Journalism’s engaged investment
As wildfires raged in Southern California during the last several weeks, the journalists at KPCC — Southern California Public Radio, and its digital publication, LAist, received a plethora of questions about the fires and their impact. As the number of questions increased, so too did the number answered, as Ashley Alvarado, the Director of Community Engagement, put it on Twitter recently.
One of the challenges that journalism continues to face is how to solve the problem that is the current state of the relationship between itself and its audience. Part of the solution comes with deeper audience engagement, and KPCC has been an organization in the spotlight recently when it comes to it — from positions for engagement producers focusing on the 2020 Census and early education to what is considered a rarity in the industry — audience engagement internships.
The investment that Alvarado and KPCC have made in creating these internships has not only allowed for a focus on innovation, but a focus on something that truly is at the heart of journalism’s future — trust. Indeed, they have sent a clear message to the world of 21st century journalism — create more of them, for they will have long lasting benefits than the span of the internship.
On the surface, creating audience engagement specific internships may indicate news organizations willingness to broaden the traditional internship in response to the changing dynamics of journalism.
While that is true, that shouldn’t be the reason why these positions are created. They should be created with a two-fold purpose in mind — a purpose to not only engage students in something that is quintessential to journalism’s development, but also letting them have a role in creating a solution to an industry-wide problem.
The thought of the subject of audience engagement in many newsrooms appears to be focused on increasing reach — and how much of that content can be seen by the public in an age where the algorithms of social media act frequently as wildcards. It becomes a debate on the quality of content versus quantity of content in order to secure investment and beat the competition.
Yet, along the way, then morale in journalism is at an all time low, and criticism towards the media is rampant — and in an age where the words fake news are buzzwords to that criticism, what good is the reach of that content if the people journalists are trying to reach don’t trust that content?
Every individual has their reasons of why they wanted to pursue their chosen occupation — journalists included. We are ambassadors of our profession, and if we are to be true ambassadors, involving the community in journalism and putting a human interaction into explaining editorial processes and the role of reporters is something that must be focused on — and its something that cannot be accomplished through social media alone. Internships would allow students to learn that important lesson hands-on.
Alvarado and her team at KPCC should be applauded for the efforts made to expand these offerings. They have created them not to stand out as a journalistic organization, but to help showcase what journalists are ultimately called to do even in this frantic digital age — helping audiences be at their best. They are epitomizing a succinct mission statement of journalism written recently by a professor at the University of Minnesota — that a journalist should be a champion of the people.
Other organizations — be they in public media or commercial media, or in population centers of 2,000 or two million — have a lot to learn from Alvarado and KPCC. Creating these internships is a great starting point — because the more of these internships there are, the more that journalism is indicating to the next generation that the issue of audience engagement is far more than just expanding reach on social media.
It’s a reminder of what is perhaps journalism’s sole constant, that while there are changes, the mission remains the same — enhancing the common good.
