we seek the practical applications of living out these values in journalistic work. We are advocates for audiences and communities in how we practice journalism.
- Gatherers are most likely to be white and woman-identified. About 20% of our community identifies as Asian, Black, Hispanic or Latino/a, or multiracial, and about 20% are male-identified. In terms of working in and around engaged or community-centered journalism, more than half of of Gather members are early in their careers, 20% are mid-career and 23% are veterans.
- You overwhelmingly asked for more opportunities to meet or mentor others. Respondents had many suggestions for how this could look—regional groups, one-to-one interactions and informal mentoring, skill-sharing, topical happy hours, making space for specific sub-groups, Gather convenings—but the ultimate ask is the same: Gatherers want more participatory chances to connect.
- The industry seems more receptive to engagement, but more culture change is needed. Gatherers generally have colleagues and higher-ups who are supportive of engagement approaches. However, only ⅓ of respondents say they have guidance for this work. Despite a growing interest in engaged journalism in the last few years, many Gatherers are still doing the work of educating their organizations about what engagement is and what resources are required to do this work well.
We welcome you to read our early analysis. Do you have thoughts and responses to the survey results? We’d love to hear from you either as a comment on the page or dropping us a note at letsgatherin@gmail.com.
— The Gather Team