This report is for people who want a more substantial hand in shaping their collective future. Research has found that who gets to name a problem—and how they name it—are critical factors that go a long way in determining how effective the response will be. Naming and Framing Difficult Issues to Make Sound Decisions incorporates Kettering Foundation’s latest insights on how people can describe problems and present different ways to address them.
A collaborative relationship between citizen journalists and professional journalists has long been an aspiration for many media scholars. While tensions surrounding professional control are significant, scholars also have to consider the structural dynamics of content online and across social media networks, particularly in an era of the corporatized and commercialized Web. The rise of social discovery tools and algorithms is also addressed. This article aims to bring to light these concerns and moves the conversation about citizen journalism forward by proposing a model that identifies the pathway through which news organizations gather, select, package, and disseminate citizen journalism content.
When uttered outside of journalism circles, the word “engagement” means something fairly specific involving rings, love, wedding bells, commitment, and the like. If there’s no pathway for input from your audience to shape the content decisions your newsroom is making, then it’s not audience engagement. Engagement happens when members of the public are responsive to newsrooms, and newsrooms are in turn responsive to members of the public.
We know trust in journalism is low. So what are we doing about that (beyond hoping it changes)? Learn how to use social platforms to tell the story of your journalism and why it’s credible. Don’t just share links to published stories. Build relationships with your users by sharing your process, introducing your staff and telling the story of your brand. Persuade people that you’re worth following. Invite them to connect with you. Give them a sense of who you are and invite them to make an emotional connection.
Many will remember—some with a touch of heat—the 1990’s movement known as civic (or public) journalism, which called for a rethinking of newsrooms’ relationships with their communities. Is today’s engaged journalism a new chapter of that movement? As someone who edited a newspaper during those earlier years, and who is now working as a senior fellow and consultant with the Democracy Fund, I’d say the short answer is yes – but: Engaged journalism is a much-evolved descendant, born into a radically changed landscape.
Surveys and forms can be valuable tools in the journalistic toolbox. If you use form tools well, they can help you engage with your audience to find new leads, information, skills, ideas. If you use them thoughtlessly, they can be a waste of your energy and frustrating experience for everyone, including the people you want to respond to them. Earlier in our work, we experimented with a product called Ask, a form-based tool. While Ask isn’t in active development anymore, we learned a lot in our research about how to use forms effectively.
Impact Tracker is an open-source tool from the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR). It’s an interactive database that helps manage records of real-world change associated with a story, project or event. The entered dataset is filterable and searchable to track impact by topic or time period. Here’s a handy guide in how to use the tool, a write-up from journalism.co.uk, and download the open-source version.
Wave after wave of digital innovation has introduced a new set of influences on the public’s news habits. A two-part survey by Pew Research Center, conducted in early 2016 in association with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, reveals a public that is cautious as it moves into this more complex news environment and discerning in its evaluation of available news sources.
This report describes what we learned from analyzing 9,616,211 comments people posted to The New York Times website between October 30, 2007 – the date on which The New York Times began allowing users to post comments to news stories – and August 13, 2013.
Before there were Facebook and Twitter, email and cellphones, there was real-time, face-to-face conversation where ideas were presented, positions debated, solutions brainstormed… In this webinar, we’ll focus on producing editorial events to engage your audience and generate revenue. We’ll talk through how to create a great program (the key to building audiences!), keep the costs low and generate income. We’ll also help you strategize about how to best deploy your resources: your staff, your partner organization’s staff, and contributions, and technology.
The NLGJA Journalists Toolbox is designed primarily to assist journalists who don’t normally cover the LGBTQ community. The advice here is drawn from outside media experts and our own members who are professional journalists for both mainstream media and the LGBTQ press. We also offer story ideas and new ways of thinking for reporters who are experienced in covering LGBTQ life.
Now more than ever, journalists can engage their audiences as contributors, advisors, advocates, collaborators and partners. This study describes in detail how newsrooms and independent journalists can grow their readership, boost their relevance and find new sources of revenue by listening to and learning from their audiences.
