The Dallas Morning News has created a Facebook Group for its subscribers. It’s a way to grow loyalty among those who pay for its journalism and give them more direct access to the paper’s journalists and editors. Members of the group also get exclusive benefits such as tickets to events and other perks … In this issue, we’re looking at how the Morning News built its subscriber group and how the newsroom and marketing departments collaborate to run it.
Resources
The View From Somewhere
#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.
Solutions Story Tracker
The Solutions Story Tracker from the Solutions Journalism Network is a curated, searchable database of rigorous reporting about responses to social problems. It’s designed to help identify emerging ideas, approaches and patterns in social change around the world. Here are 10 Reasons Why Journalists Submit to the Solutions Story Tracker.
Chartbeat
Chartbeat is a web metrics and analytics platform built to support digital publishers. The product helps news organizations measure audience activity and engagement, which in turn informs decisions about content and promotion. Read more in MediaShift’s 2016 Chartbeat study.
Centering Community-Info Needs During the COVID-19 Pandemic
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.
Building healthy membership communities: Lessons from newsrooms around the world
This report studied four newsrooms from around the world – the Honolulu Civil Beat, Krautreporter, The News Minute, and Tortoise – who have cultivated strong communities among their members. The report offers takeaways and lessons that can help other newsrooms interested in a community-building approach to membership.
Developmental Evaluation
Developmental evaluation (DE) offers a powerful approach to monitoring and supporting social innovations by working in partnership with program decision-makers. In this book, Michael Quinn Patton illustrates how DE can be used for a range of purposes: ongoing program development, adapting effective principles of practice to local contexts, generating innovations and taking them to scale, and facilitating rapid response in crisis situations. Here’s a quick explanation of developmental evaluation, and check out how DE was applied to the Elevate Engagement conference and JTM’s Civic Communication report.
The Appropriation/Amplification Model of Citizen Journalism
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.
DocumentCloud
DocumentCloud is a document storage and research platform for journalists working with primary sources. DocumentCloud includes services such as passage highlighting, notations/citations, and personal notes. Users can also upload documents to the platform and see content related to that document. Contextual information is generated based on key items found in the uploaded document. Additionally, users may share their work publicly at any time, adding their content to the platform repository.
What Engagement Reporting Does — and Doesn’t — Mean at ProPublica
Engagement reporting at ProPublica is about giving you a place to share that kind of information. Our job is about connecting with, mobilizing and marshaling communities who have information that becomes more powerful when it’s all put together. We operate as kind of journalistic community organizers, both online and off.
How Journalists Engage: A Theory of Trust Building, Identities, and Care
A unique theory of trust building in engagement journalism that proposes journalists move to an ethic of care as they prioritize listening and learning within communities instead of propping up problematic institutions.
Hearken
Hearken is a consulting and technology company that “help organizations create relevant services and build resilient networks through community engagement.” Hearken began as a public Q&A technology platform and now focuses on processes of change that are enabled by their tech offerings.