NewsBeat

October 2018 NewsBeat 5 Across the four examples we discussed, several themes emerged about how to engage and listen to communities more effectively, especially for journalists who are not members of those communities: • Sometimes, you need to say you're sorry. At first, you might need to approach a community by apologizing for past coverage (or lack thereof) and owning past mistakes, even if you specifically did not commit them. Remember, you're never walking into a community with a clean slate, particularly if you are coming from a legacy news organization with a long history. • Partnering can help, whether it be with an existing community organization or with a tool to gather information from community members. Going it alone isn't always the best way. Also, there are ways to partner that don't include a heavy lift at the beginning. Sometimes, you might just seek partnership for space use, for example. Other times, a partnership might be more in depth and require deeper collaboration. • Get out of your comfort zone. Part of doing this type of work is recognizing that we don't have all the answers. We need to demonstrate humility and be willing to live in discomfort. (Journalists make people uncomfortable all the time, even when we're trying not to, so it's good for us to experience that ourselves.) • Use tech wisely. Do test runs. Know your limitations. Make any interactions a community must have with technology as frictionless as possible. Offer human support for when things go wrong. • Be mindful of the power dynamic. In any of these situations, journalists wield a lot of power just by the nature of what we do. We need to make others comfortable before they are willing to talk with us. Sometimes that means no notebooks, no cameras, etc. And all the time, it means we need to be humble. (Notice a theme here?) • Show how the listening changed YOU. In each of the examples, the news organization changed its coverage either by including new voices or covering different subjects than they would have before. One simple question For journalists wanting to try these methods of listening, you might want to start by asking the simple question, "What audience or community do you want to listen to?" Brainstorm on this question on your own or with colleagues and reflect on your current coverage as well as the multiple communities in your coverage area (whether topic specific or geographic specific). At SRCCON, session participants came up with a wide range of answers to this question. Here are a few of their answers, to inspire your own brainstorming: • Renters • Trans/non-binary folks • Migrant workers • Asian American folks on "non- traditional" trajectories • Low/no income people • Folks from small rural towns • Kids in the foster care system • First-generation college students Answering this question may also open up a good discussion about how you track the diversity and breadth of your story topics and sources. What do you do now for these groups? Do you have regular contact with them? Should you consider a source or story audit to define a baseline for this work? Knowing where you are starting from can help clearly point out areas for improvement and growth. What's the impact? As with all things journalism-related these days, we want to know the impact of the work that we're doing. With focused listening efforts, it can be difficult to come up with clear-cut goals that are anything akin to page views, time spent, social shares, digital subscription numbers, and rates, etc. But it's just as important to define what we think success looks like for listening and engagement work and to come up with tangible ways to measure that success. Our participants came up with a solid list of both qualitative and quantitative ways to measure the impact of a focused listening project. Some of their thoughts included: • Qualitative surveys with the community before and after an event or project that ask about whether participants felt respected and heard. The questions should allow you to answer the general question, "How did we do?" • A demonstrated shift in coverage topics and sources, based on quantitative data • The length of new relationships created by the listening engagements • Tracking whether other news organizations copy your efforts or build on what you learned Taking it further The work of focused listening is not something that can be completed like a task on a to-do list. It requires sustained effort over time, which includes organizational buy-in and a strategic commitment, as well as a willingness to adapt to the needs and desires of the communities you're trying to serve. We're interested to see what others at SRCCON and beyond will do in this area and what we can learn from them. For some further reading, you might want to read a piece by P. Kim Bui for the American Press Institute that looks at how journalists can employ empathy in their work, which also involves focused listening. The activities in this SRCCON session were also inspired by an API summit in the spring on listening, the takeaways of which appear in this report on creating a culture of listening. Amy L. Kovac-Ashley is the director of newsroom learning for the American Press Institute, where she focuses on newsroom culture, professional development, leadership and diversity. She has experience both as a professional journalist and a journalism educator at the collegiate and graduate levels. She invites you to follow her on Twitter.

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