NewsBeat

20 NewsBeat February 2017 One solution: Use social media (or tools like Hearken) to determine what people in your community care about. Then focus your efforts on those people and their questions. Direct public offering: Want to give your audience a piece of the action? Ask them to invest — literally. At least one news organization, the Bay Area's Berkeleyside, has asked its readers to buy chunks of the company to keep it afloat. This model was pioneered by the Green Bay Packers — one of the most successful NFL franchises, and gives readers a financial stake in the news organization's success. Subscription: Kind of like a direct public offering, without the equity. Subscribers may feel more invested in your journalism — and more likely to share it — if they're helping pay for it. Chatbots: Don't have time to have a back-and-forth with every reader? You don't have to! The rise of artificial intelligence and machine learning is empowering news organizations around the world to create chatbots that can dialog with readers and help them find the news they want. The record for these bots has been spotty thus far, but expect this tool to improve with time. Tours: No matter how convincing virtual reality gets, there's no substitute for seeing a place with your own eyes and meeting people firsthand. Newsroom tours can deepen your connection with the community and foster spontaneous ways for the public to engage. Internships: Honolulu Civil Beat used its internship program tobring a community member into the newsroom to learn more about the business and craft of journalism. What's a better way to build the public's trust in journalism than having them produce it for you? Partner with the community: The community internship program is similar to an approach undertaken by City Bureau, a Chicago-based nonprofit that connects professional journalists with community members to tell their stories. More facetime with the public means more news literacy and, perhaps, additional support. Events: Events are a great moneymaking idea for a few reasons. They elevate your outlet's profile in the community. They give your audience a chance to see and interact with your journalists. And they make the process of journalism more transparent — people can see how conduct interviews, for example, and they can observe reporter- source relationships firsthand. Give away your journalism: Many nonprofit news organizations, including ProPublica, The Marshall Project and the Center for Public Integrity, spend months tackling investigations in the public interest and give them away to partner organizations. Should public-spirited for-profit news organizations do the same? In recent months, news organizations in San Francisco and Philadephia have teamed up to examineissues such as homelessness and prisoner re-entry. Sell (or give away) your data: ProPublica has launched a data store that has pulled in more than $200,000 to date. Many news organizations collect government data as a matter of course, so why not follow the ProPublica model and sell it (or offer it to the public for free). Notifications, notifications, notifications: Mobile alerts, email alerts and web alerts are all fodder for instant engagement. Get users to opt-into alerts on Chrome, mobile apps and newsletters so you're directly in front of them when big news breaks. Comments: Many news organizations have gotten rid them, but online comments still have major champions in the news industry. Comment advocates contend that the spaces below (or alongside) stories are crucial spaces for reader engagement. Slack channels: The Washington Post, Gimlet Media, Poynter and Nieman Lab have all established Slack channels to instant message with die-hard fans. Although it's tough to build vibrant communities on Slack, chat rooms enable instant feedback and lively exchanges. Live video: You can't get facetime with everyone, so Facebook Live will have to do. Apps like Periscope, Facebook Live and Meerkat (remember that?) allow you to broadcast the inner workings of your newsroom without devoting time to things like editing and post-production effects. Talk to them: There's no technological tool or marketing scheme that can take the place of a face-to-face conversation. If you really want to know what people in the community think about your newsroom, knock on some doors, shake some hands and find out for yourself. (Continued from previous page) Reader support is more important than ever…

• Cover