Creating Community Collaborations: A recap of Engaged Journalism Exchange pre-conference
On August 2, over 40 researchers, journalists, and other media practitioners came together in the Detroit Free Press and participated in the Engaged Journalism Exchange AEJMC pre-conference focused on collaborating with communities.
Engaged journalism and collaborating with local communities are becoming a central concern in journalism practice and research. The session began with a welcome from Letrell Crittenden, Director of Inclusion and Audience Growth at API, quickly followed by a panel on lessons learned from engaged and collaborative research, moderated by Daniela Gerson from California State University, Northridge.
In this panel, we heard from Andrea Wenzel (Temple University) about the importance of “always looking for ways to create a cycle of communication” between scholars, media practitioners, and community members. Chelsea Peterson-Salahuddin from the University of Michigan talked about her experience and highlighted the importance of keeping the lines of communication open and being adaptable to change.
“I want to keep in mind what are the needs of the community as well. I don’t want my work to feel extractive,” she said. “How can we come together, and intention set together?”
In addition, Jesse Holcomb (Calvin University) and Holley Wilkin (Georgia State University) shared their tips for doing effective collaborative research including the importance of trust building when working with organizations and communities, being aware of similar research to avoid duplication, and bringing the data back to the communities.
“You need to be able to find ways of bringing the data back, whether it’s from journalists writing stories about it, or you presenting at community events,” said Wilkin, a health communication researcher who regularly integrates community advisory groups into her research studies. She added that sharing data mattered because it allowed residents to“use the data to help fight for changes in their neighborhoods.”
The conversation then built among the participants on positionality, implicit bias training, and the constraints of the peer-review process.
“I try to have multiple modes of sharing my work,” Wenzel said. “I try to design projects that are deliberately collaborative with community stakeholders … it allows me to do something right away and get feedback right away.”
The session transitioned into collaborative brainstorming, where participants broke out into groups to discuss research questions they would like to explore, challenges that’s kept them from doing this work, and takeaways they have from trying to do collaborative/engaged research.
Some of key takeaways and questions from this session included:
· Do we have a shared definition of engagement?
· Approaching with a “lens of care”: Do we care about the community that we are serving? And when we approach it from this lens of care, we ask questions differently.
· What is news to you as a community member and not just the community?
· How do we help newsrooms understand the importance of collaboration?
· How can organizations effectively and productively apologize for getting things wrong with communities of color?
· What are the differences in funding for historically marginalized communities in comparison to white-led mainstream newsrooms and non-profit organizations?
The second-panel session, moderated by Letrell Crittenden (API) focused on engaged journalism efforts in Detroit and included perspectives from Candice Fortman (Outlier Media), Jewel Gopwani (Detroit Free Press), Nargis Hakim Rahman (WDET), and Harmony Rhodes (Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan). The panelists, representing legacy media, start-up media, and funders, highlighted their efforts of engaging with the community in Detroit through various means including texting, community advisory groups, and Documenters programs.
“For people in crisis, a website is not useful. 2000 words are not useful. We set up an SMS texting system,” Candice Fortman said on Outlier Media’s approach to “making sure people can survive and thrive in a city.”
“A lot of news organizations take the position that everything is competition, and that is not where we start,” said Gopwani from the Detroit Free Press. She describes collaborating with both other news organizations and community members. “We want people to get something out of their interactions with us.”
The conversations out of this panel grew into thinking about the importance of truly understanding who your audience is, and consideration around budgeting for and funding engagement, leading to intriguing conversation among the participants. The full audio of the event, including the Q&A and the share back from the small group discussions, is available here.
Thanks to the co-sponsors of our 2022 Engaged Journalism Exchange pre-conference: AEJMC’s Participatory Journalism Interest Group, the American Press Institute, the Agora Journalism Center, the Knight-Lenfest Local News Transformation Fund, the Tow Center for Digital Journalism, Temple University, and University of Utah.
