How Back Pocket Media is helping newsrooms build trust through storytelling events
The following post was written by Tay Glass, a Senior Producer at Back Pocket Media.
Note: Trusting News Assistant Director Lynn Walsh helped advise Back Pocket Media on survey questions for these events. While the following results are based on only about 100 survey respondents, Back Pocket Media’s findings make a compelling case for how hosting authentic, engaging community events can positively impact a community’s view and relationship with a news organization and its journalists. If you’re inspired by this work and want help brainstorming around events and how to assess audience response to them, you can reach out to the Trusting News team on Twitter or via email.
Americans’ trust in news media remains near-record lows, according to a recent poll from Gallup. At 34%, the number of Americans who believe mass media reports “the news fully, accurately and fairly” in 2022 is only rivaled by the all-time low that was set during the runup to the 2016 presidential election.
In the face of this widespread distrust in “the fourth estate,” it’s easy to feel despondent. But for the last two years, we at Back Pocket Media have been using live storytelling events to help solve the journalism trust crisis. And the results are encouraging.
Our concept is simple — get journalists up on stage to share intimate, human stories that show the behind-the-scenes of the reporting process. These live performances, known broadly as “live journalism,” are often accompanied by music and multimedia. Other key players in the space include the Moth, the National Storytelling Festival and the Storytellers Project. At Back Pocket, we take a local approach and feature stories for, by and about the community.
Since 2020, we have partnered with 25+ newsrooms across America to put on live journalism events that feature impactful local journalism on stage. The most recent season of Local Live(s) events included collaborations with ProPublica, the Miami Herald, the Baltimore Sun, Michigan Radio and more.
Qualitative and quantitative data suggest the events resonated with local community members on a deeply personal level. According to the data, 91% of attendee respondents across 13 events felt “the live stories I heard tonight made me feel [the newsroom] produces reliable news and information.”
Reliability was one of three key indicators of trust we measured in a post-event survey that we built in collaboration with Trusting News.
“The event accomplished exactly what I had hoped,” Mary-Margaret White, CEO of Mississippi Today said. “It created a space for our readers to have a deeper understanding of what it is like to work in journalism and it also attracted a younger and more diverse audience than past programs.”
According to the survey data, 80% said “after hearing the journalists’ stories, you can trust most news most of the time.”
By comparison, trust in news in the U.S. has fallen by three percentage points and remains the lowest (26%) of 46 countries surveyed by Reuters in their recent Digital News Report.
“Local Live(s) really does help build that connection between journalists and their community,” Ivan Venegas, an attendee at the Local Live(s) x Miami Herald event in February 2022, said. “More of this. More events. More, more, more. That’s my recommendation.”
“We’ve seen our events drive engagement in three key areas,” Back Pocket co-Founder McArdle Hankin, said. “They allow local newsrooms to reach new audiences, build trust with underserved communities and promote collaboration across local media ecosystems. It’s exciting to see non-readers stay late after a show to banter with reporters they may have never read.”
Back Pocket Media recently received a grant from the Knight Foundation to hire a Development Manager. This marks the first non-founder hire and offers an opportunity to do meaningful work at the intersection of journalism, storytelling and democracy (if you’re interested in learning more, you can view the job posting here).
The Knight funds will also support a large-scale storytelling festival in Philadelphia that uplifts the city and shows the story behind the region’s biggest headlines. The inaugural event will include journalists from 4–7 news organizations including Resolve Philly and the Philadelphia Inquirer and is slated for fall 2023.
To attend an event or reach out, you can follow Back Pocket on Instagram here, Twitter here or join our newsletter here.
At Trusting News, we learn how people decide what news to trust and turn that knowledge into actionable strategies for journalists. We train and empower journalists to take responsibility for demonstrating credibility and actively earning trust through transparency and engagement. We’re co-hosted by the Reynolds Journalism Institute and the American Press Institute. Subscribe to our Trust Tips newsletter. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook. Read more about our work at TrustingNews.org.
