The drive to innovate engagement—why big and small media companies are pushing for it
“Are you the present or the future?”
That’s the last question Carrie Brown, the director of CUNY’s social journalism program, asked us before we left our first session of the University of Oregon’s Super-J in NYC trip.
Looking back now, her question rang true to everything we learned at CUNY that day.
But it also rang true in almost every session we had over the course of that next week.
Brown also said the goal of their social journalism program is to teach people who can “flip journalism on its head.”
To me, that’s just any other way of saying that they’re out to change the world.
And as the engagement editor at The Emerald, I wish I could say I wasn’t surprised when I heard them mention that engagement and listening were big factors in what the future of media will be.
But I was. Particularly since the metrics use of the word “engagement” sometimes be seen as a dirty word to journalists
Brown perhaps summed it up best when she said: “Sustainable news is engaging audiences.”
Engagement seems to be the new “inno”
And I’m not talking about that buzzword “engagement.” I’m talking real, I hear and see my community kind of engagement. The kind of engagement that has nothing to do with the metrics that drive social media or clicks to your site—I’m talking about reaching out to your audience and asking what they wanted to see covered.
“Engagement is a function of listening to the customer voice, how they’re behaving and how they actually want to engage with us,” said Deirdre Breakenridge, CEO of Pure Performance Communications and adjunct professor at NYU, in a Mashable article. “That’s probably the biggest piece right there. It’s so hard to define engagement if you’re not taking the time to truly understand how people want to interact with you.”
This came up in more than half of the 16 organizations we visited over the course of five days. Innovation and engagement became intertwined—whether that be in the quiet newsroom of the Wall Street Journal or the offices of Parse.ly.
Engagement meant something different to everyone we talked to at the different media groups. There’s no doubt that all these companies are pushing for better community engagement—regardless of their legacy paper status or clickbait-y reputation.
Each of them are seeking to innovate. They are seeking to do something better than they’ve done before.
For the New Yorker’s Senior Web Manager Michael Guerriero, he says that could mean having social media channels that tell stories rather than just simply promoting stories.
Basically, a short-form extension of what journalists do already… Just a little more digital-first focused.
“What does it mean to be digital?” asked Ian Fisher, an assistant editor of the New York Times. “(To me), being digital means recreating your relationship with the audience, no matter where they happen to find you.”
It’s not like people aren’t paying attention to community engagement
Some of these media groups are trying to engage audiences in a myriad of different ways.
ProPublica is one news outlet that has a dedicated engagement team—which admittedly have a growing presence around newsrooms everywhere.
The nonprofit’s (community) engagement efforts really focus on those who don’t naturally gravitate toward its coverage. Occasionally, the team will adapt its coverage to target a specific demographic. For example, to target a younger audience, it would focus on the topic of college loans.
But ProPublica’s main focus is building and nurturing community to find stories, and to allow people to tell theirs. The team uses a bunch of different platforms to build these communities—from Facebook groups to a ground source messaging app, email lists and more.
A recent form of this occurred in its call out for its Agent Orange investigation.
But it’s not just “words” people focusing on engagement
Video folks are too. And the design folks. And probably others I’m missing.
What’s sticking out in my mind almost two weeks later is Blue Chalk’s use of engagement tools. While its admittedly not as formal as what ProPublic is doing, the idea is still there.
Blue Chalk is “an award-winning production and media strategy company founded by proven business leaders who believe in the power of nonfiction visual storytelling.”
Some of the work is paid for by clients, some of it isn’t.
But one of Blue Chalk’s objectives is to focus on leveraging storytelling to engage viewers.
“It’s personal at the end of the day,” said Greg Moyer, chief executive office of Blue Chalk. “It’s who you know and wHo is willing to work with you.”
Here are a few examples of how Blue Chalk engaged different types of audiences to completed it’s work. (Bearing in mind that some of this Blue Chalk content was commissioned by companies.)
And even the engagement people aren’t blowing up the buzzword
When we visited Parse.ly, we met with Kelsey Arendt, who’s a customer success manager. She used to work for the Guardian’s commercial team, where she managed projects dealing with marketing and sales.
Parse.ly’s main mission is to provide publishers with “clean audience insights to answer questions about how readers respond to content.
It’s not to dictate content, it’s not to tell people how to write. It’s more a form of digital strategy, and seeing what types of action are most affective for your audience.
“The story is always the thing.” — Kelsey Arendt, Parse.ly
Arendt pointed out that there is a difference between social media, share-ability of post and engagement. Specifically audience engagement, as well.
Over the last few years, engaged time has become even more important. Referrers from social and search are becoming increasingly important as well.
Pushing for bigger investments in community engagement might pay off for news groups
We’re in a time of news seeking out the audience instead of the other way around. Millennials are joked as having the attention span of goldfishes, and being uninterested in anything other than clickbait.
“I don’t know that clickbait equals young people,” said Fisher.
In fact, Ardent thinks that audience metrics and demographics data have too much weight put on them.
“What the age argument comes down to, in my opinion, is millennials and everybody else,” she says. “And that’s a gross overgeneralization.”
In fact, engagement seems to be constantly shifting due to the millennial audience.
“They are actively reshaping advocacy, engagement, service and philanthropy on a scale that has never before been experienced. As a result, traditional models of engagement, movement building and measurement are evolving to keep pace with their new ideals. To realize the full potential of this generation and ultimately achieve greater impact and sustainable results, we must challenge one another to rethink how we engage, communicate and collaborate with the younger generation.”—Millennial Engagement, The Case Foundation
If news groups can come to identify their audiences and learn the myriad of best ways to engage with them, we might begin to see the future of journalism that I think community engagement presents.
But where does that start?
Personally, I think that starts at the local level. I think that in order to practice good, quality community engagement, that we all need to travel back to that small town reporting feel.
We need to imagine that we’re writing for our next door neighbors and the issues that directly affect them.
It’s about relationships with people
Plain and simple.
It’s not always about what you know, what kind of records you can get… Though all of that is extremely important for reporting purposes, and I love using records to help supplement your story.
But you will never replace a human element. You always need something to humanize your story.
So go forth and engage, be human and write stories.
