NewsBeat

8 NewsBeat December 2018 Lessons learned: Seven ways news outlets can rebuild trust and sustainability J ournalism is suffering from some pretty big trust issues right now. It's a problem not unique to the United States, but increasingly a concern in places like the UK, Australia, France and Italy. For many U.S. critics, journalism — and the journalistic trade — is all too often seen as elitist, left-leaning, out of touch with non-coastal audiences, and frequently the preserve of white, educated males. There's plenty of truth in many of these accusations, and there's no doubt that if we wish to rebuild trust — and turn that trust into audiences willing to pay for acts of journalism — then we will need to do some things differently. Based on my research over the past decade, much of it in the local news arena, as well as my on-going and previous journalistic work, here are seven recommendations which offer newsrooms — large and small — some potential ways forward. One: Report stories not found elsewhere At a time of declining advertising revenues, dwindling newsrooms and shuttered titles, there's a business imperative to offer something different. What needs to be avoided is allocating precious resources to rewriting wire copy, featuring stories simply because your competition is, and reporting stories and covering beats the way you always have. As Jim Brady, CEO of Spirited Media, memorably told me in 2016: "You can do anything, but you cannot do everything." Reporting stories not found elsewhere is an important differentiator in an increasingly noisy and cluttered media landscape. For local newsrooms, this means focusing on telling stories that might be overlooked by other outlets, as well as offering new and fresh perspectives. Weeklies, which make up the majority of newspapers in the United State, are especially well placed to do this, as they're working on different publishing cycles. Two: Trumpet successes more As journalists we're always driven by the next story, meaning that we seldom do a good job looking back at what we have done. But we need to do a better job of showing and reminding audiences about the impact of our work. Newsrooms tend to do this (although many of them appear uncomfortable doing so) if they've won an award. But why we don't do this more often? Offering value is essential for financial viability. As Sharon Chan at the Seattle Times has noted, demonstrating impact is part of "building that deeper relationship with people and showing that there's value to having a newspaper, a legacy newspaper." Regularly stressing the benefits of what you do — as local PBS or NPR affiliates are forced to do through pledge drives — coupled with a distinctive editorial agenda, can reinforce that good journalism doesn't happen by accident; and that we need people to pay for it. Three: Tell stories differently Newsrooms would further benefit from more effectively revisiting and updating previous stories. This requires a more incremental, and longitudinal, approach to reporting; one which may help offset the (often legitimate) criticism that we have a tendency to parachute in and out of communities. The impactful, Pulitzer Prize-winning, work of E. Jason Wambsgans at the Chicago Tribune, is a testimony to this MO. I also believe that more newsrooms, including local outlets, should actively embrace the explainer. In the digital era, this is especially important given that many readers are casual consumers and fly-by's. They've not been tracking developments on a story day-to-day as we have. As Vox's Ezra Klein has observed: "Journalists are better than ever at telling people what's happening, but not nearly good enough at giving them the crucial contextual information necessary to understand what's happened." Four: Show your workings There remains too much assumed knowledge in a lot of reporting, at all levels, and that applies not just to what we report, but also how we report it. As an interviewee, it can be immensely frustrating when some of my carefully crafted contributions end up on the cutting room floor. I'm a journalist, so I understand why this happens. The same cannot necessarily be said of many of the sources that we deal with. We need to do more to explain our processes to people outside of the newsroom, sharing how decisions are made, especially when it comes to editing and story selection. Of course, in a time-pressed newsrooms, there are a million reasons not to do this. Yet, you can do this efficiently, engendering trust and boosting news literacy in the process. By DAMIAN RADCLIFFE

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