Since Free Press’ News Voices project launched five years ago, they’ve focused on centering the needs and voices of community members in local news, and organizing to make media coverage more responsive to those it intends to serve. The resource list the ways News Voices hosted several community conversations in both English and Spanish, through digital spaces and conference calls.
Looking for an alternative to face-to-face events in the time of Coronavirus? People have been experimenting with synchronous online convening for years and the tools continue to improve. Here are some suggestions based on experiences of the Journalism That Matters team.
This study examines organizational dynamics, technological affordances and professional challenges of engaged journalism practices by analyzing how Hearken, one of the most celebrated audience engagement companies and its tools and services are being implemented in 15 U.S. news organizations. This framework identifies Hearken and organizations like it as important “external actors” providing technological “actants” that are shaping how newsrooms report the news by providing ways for audiences to be brought into producing the news, particularly during the earlier phases of the reporting process. Ultimately, this study presents a partial update to the decades-long literature on participatory journalism by suggesting that engaged journalism practices actually create opportunities for meaningful audience involvement.
Last year we embarked on a process to define what impact means for a people-centered, community news lab. As our young media start-up matures, remembering why we do this work is as important as building models for the future of local media. That’s why City Bureau’s first Impact Report begins with a story—a historical guiding star from our home on Chicago’s South Side—the story of the Pullman Porters.
In the most exhaustive study of its kind to date, MobLab and 13 other organisations heard from more than 500 social change practitioners and leaders across the global non-profit world. How can organisations measure the depth and value of people’s engagement and participation? What indicators can you use to assess grassroots power building, organising, and volunteer initiatives? Through research, consultations, and a global survey, the resulting report offers a baseline for how organisations are measuring people power today, and reveals where more attention is needed to accurately reflect the power of people coming together for change.
How can journalists surface community perspectives through doing, not just talking? CapRadio in Sacramento, Calif., collaborated with an elementary school to host an activity-based listening event to find out. Here’s what happened.
CapRadio celebrated (and shared) the six-part documentary podcast called “Making Meadowview,” which profiled community leaders tackling big neighborhood problems in South Sacramento. It was a year-long project, born through a process of relationship-building with Meadowview residents.
The 2020 Edelman Trust Barometer reveals that despite a strong global economy and near full employment, none of the four societal institutions that the study measures—government, business, NGOs and media—is trusted. The cause of this paradox can be found in people’s fears about the future and their role in it, which are a wake-up call for our institutions to embrace a new way of effectively building trust: balancing competence with ethical behavior.
Date: 01/16/2020
In 2018, New Jersey created the Civic Information Consortium, a first-of-its-kind nonprofit with the mission of strengthening local-news coverage and boosting civic engagement in communities across the state. Free Press Action conceived of the Civic Info Bill, which created the consortium and is now serving as a model for other states that are seeking to give people the news and information they need.
When we started our Locked Out investigation into the lack of routes out of homelessness, the follow up to our Dying Homeless project, we knew this on paper. But what we did not necessarily understand was the disorienting reality for so many of living like this. The Bureau Local project is a young one, and we are still exploring how journalism in the UK could better serve communities. We want to understand how people who live through the issues at hand can help conceive and shape media narratives, rather than being fodder for them.
Journalism has little purpose if it is not trusted by the public it is meant to serve, so public engagement and public trust are inseparable in the networked world of digital journalism. Engaged journalists are starting to ask, “How can we help people trust each other?” In addition to representing the public interest, engaged journalism involves the public as true partners, enabling journalism to become complete, more accurate, more trusted, and more meaningful.
#MeToo. #BlackLivesMatter. #NeverAgain. #WontBeErased. Though both the right- and left-wing media claim “objectivity” in their reporting of these and other contentious issues, the American public has become increasingly cynical about truth, fact, and reality. In The View from Somewhere, Lewis Raven Wallace dives deep into the history of “objectivity” in journalism and how its been used to gatekeep and silence marginalized writers as far back as Ida B. Wells. There’s also an accompanying podcast.
