Putting Community First, Part II
A recent post on my Wordpress blog (neglected to cross-post here on Medium, unfortunately) focused on the common threads between a couple of ideas I’d come across that put community building at the center of journalism. Another event I was fortunate to attend on May 25 addressed the same idea.
This was a networking meet-up co-sponsored by the Online News Association and LION Publishers, an association of local independent online news organizations (hence the acronym, LION). As a researcher long interested in community journalism and journalistic innovation I’ve been aware of both of these groups for some time, but never had attended any of their events.
The program included a few staff members from each sponsoring organization, but was mostly centered on engaging small-group conversations among about 15 participants, who mostly were current or aspiring operators of small online news operations. The main thing I had in common with them, as I mentioned in a couple of the discussions, is the occasional help I provide to my wife, Missy, with her community blog covering our town. Participants came from every every region of the U.S. (e.g. Massachusetts, Maryland, Florida, Colorado, Arizona) with at least one international visitor, from Nigeria. The main topics were ways to generate revenue and to serve audiences better.
The discussion of audience in particular resonated with what I heard about, and wrote about, last week: That the most effective way to be attuned to audience needs is to be engaged with the community. That having authentic expression of community voices as part of the coverage is a powerful way to connect. That this is particularly the case with under-represented audiences — especially economically disadvantaged ones, who are all too often people of color.
Talking at such audiences, with traditionally framed stories presented on a website, just won’t cut it with regard to serving their information needs. On the other hand, listening carefully to their concerns, perhaps tapping into them with unique tools such as text messages (as done so successfully by Outlier Media), is a way to know what those needs are and address them in the coverage.
It’s been in many ways a bad week for local journalism with Alden Global Capital’s purchase of Tribune Publishing; as noted in many commentaries that deal will put fully half of U.S. legacy newspaper circulation under the control of private equity firms that are more interested in extracting value than building up local news coverage. (I see no need for yet another “hot take” on the subject, so I’ll stop there.)
And while the implications of private-equity control of so much of U.S. journalism are concerning — and I don’t mean to underplay them — it’s refreshing to attend events featuring practitioners from the “authentically local” variety of journalism, and to hear them talk about audience members as contributors whose voices and stories have value. In my judgment, the future of successful local news lies there.
I think perhaps the most insightful comment ever made about local journalism was Clay Shirky’s observation way back in 2009 about how — when it came to countering the loss of daily newspaper coverage in many communities — “nothing will work, but everything might.”* In other words, rather than having one big thing emerge to replace traditional journalism, we need many approaches each doing a part of the job and collectively fulfilling our information needs — perhaps even more completely than some legacy newspapers did.
In a very real way, the work of LION organizations and the work of some of the innovative organizations that were part of the Collaborative Journalism Summit last week represent some of these new approaches that Shirky suggested. Hearing the discussions at the events I’ve been privileged to attend in the past few days offers evidence that what Shirky proposed is happening, at least to some degree, to revitalize local journalism.
Disclosure: This has been cross-posted to my Wordpress blog also.
*Quote appears in sixth paragraph from the bottom of the essay
Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: audience engagement, community involvement, community journalism, journalism, LION Publishers, Online News Association | Permalink.
Originally published at http://emergentjournalism.wordpress.com on May 26, 2021.
