As part of my RJI fellowship, I conducted dozens of interviews with journalists and non-journalists about how a more social culture is changing the relationships between institutions and the people they serve. I talked to academics and practitioners. To people from the corporate world and nonprofit leaders. And I sought out journalists whose job duties include a focus on audience.

That’s what engagement really is, the way I’ve studied it: A focus on, respect for and enthusiasm about the role of the audience.

Continue reading “Three kinds of engagement: outreach, conversation, collaboration” →

I was honored to be asked to write for the Nieman Reports summer 2011 issue, which is all about community and is jam packed with awesome resources. Here’s the post I contributed:

Of the many challenges news organizations confront, there is one that inspires my research, informs my teaching, and ignites my imagination. It involves the disintegrating connection between journalists and their audiences — the separation of journalists from their communities that has taken place through the years. With the notion of objectivity having become such a dominant strategy, sometimes this distancing has been intentional.

Continue reading “A journalistic obligation: to identify and attempt to engage the audience” →

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For almost a year now, I’ve been reading and learning about a little newsroom in Connecticut making extreme moves (literally and figuratively) on the engagement front. This spring, I got a chance to see it for myself.

The Register-Citizen in Torrington, driven by the vision and efforts of Publisher Matt DeRienzo, has shown the rest of us what it can mean to make community outreach central to what we do. (Outreach is one of my three categories of engagement. For more detail, see this presentation.) Journalists are creatures of habit and routine, and Matt is trying to change his staff’s fundamental outlook, starting with what they see when they walk into their newsroom.

I’ll go over a few of the highlights of what they’re up to, and share some observations.

Continue reading “Inside the engagement experiments at the Register-Citizen” →

Zach Seward is the outreach editor at the Wall Street Journal. When you’re at an organization as large as the Journal, your relationship with your audience is going to necessarily look quite different from those at smaller shops. But I’ve talked this year to some other large newsrooms (including the Associated Press, NPR and the Chicago Tribune) and have found a lot of variety in their approaches as well.

Zach’s name has come up over and over as I’ve asked folks for interview suggestions, and I was glad to get a chance to ask him some questions about his job, his newsroom and his audience. Here’s what Zach had to say:

ON SOCIAL MEDIA BRAINSTORMING: Part of Zach’s job is to talk to reporters and editors about possible social elements to accompany individual projects. He says he approaches those from a neutral standpoint, rather than one of persuasion or evangelism. He allows for the possibility that a social component doesn’t make sense and tries to be more consultant than cheerleader. He says that approach suits his own personality and is consistent with the healthy skepticism journalists often wear. He doesn’t want social media to suffer from over-hype and to feel like a bandwagon every reporter’s got to jump on.

Continue reading “What “engagement” means to Zach Seward at the Wall Street Journal” →