Meet the team: Sarah Pineda shares a behind-the-scenes look at KPCC’s engaged journalism work
My first day working at KPCC-LAist, I found my desk. That was a Monday. Tuesday was Election Day. The Thousand Oaks shooting happened my third day, and the Woolsey Fire erupted the day after that. I think it’s safe to say my first week was a busy one, but it provided a powerful crash course into engaged journalism.
It’s now been a little over a year since I joined the community engagement team, first as an apprentice news clerk (a role that’s similar to an internship) and now as a permanent assistant producer. When I explain to others what my job is, I like to say I serve as a liaison between the newsroom and community members. I work to help our journalism become more reflective of the audience we serve.
Yeah, but what does THAT mean? KPCC-LAist prioritizes centering community insights in our reporting and live events. We have set up several channels of communication — through surveys, emails, text messages, and other means — and those channels require constant maintenance and care. This is where I come in.
One example: Hearken is a widely used engagement management platform through which community members can ask journalists questions. At KPCC-LAist, we invite general questions throughout the year. On any given day, we may field inquiries like, “Where is the best place to watch the sunset, feel a cool breeze and enjoy a cocktail?” or “How can I make friends in such a large city?” or “Is L.A. a desert?” if we want to get controversial. If community members have a question for a reporter on a specific beat of their interest, they can ask them through their Hearken embed. I’ll read through all these questions and answer some or direct them to the people in the newsroom who can. Some of these questions get answered on LAist in our “Dear LAist” column or in an on-air segment.
We also invite questions during breaking news, like wildfires, elections, and shootings. My first experience working on this was during Election Day in 2018. I helped answer questions the public had on voting and the election. We provide a public service to help people navigate the flood of news coverage to answer their specific questions one-on-one through email. When the SoCal wildfires broke out last year and this fall, we received nearly 500 questions. People asked us where to find missing family members, how to find out whether they needed to evacuate their homes, what they could do to help families affected. I helped answer their questions. These events cause fear of a legit threat and having a platform for them to ask these types of questions, builds trust within the community that we’re a reliable source.
Not only do we invite community members’ questions and curiosity, but we also regularly turn to our audiences to inform our reporting, shows, and live events. In fact, we have tens of thousands of people who have signed up specifically to become news sources for KPCC-LAist, answering our journalists’ questions on everything from college statistics classes to public transit experiences to what it’s like in the months after giving birth. The responses we received from these queries led to powerful stories highlighting voices with first-hand experience on underreported topics. How do we get the process started? Typically, a reporter or producer comes up to me with an interest in hearing from the KPCC-LAist audience or a specific target group on a unique topic. I’ll create a collection of questions on an online form, then email news sources and work with the social media team to get the word out. Once the responses start coming in, I’ll make sure I get them to the reporter; sources then might get quoted or interviewed for a story online or on-air.
Not only does engaged journalism allow us to be more reflective of our community and relevant to them, but it’s a critical part of our sustainability. We’ve learned that centering the experiences and curiosity of Angelenos doesn’t only allow for more original reporting but also stories that perform well on our website attract a local and loyal digital audience. To be very specific, stories that are tagged as being produced through engaged journalism tend to draw larger audiences with people spending more time on the stories. These readers also are more likely to be from the Los Angeles area and come back to the website more often. This matters when we’re working hard to become part of Angelenos’ daily habits.
As part of the engagement team, I am always working on different special projects and doing new things — whether that’s tabling for our elder abuse coverage outside in 90-degree weather, bundling more than 4,000 postcards with rubber bands to get the word out on our black infant mortality reporting, doing Instagram stories during our Unheard LA shows, I truly love working in engaged journalism.
If you’re interested in sharing your insights and experiences with our newsroom, sign up to become a KPCC-LAist news source. Have a question that’s been on your mind? Ask us anything. Shoot me an email at spineda@scpr.org to learn more about how you can get involved in our journalism.
