Step #2: Newsroom Conversations

Much knowledge about the community already exists within the newspaper and it is important to take advantage of that resource.

To start the newsroom conversations, recruit a group of reporters, editors, researchers, librarians, and photojournalists. Some newsrooms may want to include people from advertising, circulation and other departments. (Not all of these people need to be included in the overall process.)

Ask each individual to think about the questions below. Then pull the group together to review their responses. 

Here are some questions to ask: 

How would you define the boundaries of the target areas?

What do you know about the target areas? Where do civic spaces and conversations exist? Who is in them? What do the conversations sound like?

What sources do you know in this area? What role do they play? What kinds of things can you usually learn from these sources?

Who else should be contacted to find out more about this areas civic spaces and conversations? Who might be the best civic leaders and catalysts to tap? 

ENGAGING PEOPLE TO FIND CIVIC SPACES

These tips apply to all conversations journalists have to find and tap civic spaces. 

REMEMBER THE GOAL. Journalists will uncover enormously rich information when doing community interviews. Keep track of the information but do not lose sight of the two underlying goals: To figure out where civic spaces and conversations exist, and how journalists can listen and use them in their daily journalism.

LISTEN FOR INSIGHTS. Journalists should try to hear how people in the different layers of civic life view and understand the community; what they tend to know and what they don’t know, what they believe their neighbors or colleagues are concerned about and why, what language they use, how they describe the importance of different civic conversations and spaces. Listening in this way can help journalists figure out the insights that different layers of civic life offer.

ENGAGE PEOPLE. These interviews should be a conversation, not quick-hits to find a quote or a piece of information for a story. Many people will not have on the tip of their tongue the kinds of civic spaces, names of people and insights that journalists want. The Harwood Groups experience is that people need time to tell stories, make connections and remember things. How journalists approach these conversations is critical.

KEEP IT OFF THE RECORD. The Harwood Group recommends that these community interviews (at least initially) be off the record. People are seeking a different kind of relationship with journalists, which will need to be established over time and which will show people that the journalists are committed to learning about them and their communities.

The Wichita Experience
In conversations at The Eagle, reporters told The Harwood Group that they felt they were still missing a lot of good and important stories. They said there were issues, events and controversies going on that they didn’t know about. We tend to wait to be ‘told’ about what’s going on in the community; we’re not building relationships with people,” said one Eagle journalist.

Reporters noted that when they wanted to talk to people in Wichita other than “official leaders,” they did man-on-the-street interviews. Both kinds of interviews, they said, could be superficial and fail to capture the richness of community life and peoples experiences.

Many reporters and editors said they wanted to get “out into the community” but didn’t quite know how. Some journalists also intuitively sensed that different neighborhoods work in different ways but could not describe how.