Listening Across Illinois
A few months ago Kristin Walters attended a peace march in Danville, Illinois as part of a gun violence series the public media collaboration, Illinois Newsroom, has been working on. Walters set out to chat with folks at the march and also set up a Listening Post recording device to collect feedback from the many attendees affected by gun violence. Walters told us she’d seen that “in people’s grief, sometimes the Listening Post wasn’t the best storytelling option because it was too painful for them to sit alone with their thoughts. They actually preferred talking to me.”
We love hearing from folks who’ve tried out strategies from our playbook or tested a tool from our toolbox. Seeing photos of a new Listening Post out and about is always exciting. Successes with these tools or strategies are reassuring, but we have no illusions that they are suited for every situation. That’s why it’s just as meaningful to get feedback when something doesn’t go quite as planned.
In fact we had a similar experience to Walters when our New Orleans project covered gunshot survivors. Rather than using a recording device, we engaged residents around this difficult yet common experience by tapping into trusted community spaces, in this case a boxing gym, to connect with people around this topic. Here’s the result of that work.
We followed up with Kristin Walters to chat about her engagement work with Illinois Newsroom and her plans to give it another go with a brand new Listening Post recording device.
Illinois Newsroom is a regional journalism collaboration between six different Illinois outlets. The collaboration works to fill the gap between hyper local spot news and national news by focusing on in-depth reporting coming from a regional perspective. As the Engagement Strategist, Walters is working to integrate engagement work into the editorial process at Illinois Newsroom. “I’m developing or uncovering pathways for community voices to influence the topics our reporters cover and how they cover them,” says Walters.
This process begins with extensive listening. Walters is leading twenty meetups across Illinois each month. She reaches out to city managers, school superintendents, non-profit managers and others about specific reporting topics. Then she facilitates a listening session with these community leaders and reporters from the local Illinois Newsroom affiliate. These sessions aren’t for broadcast purposes, they’re just about listening for an hour.
For Walters, this effort is a critical step in shaping local and regional reporting that most of the newsrooms in the collaborative wouldn’t have the capacity to conduct on their own. These sessions lead to story ideas, sources, and ultimately she’s building a statewide network of stakeholders. As civil society actors become more invested in supporting the concept of local journalism, there’s an identity shift within the community around newsrooms. Walters says, “we don’t want to be seen only as a place where you send your press releases. We’d rather you also understand that we’re constantly searching to understand the community better and when something interesting is happening we want to be the first people you call.”
Ultimately journalism gets created from the conversations Walters has around the state. For example, Walters conducted a month of listening sessions in eight high schools across the state and voices from these sessions contributed to Illinois Newsroom’s series on gun violence. Once these stories are created, Walters goes back to communities to make sure they see the results. She’s created an event series called News & Brews. The first event focused on trauma in schools and was called “How Schools Can Better Help Kids Cope.” The event, hosted at a brewery in Urbana, quickly hit capacity and spilled out into the beer garden with some 140 people in attendance.
Folks gathered to listen to a panel of experts, ask them questions, and have break out discussions. “We were able to serve as connectors between people in the community and resources,” says Walters. Parents, teachers, administrators, and non-profit workers mingled over beers, sharing experiences and exploring difficult questions with experts in the field.
These events are also a way to keep the community at the forefront of Illinois Newsroom’s reporting. They give community members the opportunity to interact with the story or topic and push continuing coverage forward. At the first News & Brews event, Walters passed around perforated postcards for participants to take notes, submit questions, or suggestions for further coverage.
Twenty questions and comments were submitted at the event and journalists from Illinois Newsroom are working with panelists from the event to respond and investigate. The next News & Brews is at the end of July and will center around funding for prison libraries. Walters is working to build a new Listening Post that she will have on hand at the event to collect stories from attendees about their favorite books or their experiences with incarceration. This Listening Post will be another tool for Walters to use in achieving her goals as the engagement strategist. She wants to understand “what is important news and information for our community and how are we going to spend our limited time and resources in the best way?” Integrating engagement into the editorial process and allowing community voices to guide reporting ensures that Illinois Newsroom is functioning as a vital community resource.
The Listening Post Collective is a project of Internews. We provide journalists, newsroom leaders, and non-profits tools and advice to create meaningful conversations with their communities. We believe responsible reporting begins with listening. From there, media outlets and community organizations can create news stories that respond to people’s informational needs, reflect their lives, and enable them to make informed decisions.
