Getting Out Of The Newsroom For Your Community
Linda Fantin shows us how to specialize our community reporting
As journalism students, we spend a lot of time talking about objectivity and its debated existence. We spend even more time discussing the importance of transparency and authenticity, but how are we translating this classroom discourse #irl? Linda Fantin of Public Insight Network has some advice for prospective journalists and interviewers alike: know your community and tailor your content to fit their needs.
“It’s important that people know who’s asking the questions” — Linda Fantin
Authenticity and transparency intertwine when it comes to identifying the “who” behind community reporting. When it comes to authenticity, it’s up to the community to decide what stories are truly reflective of their shared experiences. Journalists don’t get to decide what is and what’s not authentic about a community — if people are willing to share honestly, authentic stories will be reported. It’s the journalist’s job to get at the heart of these honest narratives, which requires a ton of communication and collaboration. Transparency is primarily the task of the journalist since some communities, particularly more niche and marginalized communities, may not initially open up to unknown journalists.
“No one cares what you know until they know that you care.”
For our Staten Island GroundSource project, my group discovered that meaningfully engaging an entire borough, particularly a borough that none of us lived in, was pretty much impossible. Instead, we’ve chosen to focus on a specific region of Staten Island — the North Shore. That meant tailoring our outreach questions to ensure that they resonate with local residents, and not overwhelm or offend them. It’s about asking basic questions like, “What is missing from the North Shore?” or “How do you feel about the coming giant wheel?” Don’t purport to know anything about a community; leave your ego in the newsroom.
Engaging a community can be as easy as asking simple, conversational questions. Fantin’s advice to our class is to not parachute into a community with hard-hitting, probing questions. Rather, ask folks what sort of questions journalists should be asking. For example, Fantin suggests asking: “What is happening in your daily life that you think people should know about?” Allowing the community to direct your reporting will improve the quality of your stories, and it may build long lasting trust between you and the community.
“Building relationships starts with getting out of the building and engaging people.”
In anthropology, we’d sometimes debate the semantics around calling our ethnographic subjects our informants or our collaborators. The distinction being: who’s impacting whom? As journalists, we must always question whether we‘re reporting on the stories we assume affect a community, or if we’re actively including the community’s expressed concerns in our reporting? Understanding our relationship to specific communities will help us as journalists relay their stories, and not rewrite them.
“Think of the community’s information needs and not the journalists’.”
Knowing what platforms your community utilizes could mean the difference between having no engagement, and establishing a legitimate presence within a community. As journalists, we should always be thinking of creative ways for folks to access information, because the way we obtain relevant stories, may not be the way a community does, so avoid reporting to the void.
Questions:
- When has journalism positively served your community?
- Can you recall a time when journalism has failed your community?
- Are you planning to serve a virtual community? If not, how have you physically engaged your community?
