In this Lightning Chat, we hear from great minds researching polarization in our country and local journalists putting their research into practice in their own towns.

In this Lightning Chat, we hear from great minds researching polarization in our country and local journalists putting their research into practice in their own towns.
Gather’s March 2023 lightning chat invited participants to explore models for “accountability infrastructure” — systems, structures, or programs that facilitate a process of holding stakeholders with more power responsible for listening to and addressing the needs and concerns of those with less.
There are many benefits of featuring real readers in your reporting, but it can be hard to know where to start. In this lightning chat, we talk about best practices for gathering stories from your audience, how to build trust, and why covering divisive political issues through personal narratives is a good idea.
From the ground up or within existing roles, how do new and growing news organizations build an engagement/audience team? What roles do you prioritize, and when? How do managers and companies continue to grow their audience/engagement folks where they are, even if there isn’t yet a career ladder for them?
Everybody has their unique style of working. But how do we communicate our needs to supervisors, coworkers and teammates? This Gather lightning chat focused on “user manuals,” a simple management practice that can help colleagues understand and support each other.
Burnout is all around us. It’s an implicit scourge in journalism that might result from diminishing returns on some cultural expectations for the work we do. Let’s talk about what we’ve done and what tools we’ve used to make progress happen.
During this Gather Lightning Workshop, attendees collaborated on a document that you can take back to your newsroom, including lessons learned from journalists who have incorporated texting as a regular part of their work.
Listen to and learn from the finalists of the 2022 OJA/Gather Award in Community-Centered Journalism, Medium/Large Newsroom category. Stefanie Ritoper of Southern California Public Radio and Jenny Stratton & Samantha Cabrera Friend of Catchlight share lessons from their community-engagement projects.
Listen to and learn from one of the finalists of the 2022 OJA/Gather Award in Community-Centered Journalism, Micro/Small Newsroom category. Adam Mahoney and John Thomason from the Grist share lessons from their community-engagement project.
Over the years, we’ve seen more and more newsrooms posting job listings for roles like social media manager, newsletter writer and audience engagement editor. But can these roles evolve beyond early career positions and eventually find a space among news leadership?
We in engaged journalism have much to learn from other communities of practice. Fiona Morgan, July’s Gather Guest Curator, produced and hosted this conversation with fellow members of our civic infrastructure.
Learn how to build reciprocal relationships with communities so your newsroom can truly serve local needs. Alicia Bell and Mike Rispoli will take you through their methodology, using grassroots organizing techniques to develop community leadership and share power.