The take from outer space
Information needs from a different perspective
The ideas here were developed in conversation with Sarah Alvarez of Outlier Media, Courtney Hurtt of WDET, Eve Pearlman of Spaceship Media, Mike Rispoli of the News Voices Project of Free Press, and Harry Blacklund and Darryl Holliday of City Bureau.
At Spaceship Media, we use journalism to bridge divides between ordinary citizens on opposite sides of polarizing issues. Our work takes the ideas of “journalist” and “media” and looks at them from different perspectives. Because of the work we are doing, Spaceship Media cofounder Eve Pearlman was invited to a discussion with a group of journalism-obsessed, social-justice-driven minds in Detroit last summer at the behest of Outlier Media’s Sarah Alvarez.
While I was not part of the original group talking about information needs, the idea was introduced to me by Eve at ONA’s conference last year. “You know Maslow?” she asked. “It’s like that pyramid, but for news!” Eve and fellow Detroit-goer Mike Rispoli’s excitement drew me into their conversation about The Shape. The idea of deepening the discussion was born, and I was invited to the video conference calls that followed.
The Shape is the pyramid of information needs that this group started to define at Sarah’s gathering in Detroit. Rough contours: The shape is Maslow’s hierarchy of needs pyramid repurposed for news, with the lowest and biggest portion designated for basic, survival information needs and the tip being news that is less vital to day-to-day life. The pyramid is a framework for journalists to think about story and media and industry — to think about the range of needs for information in the communities they serve. City Bureau’s Harry Blacklund details the pyramid in this fabulous essay. He writes:
One of the first things we noticed in sketching the information pyramid is that our priorities seem wildly out of balance: a huge amount of journalistic resources go into the top of the pyramid to serve the abstract needs of a comfortable few, completely passing over the basic information needs of a great many.
The conversations (there were many over the course of the year) were inspiring. They epitomized the openness and willingness to be collaborative that is needed for real, meaningful change. The conversations left Eve and me joyful and full of ideas, and drove Team Spaceship to think of the hierarchy of needs in the context of dialogue journalism, our brand of deeply human centered journalism.
The Pyramid, as seen from above
In sketching our version of the information needs pyramid, and being out of this world on our Spaceship, we took the perspective of the pyramid from the top down. By fulfilling basic human needs first, news providers can help people become full actors in their lives, in their communities and in their democracy.
Spaceship Media is a journalism organization, living comfortably in the human connection circle, helping people talk across difference to help restore trust in journalism, and build community. So far on our journey we have used our method to addresses divides and polarization issue by issue. We have hosted conversations about immigration, guns, education and electoral politics. We have been lucky to have meaningful outcomes in communication and community building with this method, and we have also wondered if we could push beyond that circle or, more accurately, into it.
Spaceship Local, pyramid practice on the horizon
Can Spaceship Media use our method of dialogue journalism to address more basic information needs like those that support safety and survival? What if instead of creating conversations around single polarizing issues, Spaceship Media hosted and supported more varied conversations in communities? What if we used these conversations to identify and then fulfill the basic information needs of people in cities and towns places where the discourse is often polarized around issues of local importance: school taxes, development, city government, public safety?
Polarization begins at the local level. When citizens don’t know journalists, when local news infrastructure doesn’t serve them directly), and when there is no place to go for civil, respectful dialogue about the issues that matter deeply to their lives, trust in journalism declines and democracy suffers.
Spaceship Local is a project to bridge divides, meet the information needs of local communities, and help restore trust in journalism. It adapts Spaceship Media’s successful method of dialogue journalism to serve cities and towns, and includes a roadmap for deep partnerships with libraries, established media entities, and other community organizations.
Let’s breakdown that high-mindedness
The fabric of community becomes frayed when citizens don’t know the journalists who cover them or have no local coverage at all. Information needs don’t vanish because there’s nobody there to report them. Information needs don’t go away when newsrooms disappear or stop covering a neighborhood. So people do what people do, they look for others in their midst who might have information. Across the country we see place-based Facebook groups and other social media groups where conjecture and hypothesis or guess (misinformation) runs wild. These conversations are often about safety concerns. In my neighborhood group, there are often questions about suspicious characters or police presence.
In a Facebook group dedicated to Douglas, Arizona — the town where I grew up — I see talk about the mayor’s abuse of power and the movement of undocumented people along the border. The idea behind the information pyramid is that by meeting the basic information needs of people you give them the ability to move on to needs to the outer rings of the pyramid
Journalists routinely cover inequity as an abstract phenomenon that can be observed and remarked upon from afar, but it’s a rare media organization that would produce a guide for navigating rural poverty, or managing an opioid addiction, or handling your lease when you’re getting gentrified out of your neighborhood.
On social media, unfettered by careful, trusted reporting, people share pieces of truth or outright incorrect information, animosity arises and rifts are produced or widen. What if journalists were there to dig up facts through partnerships with community organizations? What if journalists used this information to moderate miscommunications and build relationships within the community? What if people saw themselves and their neighbors reflected accurately, publically?
This fall, Spaceship Media will begin conversations in my hometown, Douglas, Arizona — a pilot project we are calling Douglas Local — to see what happens when a news desert has focused, moderated conversation among members of its community and journalists are there to listen and provide information that meets specific needs of that community, focusing on safety and connection.
With this overhead view of the information pyramid, we see a clear connection between what Spaceship Media started off doing and what we hope to accomplish: to help the local news ecosystem better serve each community.
Stay tuned.
Spaceship Local: Douglas Local is funded in part by Lenfest/FB Community Network Grant and The Kettering Foundation with a research partnership with ASU News/Co Lab.
