Some Highlights from my Social Journalism Community Engagement Class

In our first Community Engagement class taught by Dr. Carrie Brown and Professor Jeff Jarvis, they popped the big question: “What is Social Journalism?” I’d read Jeff’s book, Geeks Bearing Gifts (twice, just to be sure I was off to a good start), yet I still wasn’t sure I could completely articulate what I had signed up for. I had no background in journalism — was a CPA, an entrepreneur, and a holistic health coach — but I was drawn to this new social journalism program at CUNY — it resonated deeply with my desire to impact a community that mattered to me.

The semester was fast-paced and filled with exciting new ideas, guest speakers and hands on experiences. I was required to write about what I was learning through weekly posts on Medium — it felt vulnerable to put my writing in a public place so soon, but it was a valuable experience that became easier over time. The Medium posts have challenged me to think about how to apply what I’ve learned to the work in my community. I’ve also learned a lot from hearing what my peers are thinking.

Seeing journalism as a service and why it matters

Journalists have an opportunity to engage with their communities to help them to better organize themselves, to identify problems, to help them collaborate to find solutions that meet their needs, accomplish their goals and improve their community. This is social journalism — at least as I currently see it.

I’ve learned that the connection between journalists and their audience has disintegrated over the years. This appears to have been the result of journalists wanting to be objective in their reporting, and as a result, they’ve separated themselves from their community to avoid any conflict of interest and to report the news fairly. For years journalists have been criticized for partnering with a community to help find solutions to their problems — they called it advocacy, a term that appeared to conflict with objectivity.

We had an interesting class discussion about advocacy and objectivity. Our professor Jeff Jarvis wrote about this in his book, “Geeks Bearing Gifts” and said, “Isn’t advocacy on behalf of principles and the public the true test of journalism? The choices we make about what to cover and how we cover it and what the public needs to know are acts of advocacy on the public’s behalf. Don’t we believe that we act in their interest?” When we help our communities meet their needs and accomplish their goals, we are advocates for them. Jeff also went on to say that we are not objective as journalists.

In the “Elements of Journalism,” Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel appear to agree when they state that objectivity was not meant to imply that journalists were unbiased, rather, it is about the method rather than the journalist being objective — our first obligation as journalists is to report the truth to citizens. I have loved these class discussions.

The internet has significantly impacted journalism — blogging and social media has produced more citizen journalists and the trust in traditional journalism has been challenged. Now, more than ever, journalists are beginning to see the value of connecting with communities. The concept of mass media and the masses no longer exists — we must see people as individuals who are a part of a community.

CUNY’s social journalism program is not just about social media, although that is a part of it — it’s focused on engaging with a community’s own work. I chose to take a year out of my life, move to NYC and devote myself completely to this intense program for a reason — I want to have a more significant impact in my community. I’m learning some cutting-edge skills for engagement that I believe will make a huge difference in the outcome of my work as a journalist. I’m learning the value of doing journalism with rather than for my community.

Learning to Listen: Listening to Learn & Empathize

I have to admit that when I started this program I thought I was a pretty good listener — after all, I was trained to listen to my clients as a certified health coach, and I spent years as a healthcare consultant. This program has helped me to recognize that I sometimes listen for the purpose of responding. I want to listen to understand — there’s a big difference that translates to developing empathy.

Design Thinking

My favorite listening tool that we’ve learned about is design thinking. It starts by listening for the purpose of gaining empathy. Next we reframe the problem by capturing our findings and insights and defining them. Then we ideate, which is sort of brainstorming about ideas to come up with a prototype, a model that we will test and modify. I loved being able to practice it through a hands-on workshop during our orientation.

We had the opportunity to teach a design thinking workshop to college students which was amazing. Teaching has always been an effective way for me to learn, and this workshop was no exception. I was encouraging to see our students follow the design thinking process and come up with impressive prototypes that solved specific problems. It was a powerful experience! Design thinking can help us reframe our problems — it can even change our worldview.

We also had a group “design challenge” for WBEZ that was very helpful for gaining practical design thinking experience. While it took me out of my comfort zone to go out and ask strangers questions about their listening habits and their relationship to public radio, I definitely learned more about how to listen and empathize with the needs of a community. By following the design thinking process, we were able to identify specific problems that led to creating a practical solution that we presented to WBEZ.

Ethnography

Dr. Lisbeth Berbary spoke to us about ethnography — she’s brilliant! I learned a lot from her about listening and used some of her tools to do an observation exercise where I took very detailed notes while studying people and their surroundings.

This exercise was interesting because I didn’t realize how much detail I miss. It forced me to see things that I’ve been completely ignoring. I can see great value in learning how to observe as a researcher. I’m naturally starting to practice this more often and beginning to notice more of the details, like sounds, smells, gestures, language, etc. It’s a great exercise in learning to be present!

