7 ways KPCC-LAist is experimenting with its COVID-19 coverage
By Adriene Hill with Ashley Alvarado and Jon Cohn
January 26. That’s when the first cases of COVID-19 were confirmed in L.A. and Orange counties. It was a Sunday morning. I was the weekend editor. I assigned a reporter, and put up a Hearken post to begin fielding questions from the audience. (Hearken is a technology platform that allows audience members to ask questions directly to journalists.) As a newsroom, we had anticipated the moment. (We had not anticipated the death of Kobe Bryant, which happened that same day.)
Before the first local cases were confirmed, we’d begun reporting on the impact of the virus, both what had already happened and what could be coming. Two days before the confirmed cases here, we covered how Chinese-Americans in the San Gabriel Valley — which has one of the highest concentrations of Chinese-Americans in the country — were responding to the news back home.
In the weeks after that first case, with the help of my dad (who is a doctor) and one of his friends (an infectious disease specialist), I started to think through how the newsroom might need to prepare in case the outbreak was severe. I ran to Target and bought a bunch of hand sanitizer bottles for the newsroom. I told our chief content officer, Kristen Muller, that I was making attempts to order masks for the staff. Together with colleagues around the room, we started thinking through what it might look like if many of us had to work out of the office. We prepared protocol and workflow documents. We tried to think two and three steps ahead.
On March 10, at an all-staff meeting, we told staff who could work from home to begin doing so the next day. We canceled nonessential travel. We postponed events.
The last four weeks have been surreal. The work has been intense. But we had prepared and have been able to think ahead and to plan the next steps on our own terms.
Our mission is clear: provide factual, timely, and easy-to-understand news and information. That’s our North Star. It is also an essential moment to extend our reach. We want to get the valuable journalism we do to the broadest possible audience. So, we’re sharing our experiments in real time, in the hopes that there is value for other newsrooms.
Answering community member questions — together
When news of the coronavirus started to pick up in late January, I created a Hearken embed to field community member questions. In the last month, we’ve seen a surge in questions. At one point, we were receiving nearly 10 questions per minute. To date, people have sent us more than 1,300 COVID-19 questions. We’ve personally responded to more than 1,100 of them.
How did we do this? Very early on, our director of community engagement, Ashley Alvarado, and I developed an engagement workflow for fielding questions and directing them to the reporters and editors best positioned to answer them. (You can see a templated version of it here.)
Roughly one-third of the questions we’ve received have come from outside of California, many from outside of the United States. Wanting to focus first on our region, we made the decision to prioritize local questions while also inviting journalists in other newsrooms to help facilitate answering out-of-state questions. (You can sign up here.)
Reporters, editors, and show producers are all engaged in the process of answering questions as well as sourcing story ideas and voices from the questions we’ve received. Those stories have ranged from what it’s like to get married, to mourn a loved one, to be a renter during the pandemic. And digital editor Lisa Brenner regularly updates the 9,000-word-plus “Coronavirus In LA: Your No-Panic Guide To Daily Life And The New (And Changing) Rules”
We are also working alongside Quartz and Hearken to apply machine learning so that we can reduce the amount of time it takes us to process a question, and can help automatically sort questions into topics and bins. That will allow us to identify in real time when trends change in what people want to know. That information would help guide our news gathering efforts, enable us to more quickly and effectively collaborate with other newsrooms, save staff precious time from duplicating efforts, and most importantly — get information to the people asking questions who are clearly scared and in need.
Updates and answers via text message
We also invited community members to send their COVID-19 questions and to sign up for daily updates via SMS text message using the GroundSource platform. (Text CORONA to 626–423–6777 to get started.) We shared the sign-up information through our Hearken embed, social media, and to preexisting text message groups we’d set up. Texting is one way we are able to connect effectively with community segments that might otherwise be outside of our digital or on-air reach. As of April 13, about 130 people have signed up to receive daily updates.
Snail mail distribution
Thirty percent of Los Angeles County residents don’t have reliable access to the internet.
Early childhood engagement producer Stefanie Ritoper and early childhood reporter Mariana Dale are now working with Los Angeles-based graphic designer Rosten Woo to produce a mailer — in English and Spanish — with critical information about coping with coronavirus. The mailer to Southern California parents and families will dovetail with our text messaging service, allowing community members to submit questions and receive answers by text. Our initial run will be 10,000 copies, which will be sent exclusively to zip codes where there is less broadband access.
Experimenting with new mediums and new partners
Soon after the scope of this emergency became clear, we partnered with PBS SoCal and KCET on a daily video Reporter Roundup. Each day our managing editor and four of our reporters join PBS SoCal’s Juan Devis in a recorded Zoom chat that airs each evening on public television. You can find it here. We attempt to cover the most important coronavirus headlines of the day in a calm and human way.
We are working to turn the briefing into an on demand audio product.
PBS SoCal will explore including the video roundup in its outreach to teachers. We believe it could be an excellent resource for high school educators looking for a simple news product for students. We have also discussed making the video and audio available to any other media outlet interested in distributing it. We are in early days of this conversation, but plan on working with our collaborations editor and engagement team to judge interest.
Reporting in English — and beyond
Before the pandemic, KPCC had spent months developing a collaboration with community, ethnic, and in-language media in Los Angeles. Our goal was to share resources for 2020 census coverage. Collaborations editor Diana Montaño is leading the charge as we leverage the relationships we’ve built with these newsrooms as well as the diversity of our newsroom to reach more audiences. Investigative fellow Yingjie Wang, for example, is a native Chinese speaker and has gone on a local Chinese radio station to discuss what’s going on. Boyle Heights Beat, a community news site that youths produce in Spanish and English, has signed on to republish coronavirus-related essays by Erick Galindo. We’re also working on partnering with Univision to bring together our investigative teams to take a hard look at a number of issues in our large and diverse Latino community.
Finding support on Facebook
While we all know we need to keep our physical distance, it’s essential we stay connected. We’ve invited KPCC-LAist readers and fellow Angelenos to come together via a Facebook group that associate audience editor Brianna Lee created. The No-Panic Support Group For Living Through Coronavirus in L.A. group is hosted by KPCC-LAist journalists and is for sharing fact-based information, tips, and stories about living in L.A. while trying to curb a pandemic. Through it, we aim to help fact-check dubious claims, find answers to community members’ questions, and amplify some of their stories on the radio and online. What we’ve found is that it’s also a place where people share experiences with fellow Angelenos and connect with other human beings in a time of isolation. Within days of its launch, the group hit roughly 2,000 members.
Hosting virtual live events
We’ve had to cancel or postpone our in-person events indefinitely, which meant our KPCC In Person team shifted gears to produce need-driven virtual events. We recently launched the “No-Panic Guide Live” series. So far, KPCC-LAist science reporter Jacob Margolis hosted a live AMA on the supply chain, Unheard LA’s Bruce A. Lemon Jr. hosted a conversation and audience Q&A with ER doctor (and Unheard LA alum) Glenn Fernandez, infrastructure correspondent Sharon McNary led a demo on how to make your own face masks, and investigative reporter Aaron Mendelson hosted a conversation on rents and evictions. We’ll continue to work across teams to identify the most timely community needs and interests to inform future programming. A second category of virtual events intended to give our audience a bit of a reprieve with a mix of opportunities for interaction and entertainment is in the works.
