A platform to support community-minded journalists
Let’s talk about the when, the why and the how of using Reddit as part of our journalism. Bring your questions and experiences, and prepare to be guided by Bobby Blanchard of The Texas Tribune, Dominick DiFurio of The Dallas Morning News, and Gene Park – Embedded of the Washington Post (fresh off a session on this at ONA last month).
The Local Voices Network (LVN) supports resident volunteers to host mainly in-person civic conversations. With the pivot to digital, Max Resnik – Local Voices Network/Cortico and Parisa Parsa of Cortico share what they’ve learned about hosting meaningful small-group civic conversations on Zoom.
As a news organization, when should you consider creating a Facebook group, and what could the focus of the group be? Once you have one, how do you recruit and admit members? How (and how much) should you moderate conversation? And how will you measure the success of your efforts? Join Lauren Katz of Vox, Penny Riordan of GateHouse Media, and Hannah Wise of Dallas Morning News to find out.
What are the biggest challenges specific to engagement work — both for internal communication on an engagement team and for communication with the rest of the organization? What about engagement work and about audience + community relationships and interactions most need to be communicated? What tools and strategies are helpful? Join Kim Bui and Emma Carew Grovum to find out.
How can membership programs help news organizations build and reward loyalty? What can we do to celebrate and build relationships with our most committed users? Join Emily Goligoski of Membership Puzzle Project, Matthew Peterson of The Atlantic, Caroline Kitchener of The Atlantic, and Gracie McKenzie of The Atlantic to discuss it.
In the third open COVID-19 chat hosted by Joy Mayer, participants discussed one process for virtual events, how higher-ups need to set the tone for supporting staff right now, how journalists are taking on responsibilities not traditionally part of the job, and more.
We talked engagement at the Texas Tribune. Alex Samuels, community reporter, talked about how the Texas Tribune works to engage its statewide audience around government, policy and politics.
Join this special hour-long chat with two finalists in the first-ever ONA Gather Award for Engaged Journalism! Ashley Alvarado will talk about Southern California Public Radio’s engagement work nominated under the “Portfolio” category, and Cara Williams Fry and Lisa Wardle will dive into WITF’s nominated project, “Three Mile Island Accident’s 40th Anniversary.”
We chatted on finding and filling local information needs: How do you find out what your community needs to know? How do you identify information gaps? And once you’ve found them, how does that knowledge play into what you decide to cover? Join the discussion with Ben DeJarnette of Brideliner, Jesse Hardman of The Listening Post, and Mariko Chang of Civil Beat.
Tony Federico, technical director at KPCC/LAist, has been helping the newsroom pivot from in-person events to online events. He’s swamped (and may have to reschedule if Friday’s events demand it) but is happy to take questions from Gather about how they’re making it work. Based on what Ashley Alvarado says, Tony sounds like the guy the rest of us wish we had on hand to make our ideas happen.
You might use Nextdoor to keep up with neighborhood crime, gossip and lost pets. But have you used it as part of your journalism? In this video chat hosted by Beth O’Malley of St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Joe Lanane of Community Impact Newspaper, we’ll talk about how journalists are using Nextdoor and what they can learn by experimenting on platforms that are new to them.
Do you have takeaways to share from the Online News Association conference? Or are you dying to hear what your engagement colleagues learned? Join us for a super quick rundown of some highlights hosted by Joy Mayer.