How to be strategic about and make time for engagement (which builds trust)
Most journalists have an avalanche of feedback coming at them. Emails, phone calls, social media messages, online comments … it’s overwhelming. If you’re thinking there’s no way to thoughtfully respond to all of it, you’re probably right.
And yet you know being responsive to your audience and defending your work are important, right?
It’s been more than a decade since I dove headfirst into the world of engagement, and I definitely see trust-building as a subset of that work. At its core, engagement is about making sure journalism is focused on the people it aims to serve.
I love how Jennifer Brandel of Hearken describes it in this post.
“Engagement happens when members of the public are responsive to newsrooms, and newsrooms are in turn responsive to members of the public. It’s a feedback loop.”
“A litmus test your newsroom can use to know if there’s actual engagement going on (by our definition at least) is this question: What role does your audience play in your journalism? If there’s no meaningful answer, it’s likely there’s no meaningful engagement.”
So, what does engagement mean to us at Trusting News? We talk a lot about asking for input or feedback, including strategies like:
- soliciting questions to guide coverage
- taking questions about your journalism in a live video
- doing an AMA-style text-based Facebook post
- conducting an audience survey
We talk about being truly social — being in conversation with the people you aim to serve. That involves a lot of listening and responding, not just talking. Much of what we train newsrooms to do is fundamentally about noticing and addressing audience questions and perceptions.
It’s also about defending our work as journalists. We advise newsrooms on how to craft a response when their integrity is questioned or when misassumptions about their work are rampant.
We fully recognize that it can be hard to make time for this. There’s just so much of it, and you have deadlines. You’re not sure where to start. And there’s always the danger that it could blow up in your face.
In this post, we’re collecting tips for making engagement more effective and sustainable. It’s based on a series in our Trust Tips newsletter. We’ll share highlights from each newsletter edition, then link back so you can find more details and newsroom examples.
In four sections, we hope to both make the case that these strategies will be worth the effort and show you how they can take less time as you do them more often.
1. Use comments to explain and defend your work
Journalists have a lot to learn from audience feedback and questions, both about the topics we cover and about perceptions of our work. And wherever journalists publish their content online — on their websites or social media sites — they are then the hosts of any conversations that follow and can learn from them. But too often, journalists share content and then disappear.
My favorite way to think about this is to compare online conversations to hosting a party. Imagine you decide to have people over. You stock the bar, put on some music and throw open the door. And then you … leave. You hope (assume?) people will be on their best behavior, and you expect to come home to a house that’s still in order.
Ridiculous, right? We count on an event’s host to connect people, to gently redirect someone who gets a bit unruly, and to call a person a cab if necessary. The host kicks out a jerk, or it ruins the party for everyone. Everyone appreciates a host who values guest experiences. That’s part of moderation.
This is true in comments as well. Journalists can validate good behavior (hitting “like” on a comment is so quick and simple) and reprimand people who are ruining the vibe.
They can also contribute to conversations and answer questions. If someone at your party wants to know where to find the bathroom or what you think of your neighborhood schools, you answer them. And if they make an accusation about your family’s integrity, you defend yourself.
But what if it’s a *really big* party and you can’t possibly greet and interact with everyone?
Two tips for identifying the types of comment interactions that can help you build trust: prioritize the thoughtfulness and civility of comments, then prioritize the potential impact of your involvement in comments.
Read more about those criteria and how to put them to work in this newsletter.
2. Scale engagement efforts by being efficient
We know how hard it is to squeeze new things into the jam-packed life of a journalist. So, how can you invest in making engagement work more efficient over time? After years of coaching newsrooms through trust-building strategies, we have four tips we hope you’ll find useful.
- Take one-on-one communication public. Think about the time you spend answering emails, having phone conversations and talking to people in person. Then look for chances to share publicly what you’ve already articuated individually.
- Save responses to use again. The best way to build efficiency is to stop crafting the same language over and over. Start a newsroom document where you collect language you use to respond to your community. A Slack channel can also work if that’s more your newsroom’s style.
- Turn responses into content. Take those responses and repurpose them as editor’s columns, newsletter sections, social media videos, editor’s notes on stories, etc.
- Form realistic habits that are appropriate for your role. Identify what is within your control and what you hope to accomplish. Comment more on stories? Have better conversations with sources out in the field? Use your own social media to talk about your work? Then set up a system that works for you.
Find examples and more detail in this newsletter.
3. Turn negative feedback into trust-building opportunities
When we begin work with a newsroom or journalist, we often start by asking: What gets in the way of trust with your specific audience?
As we make a list of themes, we look for information gaps in users’ understanding of your work. And we think of those information gaps as opportunities to earn trust. One example: If you commonly hear accusations that you shouldn’t need a paywall because you get money from advertising, think of that as an information gap. Your audience doesn’t know what sources of revenue are or why you need community support. And why would they, if you’re not telling them?
We recommend reframing those complaints in neutral language. Work to identify what the complaint implies about what the user doesn’t understand. Then articulate your counternarrative. What do you wish people knew?
Think about all the ways journalists can lose credibility because of what people do not understand about our ethics, our motivation for doing the work, our processes and our business model? Where and how can we explain those things? (Who’s going to do it if we don’t?)
And remember: If one user doesn’t understand, there are likely others with the same misperceptions. That’s why responding publicly when possible is important. It gets your answer to everyone else who’s reading, not just the person doing the complaining. It also prevents your detractors from going unchecked on the topic of your credibility.
4. Defend yourself without sounding defensive
When journalists respond to their communities (the people they aim to serve), we like to assess both the content and the tone of their remarks. Think about diplomacy and humility, and focus on what you most want people to know. (Also, take a break when you need to, and back each other up. This work can affect your mental health and your faith in humanity.)
5 tips for the content of your engagement
- Identify what you want the person to know about your work.
- Use links.
- Make a point to actually answer the question or address the issue that was raised.
- Acknowledge where the user is coming from.
- Think about what you could learn, and ask follow-up questions.
5 tips for the tone of your engagement
- Be humble, authentic and human.
- Be amiable.
- Leave people feeling glad they reached out.
- Be generous and assume good intentions.
- Put people who actually *like people* in charge of your engagement.
Find more details and examples in this newsletter.
Trusting News is designed to demystify the issue of trust in journalism. We research how people decide what news is credible, then turn that knowledge into actionable strategies for journalists. We’re funded by the Reynolds Journalism Institute, the American Press Institute, Democracy Fund and the Knight Foundation. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook. Subscribe to our Trust Tips newsletter. Read more about our work at TrustingNews.org.
