The question we often forget to ask ourselves is: How can we motivate more journalists (and journalism students) to put the community at the center of their work, be better listeners, and understand more precisely the needs of the public? Until we can think of the public not just as “audiences” and “consumers,” but also as experts and partners in the communities we aim to serve, we shouldn’t expect to receive the public’s complete trust.
Topic: Engaged Journalism
Elevate Engagement: Listening, Connection, and Trust
Elevate Engagement is a four-day gathering in Portland designed to explore how journalists, storytellers, and civic actors could rebuild trust and reimagine journalism’s role in public life.
Portland conference tackles trust, involvement and storytelling
The gathering that brought the community of practice and engaged journalists together to help create a space for people to experience what the industry and educators have been talking about in relation to storytelling and involving the community.
Engaging News Project comes to SOJC’s Agora Journalism Center
Center for Media Engagement, formerly known as The Engaging News Project, strives to find ways that the U.S. news media can more effectively empower the public to “understand, appreciate and participate in the democratic exchange of ideas” by testing web-based strategies for informing audiences, promoting discourse, helping people to understand diverse views and analyzing business outcomes.
Special Series: Redefining Engagement
The series was inspired by Experience Engagement, a four-day participatory “un-conference” hosted by Journalism That Matters and the Agora Journalism Center. Over the next two weeks, this series will explore the progress, promise and potential challenges of community engagement in journalism.
Experience Engagement: Reimagining Relationships Between Journalism and Communities
What is possible when the public and journalists engage to support communities to thrive? This question guided Experience Engagement, a four-day working conference that convened journalists, organizers, artists, educators, researchers, funders, technologists, students, and civic practitioners in a shared space.
Community Perspectives on La Pine’s Information Ecosystem (2018)
Through a community-wide survey, stakeholder interviews, and listening sessions, the project aimed to identify strengths, gaps, and opportunities in La Pine’s information ecosystem. The findings revealed that while residents value staying informed—particularly on local events, public safety, and community development—there is no single, centralized source of information.