Engagement as a cultural shift in how we practice journalism
People-Powered Publishing Conference Recap
Thanks to the News Integrity Initiative and the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism CUNY Foundation, I was able to attend the 2019 People-Powered Publishing Conference in Chicago, IL on November 14–15 to geek out about all things creative, engagement-focused and community-based as it relates to journalism. It was extremely exciting, validating and inspiring all at the same time.
I got to meet the humble, talented founders of City Bureau, a nonprofit civic journalism lab based on the South Side of Chicago. They bring journalists and communities together “in a collaborative spirit to produce media that is impactful, equitable and responsive to the public,” and in doing so they have also created a unique, award-winning model for civically engaged journalism. With an impressive list of partners and a vision for a future in which all people are equipped with the tools and knowledge to effect change in their communities, you could say that City Bureau is leading the engagement journalism clan to the promised land.
Another important voice on the future of journalism that I got to learn from is Free Press. In 2015 they first launched News Voices, a local journalism initiative that aims to build power with communities and residents to influence newsrooms. Similar to City Bureau, their mission is to organize to “supercharge community engagement, highlight underreported issues and build trust between journalists and the communities they serve.” In a critical moment to build bridges between journalism and civic life, Free Press continues to launch News Voices in more cities around the country and with that, runs advocacy campaigns to support local media and find new ways to fund it. How cool is that?
In addition to learning from Alicia Bell, Madeleine Bair, Mike Rispoli and James Thompson from Free Press in their session entitled, “You Don’t Have to Do It All: Equipping Community Members,” I also enjoyed the session on systems changes and systems thinking led by Cole Goins and Kayla Christopherson from Journalism + Design. My eyes were opened during this session as the discussion made clear the importance of addressing the system structures and mental models that create and perpetuate the trends, patterns and events that we report on. I was reminded that while traditional journalists believe they provide enough context, it is both necessary to get to the foundation of the complex issues we cover and harmful to pretend that it is possible to be objective when we ourselves are apart of the larger system. They challenged us to think of what questions we could you ask the stakeholders you’ve identified in our community to better understand the system at work as well as the complex histories that contribute to the circumstances that affect the communities that we are trying to serve.
I also enjoyed learning about Meetr from Andrew DeVigal from Gather and the University of Oregon in his session on measuring the impact of a project. This tool tracks the impact of a given engagement project and provides resource guides and case studies related to engagement work. Since I was one of two people in the room who is nearing the end of their engagement project, I got the pleasure of sharing a bit about my process, which made me realize just how much I have done and how well I can talk about engagement work, which was very encouraging.
When discussing how to make sure we are including the right people and not excluding or overlooking those who should be in our space or a part of our project, I shared just how I selected the participants for my project, how I got to know them individually prior to the group meetings and how that helped inform my ability to moderate the conversation. I also told the room that the beauty of operating on relationships rather than deadlines is that we have the ability to revisit folks and to just ask them for direct feedback on the project including who are we missing from this conversation. In speaking with my own community, one of my non-binary friends earlier this year asked whether I was going to work with or try to reach people at every intersection of manhood including trans men, gay men and nonbinary male-presenting people as opposed to just cisgender men. This was one of the best prompts I could have gotten because it helped me ensure a more inclusive discussion among the adult men I invited to participate and continue engaging with my project. In both sessions, it was very cool to be able to prove to myself what I know by sharing it with others who also believe in the power of this work.
One more takeaway I cannot go without mentioning is from this insightful reflection of Stories of Atlantic City, a project out of the Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University. Here is the premise: A group of community members agreed to scour Atlantic City for untold stories of resilience and strength, and a group of media members agreed to tell those stories. This itself is unusual, that journalists agreed to tell the stories selected by the community. And the fact that they detailed their process and shared recommendations for similar projects in the future, just spoke to the power of transparency and community-driven initiatives.
Overall, being it was very cool to be among a lot of like-minded people, to hear about the different engagement initiatives going on around the country and to be able to prove to myself what I know by sharing it with others at PPPC. I am very grateful that I had the opportunity to attend PPPC and I am inspired to finish the semester strong.