I’ve already been able to apply some of what Dr. Berbary taught us about interviewing to the work in my own community. I recently did an informal interview with someone I met in my community. I met them at a place they picked so they would be comfortable. I asked them open-ended questions using “tell me about” and “tell me more” which turned out to be one of the best conversations I have had because I learned far more than I imagined I would. I jotted down only a few notes using key words and as soon as I left, and expanded my notes when I got home so I wouldn’t forget the details of the conversation. I appreciated her suggestion to record (audio) my thoughts immediately after an interview and transcribe those thoughts into my written notes.

Hearken

It was a privilege to have Jennifer Brandel present Hearken to our class and provide us with the opportunity to use this valuable listening tool in our communities. Hearken provides a framework for approaching stories and making sure people want them before we report them — public-powered journalism. It offers such a unique way to involve the community in our work, by letting them ask the questions that they want us to report on, having the community vote on the top choices, and inviting the person whose question we chose to report on to participate in our reporting. It’s a brilliant way to build a relationship of trust with our community by giving them what they ask for, not what we think they need. It benefits reporters by always having fresh story ideas from the audience and allowing those who ask questions to become the protagonist for a story. I’m excited about using this tool so that members in my community can become collaborators in the journalism.

Groundsource

Another great listening tool, Groundsource, was presented by its creator, Andrew Haeg. GroundSource is a crowdsourcing tool that helps us listen to the stories of our community by engaging in a conversation with them. It can help us to learn more about their needs so that we can better serve them. I enjoyed being able to use this tool for a ProPublica project in our Metrics and Outcomes class. I was able to experience the entire process from creating a community campaign and deploying it, to gathering the responses. Now that I’ve used it, I know that it will be easy to incorporate as a part of my community engagement.

Ladder of Engagement/Participation

We talked about the different levels of engagement starting at the bottom of the ladder with reach, moving up to engagement, then building relationships, then impact. When considering a community’s goals is, we should ask what we’re doing to contribute to those goals.

Kelsey Proud’s article, “The news is served: How newsrooms can connect with communities” was eye-opening. I loved what she said: “We can serve our neighbors and our world by involving them in the process from start to finish. We have to know who they are, what they value, and how they consume information. And we have to demonstrate that we know these things by bringing the stories to them where they are.”

“It’s the difference between writing in a personal journal and journalism. Journaling is for the writer. Journalism is for the community. It’s not about us.”

She also gave us some practical questions to ask when reporting. I’ve been reviewing these often as I’m engaging with my community.

She said that if we’re working on a project-based engagement effort (or individual story), we should answer these questions (in sequence) before reporting:

1. What is the specific need you’re trying to fill or question you’re trying to answer? Can you boil it down to one sentence? This also helps you describe your project to others.
2. To whom is this topic important? Think about factors such as age, education level, race, socioeconomic status, geography, access to technology, and marital status. There may be several groups you identify here, but your journalism should be laser-focused on serving one group especially well.
3. Why is it important to the targeted community? How do you know? Don’t assume — ask! This can take time to figure out. It’s worth it to be comprehensive in answering it.
4. How do the people who need this information or are affected by this topic consume information? Is the community digitally connected or do they engage with each other in other ways? (If the answer is no, consider physical/analog or events-based engagement strategies. They can be an important part of the puzzle.)
5. How should the journalism be reported, presented, published and/or broadcast? What tools does your organization already have that can be used to create journalism or information that will best serve this group of people where they are?
6. How will the group you identified know about the project? This goes back to the whole “Why do it if no one will see it?” core principle.
7. How will we know if we are successful? How will we follow up?

Diversity

I learned some important things to consider when reporting on a community that is not my own from our guests speakers, Rong Xiaoqing and Aleksandra Slabisz. They talked about internally serving a community rather than external reporting, they mentioned the importance of reaching out to community leaders.

Developing relationships with trusted leaders is essential to gaining a better understanding our community’s needs and the sensitive issues going on within the community. It’s also an important part of establishing credibility within the community. When we engage with our community and listen to their needs with openness, we are challenged to see our own biases and we discover our commonalities. Empathic listening opens us up, makes us more vulnerable, and inspires action and social change.

Conflict

Our guest speaker Pedro Burgos talked about improving comments and online discourse — I could have listened to him all day. He had a great perspective about building a healthy space while listening, participating, fostering disagreements and internalizing what is being communicated. He said that comments are important to democracy. It was refreshing to hear him say that it’s important to listen to both sides so that we can empathize with where everyone is coming from. In the end, it will help us to produce more relevant, impactful journalism. This will be helpful for me because there is some serious conflict going on in my community and one of my goals is to help to bridge the gap between two opposing viewpoints.

While I’ve highlighted some of my key takeaways from my Community Engagement class, there’s so much more. It’s truly an honor to be a part of this amazing program.