Iowa Ideas is a reporting and event series started by the Cedar Rapids Gazette in 2016 and designed to “explore the key questions and big ideas that will shape the future of Iowa.” The project’s hallmark event this year was its inaugural conference, which brought together more than 600 people to discuss Iowa’s education, workforce, healthcare, agriculture, energy, environment, and transportation.
Across the journalism industry, more and more newsrooms are turning to events as part of their engagement and revenue strategy. And advertisers and residents are responding. In Texas last year, The Texas Tribune made roughly $1.5 million from its journalism events, most of which were offered free to the public. In Philadelphia, Billy Penn made 84 percent of its revenue on events. In this guide, we will draw on lessons and case studies from news events run by newsrooms of all sizes and share some key lessons for publishers who are just getting started.
The Arizona Republic / azcentral.com in Phoenix launched The Storytellers Project in 2011 as a series of live storytelling nights. The 90-minute events, emceed by journalists, are now in 21 cities from Fort Collins, Colorado to Nashville, Tennessee. The nights blend the authenticity and discipline of first-person storytelling with the truthfulness, community-building and empowerment of great journalism.
Based on detailed, in-depth interviews with 12 editors, reporters, and a leading communications scholar based in the region, this paper shines a spotlight on the practice of local journalism in the Pacific Northwest.
We chatted about a guide for journalists about how to host community conversations, hosted by Andrew Rockway and Joy Mayer.