Your news needs (and wants), Part 2: What we’ll cover, and how we’ll do it
Your feedback helped us refine our editorial strategies going forward. We’re ready to share them with you.
By Dana Amihere
This is the second of a 2-part post on how we used the information from our online community information needs survey and pre-launch community listening campaign. Your news needs (and wants), Part 1: How we plan to address them details specific feedback you gave us and how our editorial strategy was informed by it. Below, Part 2 outlines our specific editorial strategies and coverage areas.
News delivered via SMS text message
One thing that we’ve taken into consideration from the very beginning is the digital divide within the communities we hope to serve. AfroLA is a digital-only publication, and accessibility has always been front and center.
Not everyone has a computer at home or a smartphone. And, even if they do have these devices, they may not have internet access for them. (In August, I wrote about COVID apps for Slate, specifically their ineffectiveness when it came to reaching people at high risk for contracting COVID and critically needed information about the virus’ spread but didn’t have the digital access to use the apps).
We’ve talked to numerous people who are in this situation. One group stood out. Several seniors told us that they owned phones without internet access, and that they only needed a phone to text, make calls, and maybe take pictures. In our online news needs survey, we asked:
“Would you be interested in having a newsletter digest delivered to your phone as an SMS text message 1–3 times a week?”
Nearly a quarter of respondents said yes. Of those, 42% were over age 40. That does mean a lot of people weren’t interested in a news product delivered via text message, but it’s a viable, low-fi option for us to reach phone users without internet access.
Short audio content over podcasts
We asked our survey respondents:
“Would you listen to news content produced and shared as audio?”
An overwhelming majority, 93%, said yes. Counter to what we expected, these proponents of audio content prefer an emailed or texted link to listen to an audio file as opposed to a podcast to stream or download.
News content for social media
People we spoke with and survey respondents were adamant about needing quick, consumable news content. Their preferred medium: social media.
So, we’re doubling down on our Instagram presence in 2023. It’s already our most successful platform for engagement to date (one video post garnered more than 10,000 impressions in just a few weeks), so we’ll continue to leverage that through short explainers using reels and videos.
We’re also expanding our content to YouTube, bringing in our work with local high school and community college students. (Read more about these collaborations in Part 1.)
Coverage areas
When we announced AfroLA was coming back in April, we purposefully didn’t say what beats we would have or what issues we would cover. We waited to gather feedback and information from the community to inform our decisions.
At long last, we’re able to share details about what we plan to cover when we launch in 2023, why and how. Of course, these topics will evolve over time as new needs arise, but here is where we’re starting.
Climate & Sustainability
There’s no question that adapting to and mitigating the effects of climate change is an integral part of our new reality. We’ll explore the disproportionate impacts of climate change while navigating how individuals and communities can respond and how government and policymakers can be held accountable for creating sustainable solutions.
What we might cover:
- Hazardous smoke conditions caused by seasonal wildfires
- Rising utility costs
- Accessibility and affordability of renewable energy and sustainable products
Culture
We’ll explore how we create, celebrate and express traditions, including music, art, dance and movement, food, storytelling and everything in between.
What we might cover:
- Youth writer groups
- Street artists
- Maker spaces for creators of color
Healthcare
We’re taking a holistic view of healthcare, tackling underlying structural issues that can impede access to care and what leads to different physical and mental health outcomes.
What we might cover:
- Insurance
- Environmental impacts on community health
- Access to behavioral health services
Housing
When it comes to housing, Los Angeles is in a state of emergency…literally. Prospective homebuyers are priced out of affordable housing. The number of unhoused and unsheltered Angelenos is staggering. And, in a city of more than 60% renters, the rent is way too damn high as wages stay flat and inflation persists.
But, these aren’t just problems within L.A.’s city limits and usual places which have a light shone on them (e.g. Skid Row, DTLA). More people fall into the category of “working poor,” having to choose between food, child care, medical care and housing. We need to talk about how we’re going to work our way through this mess — -beyond political finger-pointing, criminalization of unhoused people and lofty initiatives not backed by sufficient resources.
What we might cover:
- Housing communities developed specifically for formerly unhoused people
- Conditions in the area’s homeless shelters
- New ordinances developed to make unhoused people less visible
Education
Learning happens in more than just a classroom and beyond age 18. How do we educate and train people of all ages and backgrounds?
What we might cover:
- Jobs training programs funding
- Community colleges
- Educational access for formerly incarcerated persons
Justice
This isn’t your typical cops and courts beat. We’re reimagining how we cover public safety to center issues of racial, social, economic, environmental injustice and inequity. We’ll explore who’s affected and who or what is responsible for the imbalance of power.
What we might cover:
- Overpolicing
- Freeways dividing communities
- Poor air quality
- Unequal allocation of government resources
Labor & infrastructure
We’ll explore the people and systems — official and community-driven — that underpin where and how we live.
What we might cover:
- Transportation and public transit
- Social services
- Supply chains
Solutions Desk
We’re dedicating specific newsroom resources to solutions reporting, to provide insight on responses to community problems rather than just enumerating the problems once again. When we’re able to hire full-time reporters, one of them will be a dedicated solutions reporter (although solutions journalism will be integral to all of our reporting). They’ll spend months reporting on one topic to cover to produce a body of related stories that help tell the story from many perspectives and in different ways.
What we might cover:
- The efficacy of government agencies and programs over time
- How public health issues are being managed, and to what end
- How a certain issue is impacting a vulnerable group
- Who is implementing creative or innovative solutions to climate change, and how
We’ve analyzed the survey results and feedback we have collected to date. Read more about how this data informed our overall editorial strategy in Your news needs (and wants), Part 1: How we plan to address them. And, we’re far from done. We’re applying for grant money next year to continue this work with even more robust outreach (we’ll keep going on a more streamlined scale if we don’t get it). Additionally, our news needs survey will remain open indefinitely.
AfroLA officially launches in early 2023, but we’ve already started producing quality journalism for L.A.’s Black community.
- Explore the archive of AfroLA’s pre-launch stories.
- Support our journalism with a tax-deductible donation.
- Sign up for our newsletter.
- Connect with us on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook.
Dana Amihere is a data journalist, designer and developer. She’s the founder/executive director of AfroLA. She’s committed to solutions reporting that centers racial and social justice, especially through data-driven storytelling.
Previously, Amihere worked in data, interactive design and news apps for KPCC/LAist, The Dallas Morning News, Pew Research Center and The Baltimore Sun. She owns Code Black Media, a digital media and data consultancy. She is a lecturer at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism.
