The three finalists for the 2021 OJA/Gather Award in Engaged Journalism in the Overall Excellence category, including The New York Times, Arizona Daily Star, Anchorage Daily News, and ProPublica, offer lessons learned from their community-engagement projects.
Learn how Bridget Thoreson of INN, Katherine Nagasawa and Jennifer Hack Wolf applied this simple exercise to their own reporting at WBEZ in Chicago and The Beacon in Kansas City after participating in a Hearken-led training through Election SOS in 2020.
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.
Started in 2018 as a response to the growing polarization in the U.S., Civility Tennessee is a campaign “that seeks to model, promote and encourage civil discourse on issues of the day.”
Building off the immense interest in podcasting and the success of the Queen City PodQuest, WFAE collaborated with the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library to host free “Podcasting 101” workshops that focused on the fundamentals of podcasting.
To increase awareness and understanding of Woodhill, create feelings of empowerment and “voice” among its residents, and create social connections between them, Ideastream Public Media launched Inside the Bricks: Woodhill Homes.
Launched in May 2021, Dialogue is an initiative from Southern California Public Radio to redesign its style guide informed by the desires of our communities and staff. Before this guide, LAist/KPCC used the Associated Press Stylebook (a style guide commonly followed by American newsrooms). Via: How KPCC/LAist made its style guide more inclusive to build trust — in and out of the newsroom.
In a follow-up to this Ecosystems Toolkit, the author Fiona Morgan shares lessons from how she and others undertook aspects of news ecosystem assessments during the pandemic, and how this listening was itself an investment in communities. Via: How to listen during a pandemic and other lessons from recent local news ecosystem research.
City Bureau, a digital startup on the South Side of Chicago, has been attracting attention and funding for bringing “journalists and communities together in a collaborative spirit to produce media that is impactful, equitable and responsive to the public.” Co-founder Darryl Holliday explains City Bureau’s innovative model for participatory reporting and accountability journalism.
The efforts of the America Amplified initiative culminated in a six-part, national radio talk show, America Amplified: Election 2020, which explored the social challenges facing Americans before and after the November national election.
La Nacion launched Stranded Abroad collecting information and sharing stories from those trapped in foreign countries due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In early 2020, Reveal launched Seeing 2020, a national collaborative reporting initiative to help newsrooms around the country find ways to improve their coverage of the 2020 Census.
