What are the barriers? Why is it so dang hard to just “do engagement already?” We had our hunches, but we commissioned a study to really find out. We spoke with 100 people who are already bought in — who desperately want to spend their time doing better engagement — to learn what (and who) stands in their way. Engagement is a process, not a product. The solution must start with mindset and culture change, not software
The Bureau Local is a people-powered network setting the news agenda and sparking change, from the ground up. Over the past three years we have set out to make sure news is working for everyone and to do so, we’ve been changing the way it’s done. Whether it is austerity or Brexit, health or education, people across the UK experience inequality in their treatment and how their stories are told, if told at all. That’s why we focus our journalism on shining a light on the power, decisions and policies that threaten the public interest of all people across the UK.
The growth of public media is underscored by the increasing financial strength of local public radio organizations, with news-focused licensees experiencing a steady rise in revenue, primarily supported by individual giving and underwriting. The donor base for public radio has expanded significantly, with an increasing number of sustainers and major donors, indicating a robust financial future.
At the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, we believe that journalism sustainability is rooted in building stronger relationships between communities and newsrooms. While the distinction between “building with” instead of “building for” feels at first like semantics, when we begin to use it as a lens to examine journalism as both a process and a product, we see numerous ways it challenges the status quo.
Driving through Alabama on Presidents’ Day, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg swung by the newsroom of the Selma Times-Journal. In a post to his 86 million followers Monday night, he thanked journalists for their efforts to “surface truth” and “keep their communities informed.” Zuckerberg’s post comes on the heels of his nearly 6,000-word manifesto that offered an ambitious vision for Facebook’s global role. This welcome change of direction couldn’t come at a more critical time.
When it comes to hiring and promoting Latinas in newsrooms, the powers that be often blame a lack of progress on their inability to find enough candidates with the requisite qualifications, also known as the “pipeline” problem. As a response, Dallas-based former television reporter Rebecca Aguilar launched a Facebook page called “Latinas in Journalism.” Within four hours of its November launch, the page got 200 members. Within three days, it was up to 1,000. Today, it has almost 1,400 members and more joining daily.
With dwindling time and resources in newsrooms, does it make sense to invest in citizen-powered journalism and training? These programs might accomplish the mission of many newsrooms and improve democracy as a whole, but do they actually change communities? There are plenty of places to seek answers, because there is no shortage of programs that seek to train and “empower” people on behalf of journalism.
The goal of the audit is to provide a baseline understanding of KQED’s source diversity using five measures: gender, race/ethnicity, age group, geographic location, and profession. These data will be used in the creation of a sustainable source diversity tracking system, as well as to help inform decision-making and goal setting.
This 10-step guide offers practical tips and exercises to create the optimal conditions in your newsroom for meaningful engagement efforts to take root and thrive. This guide will help cultivate lasting culture change in your newsroom that results in producing more relevant content in a more authentic manner.
Source Matters is an automated tool designed to help news organizations track and diversify their sourcing. By automating the identification and categorization of sources across stories, this tool aims to reflect community diversity better, encourage more inclusive journalism, and facilitate the auditing process by saving time and effort in data collection.
Parse.ly is a web metrics and analytics platform designed to help companies “understand, own and improve digital audience engagement through data, so they can ensure the work they do makes the impact it deserves. Reviews from TechCrunch, New York Observer, and ZDNet.
ProPublica is well aware of the benefits — and impact — of crowdsourcing. It landed a story about US President Donald Trump having sold condominiums to his own son at big discounts, avoiding the usual taxes, because a reader tipped them off after digging into Trump disclosure documents that ProPublica shared. GIJN’s program coordinator Eunice Au spoke with ProPublica’s deputy editor of engagement, Terry Parris Jr., about the nonprofit newsroom’s strategy in encouraging reader and community participation in its stories. Another view from MediaShift.
