Welcome to the Trusting News team, Suzie Samin
The Trusting News staff is thrilled to announce the addition of Suzie Samin (she/her) to our team. Suzie is joining us in the role of communications assistant.
We’re thrilled to be adding Suzie to our team to focus on audience development, website updates and other publishing duties. She’ll bring more consistency and sophistication to those tasks.
Suzie brings a wealth of audience and social media experience from her work at organizations like The Meteor, the New York Times and Bustle. She’s an advocate for the user experience, and for journalism that understands and accurately reflects every dimension of its audience.
In addition to our work helping journalists earn the trust of *their* intended audience, we have an audience of our own to connect with: busy, dedicated working journalists and educators. We’re excited to benefit from Suzie’s insights and curiosity about how to reach journalists where they are with resources and ideas that feel immediately accessible, relevant and useful.
Here’s what Suzie had to say when I asked her why Trusting News is a good fit for her:
“As an audience development professional and a journalist, I feel there’s nothing more important than establishing trust both within our newsrooms and among our readership. The truth and our democracy depend on it — now more than ever. Trusting News’s mission is near and dear to my heart, and I’m thrilled to be able to contribute my experience and insights to help further it. The team has already been so gracious, kind, and welcoming. I look forward to the work we’ll get to do together.”
Our team’s approach to Dimensions of Difference
Also of note with this hire: This is the first time our team has had an open position since we co-created the Dimensions of Difference Hiring Guide with partner journalists. The guide helped us think through what perspectives we already have represented on our staff and what we would love to add to our shared outlooks and values.
We included an optional question in our job application outlining why “diversity in lived experiences, perspectives, knowledge, and ideas” is important to us and invited people to share anything they chose about their background and identity. Read more in this post about our hiring process and how we worked to get a sense of how applicants would both contribute to our team’s culture and be willing to challenge it.
Suzie and her references made it clear that she would bring her experiences to her work and also that she would feel empowered to speak up — to be an advocate and to call out problems (on our team, in the newsrooms we work with and in the industry). Suzie is a first-generation Syrin and Cuban-American. She identifies as queer and lives with invisible disabilities. She’s also a vocal advocate for mental health and has been open about her own journey. We know not all workplaces foster a culture of encouragement and safety around sharing these parts of ourselves, but we’re determined to create that culture on our team and to encourage it in the newsrooms we work with.
Suzie can be reached at suzie@trustingnews.org.
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.
