| Definitely | Yes, but… | No | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | . | . | . |
| Is this work a real priority for you? | . | . | . |
| Does the designated staff have the time for this work? | . | . | . |
| Are you willing to free up more time, if needed? | . | . | . |
| Tapping Civic Conversations and Spaces | . | . | . |
| Will you give reporters and staff the time to go into civic spaces and engage people? | . | . | . |
| Are you ready for reporters to come back from civic conversations without a story, even though their efforts add to the overall knowledge of the community? | . | . | . |
| Skills Building
Are you and other key leaders willing to invest the time and resources to help your reporters and staff learn: |
. | . | . |
| How to ask new kinds of questions required for tapping civic spaces? | . | . | . |
| How to listen to make sense of what people say and what they mean? | . | . | . |
| How to use the insights and information to frame and write new kinds of stories? | . | . | . |
| Creating a Knowledge Base | . | . | . |
| Will the paper create ways to store its knowledge about civic spaces and what is learned about them? | . | . | . |
| Will the paper make the commitment to update regularly its insights from the community? | . | . | . |
| Getting It into the Paper
Will the paper use the information and insights gained from tapping into civic life to: |
. | . | . |
| Change how story and planning meetings are run? | . | . | . |
| Create new kinds of conversations in the newsroom? | . | . | . |
| Expand the ways stories get framed? | . | . | . |
| Publish stories that come out of the civic spaces? | . | . | . |
| Push journalists to draw on what they’re learning and to use their expanded sources? |
. | . | . |
| Change Fatigue
Many news organizations have already gone through one or more change processes: |
. | . | . |
| Are your reporters and staff too tired now to start something new? | . | . | . |
| Is your staff truly open to learning and putting to use new concepts and techniques? | . | . | . |