Who Tells Your Story?
Journalism that makes changes
Throughout my college years studying journalism, I’ve realized one thing that seems to stand strong: people of color do not get the representation in the media that they deserve. Often people of color do not have people in the news rooms representing them, or frankly, people are not interested in people of color unless there’s violence involved.
So what would happen if journalists interacted with communities enough to paint accurate pictures of the real people living there, and their real stories? That’s where community involvement comes in. In order to paint accurate representations of certain environments, the people present there need to feel comfortable and listened to enough to share their sentiments.
There needs to be space on the internet where communities feel represented within the content. A clear, productive way to get to that is to allow the people that we’re writing about to give those very valuable first hand accounts and memories. Social media in particular has given journalists an avenue that makes it easier than ever to give communities a clear path to their voice. Lots of journalists have personal Twitter and Facebook pages that their readers can follow and (even better) interact with them. Imagine the juicy content that could come from the first hand accounts of engaged communities.
While I’ve never participated in forms of community engagement as a “serious journalist,” I’ve witnessed journalists who did. Youtube journalist Philip DeFranco uses his page as a place where his viewers frequently engage in conversation with him. They request the stories for the day, he encourages (and responds) to the comments that they leave on his videos, and he even dedicates every Friday to his viewers, calling it the “community show”.
This space where the viewers are an active part of the content creates a space where you always know that the viewers are going to be interested in the content, and more importantly, it makes sure that the news is never one sided. Often the media is criticized for being one sided and excluding demographics. Involving every community in the media makes sure that it’s always a fully representative space for all the consumers.
