How funders can support engaged journalism
Through a research project that included a field survey and four deep-dive case studies, we found support for the idea that engaged journalism practices can build trust among organizations and audiences, contribute to organizational sustainability, and lead to new and deepened civic engagement. We also shared some ideas about what journalism organizations can do — today! — to integrate engaged journalism into their day-to-day work.
If engaged journalism is so promising, why isn’t every journalism organization recalibrating to incorporate these practices into their day-to-day work flows? In a nutshell, engaged journalism is challenging:
- It takes time to build relationships, especially if there are currently non existent or bad relationships in place, or if an organization is unsure how best to use its resources;
- The journalism industry does not yet have standard ways for understanding the effect, or impact, of engaged journalism; and
- Journalism organizations often perceive “engagement” as a new and/or risky investment.
The good news is that philanthropic partners can help address these challenges and support engaged journalism practices in at least three ways.
- Support organizations’ engagement practices and experimentation with long-term investment.
Organizations will require time to get clear on their goals for engagement, conduct engagement experiments, and shift both workflow and organizational culture. There are many practices associated with engaged journalism; we identified nine commonly used and found them to have varying levels of correlation with six trust factors, identified by Lisa Heyamoto and Todd Milbourn.
Foundation investments in engaged journalism then must prioritize investing in all of these phases of work — ideation and hypothesis building, experimentation with practices and learning from results, and longer term change — over the long term.
2. Work with organizations to build capacity for measurement and learning to inform strategy.
Engagement work happens on websites, through social networks, via SMS, in person, and more. Organizations can experiment with other formats as well, such as arts-based engagement, creative storytelling, and calls-to-action — none of which have historically been considered “capital J” journalism. But how does an organization know if its experiments are working as intended? Where is there room for improvement? What are surprise learnings that can be incorporated into the next iteration of engagement?
Journalism organizations, especially nonprofit, tend not to be equipped to answer these questions. Lacking staff capacity in data analysis, business development, or social science research, effort is funneled into the storytelling, content production, and engagement activities, with measurement and learning coming as an afterthought, if at all.
Foundations have the opportunity to both support organizations’ in building capacity for measurement, research, and learning, and to share best practices across their network of grantees. Measurement might take the form of data analysis of digital metrics, surveys, focus groups, case studies, or content analysis. The important thing is to identify the need and opportunity for learning at the beginning of experimentation (and grant making) and to include the necessary capacity for learning in the shared understanding of the work and the resources required and allocated.
3. Journalism alone can’t fix journalism: Support partnerships, ecosystems, and movement infrastructure.
In the spirit of experimentation, foundations can support journalism organizations partnering with non-journalism organizations in order to build relationships, develop new competencies, and try new things without having to start from scratch.
In our research, we highlighted Free Press’s News Voices initiative, which uses organizing strategies and tactics to bring together community members and journalists, and found that their work in North Carolina with the Charlotte Observer, a McClatchy publication, is contributing to a shift in newsroom culture and building new relationships among community members. The partnership is adding more tools to the Observer’s toolbox, and is thus adding capacity for engagement. In New Jersey, the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation supported a collaborative effort that included not only news organizations, but community theaters, comics, and advocacy organizations to experiment with community engagement and reporting, and with significant impact.
And as these experiments lead to shifting practices foundations can support learning across journalism organizations. Already, networks like Gather and the European Journalism Centre are creating resources to share best practices and learnings. Panels about engagement, and especially engagement beyond social networks, are becoming common at industry conferences like ONA. There is opportunity for philanthropy to continue supporting these networks as the necessary infrastructure for an engaged journalism movement.
Interested?
Funders interested exploring ways to support engaged journalism can learn more through peer networks like Media Impact Funders in the U.S. and the Journalism Funders Forum in Europe. And we at Impact Architects are always happy to talk.
