A practical guide for a more equitable and service oriented form of journalism
There is scarcely anyone in the journalism world today who doesn’t know about the crisis in journalism. Starting with the implosion of the traditional business model for news brought on by digital and social media, today’s crisis is both a crisis of capacity and a crisis of relevance and trust, as peoples’ news habits and attitudes are profoundly shifting. Newsrooms need deeper and more sustainable funding models in order to have the capacity to provide quality news to their communities. But we also need to find ways to reformulate the news to build trust and better meet communities’ information needs. That means focusing on journalistic practices that show promise of making high-quality news more relevant, inclusive, and trusted.
In 2023, the Agora Journalism Center released Redefining News: A Manifesto for Community-Centered Journalism, authored by our colleague Damian Radcliffe. That report outlined the principles and priorities that define the growing community-centered journalism (“CCJ”) movement that focuses on doing journalism in ways that serve communities by partnering with them, not just reporting “on” them.
In this report, Damian goes deeper, interviewing over a dozen leading thinkers and practitioners about how CCJ is being implemented in a variety of news organizations, the challenges it is facing, and how this innovative approach to journalism can continue to grow even in the midst of declining newsroom resources and a fraught social and political environment. These interviews also reveal five key challenges – organizational culture, the time-intensive nature of CCJ work, demonstrating impact, building the journalistic skillset, and sustaining CCJ work – that practitioners are grappling with. How they learn to meet those challenges will shape the way community-centered journalism evolves.
We hope this report will offer a practical and provocative set of lessons and experiences for journalists who are new to the community-centered approach as well as for those already practicing it. Journalism may be in crisis, but there is no doubt that quality, inclusive, and trusted news is needed more than ever. We hope this report helps the promising practice of community-centered journalism forward.
Andrew DeVigal, Director
Regina Lawrence, Research Director
Agora Journalism Center