Steal this idea! Standout examples from our stations
Credit: Canva Magic Create
We say it all the time: There’s no one set definition for “community engagement.” It looks a little different at every shop that practices it — and that’s okay! Our communities are different, so the way we approach those communities can be as unique as the communities themselves. That said, there are lots of great examples of engagement practitioners out there, especially among our amazing America Amplified cohort this year. Check out some of the ideas from our stations across the U.S. and see if any of them could be customized to fit the community your station serves.
Montana Public Radio: Meet voters where they are (literally)
Montana Public Radio wanted to meet and interview unengaged Montana voters, as well as people who might be new to the state. So they sent two team members on a 900-mile cross-state road trip to talk with Montanans the station doesn’t normally hear from.
Capitol bureau chief Shaylee Ragar was one of the two roadtrippers, and she told America Amplified the road trip allowed them to record more than 20 interviews with Montanans of all ages and backgrounds. It also gave them a deeper understanding of the issues Montanans care about and introduced Montana Public Radio to new communities and potential listeners.
Montana Public Radio has big plans for the recorded conversations. They are producing a four-part on-air feature series and a web build out, which will also appear in the station’s Montana News podcast. The series will focus on why they did the road trip and the main takeaways, voters’ economic concerns, voters’ social issue concerns and voters’ distrust in democracy. In addition, Ragar is using what she learned in the conversations to construct her questions for candidates in her upcoming political coverage.
“I feel armed with lots of evidence now when I say to candidates, ‘Montanans have expressed concerns with x,y, and z, how do you respond?’” Ragar told America Amplified.
Additionally, Ragar said, the road trip allowed MTPR to be physically present in areas that may not have seen a reporter in quite some time and where people might eventually become listeners. It also gave her lots of new story ideas and contacts, and a new perspective on Montanans’ feelings about the current political reality.
“People were much more moderate in their views than I expected, but are stuck voting in a polarized system,” Ragar said. “That will certainly influence how I report this cycle.”
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1. Slow down. Taking the time to have a deep conversation helped us build trust and gave us story ideas beyond election coverage.
2. I found the word "issue" to be a turnoff. People immediately associated it with politics. I tried to start with more open-ended questions, like "What's life like in Montana?"
3. Leave all assumptions at the door! Even though this is something we're already trained to do, I found myself feeling surprised at what went well and what we learned. I'm glad I had those moments and that my own assumptions didn't get in the way.
Maine Public: Combine your engagement with something fun — like trivia!
Maine Public’s News & Brews series gives local and national news topics the good ol’ fashioned trivia treatment – two hours, five rounds, ten questions each. They host 8-12 News & Brews events each year at local brew pubs, many of which are or have provided underwriting support.
The questions are based on stories or programs that air on Maine Public’s radio or television series, from local coverage to the BBC News Hour. The station’s chief business development officer and community outreach and engagement coordinator write the questions. They find that “quirky” questions tend to go over best with the News & Brews participants.
Rather than try to build up a separate audience for their America Amplified project, the Maine Public team is using the News & Brews event series to spread the word about their election initiative. They distribute flyers with the QR code to drive News & Brews participants to their Hearken embed in order to collect participants’ questions.
“Our project aims to learn what issues are most important to residents of rural Maine this year while connecting them with the information [and] tools they need to participate in the election,” Kevin Miller, Maine Public’s statehouse correspondent, told America Amplified. “Maine is geographically large but has a small and close-knit population, so what is happening in rural areas directly affects the health of more populated communities.”
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1. Use existing station events to supplement your efforts.
2. QR codes are great (as long as people know how to use them).
3. Combine your engagement outreach with something fun — like drinking good local beer and playing trivia.
WNYC: Combine engagement with something functional — like laundry!
How do you get people to take time out of their busy days to talk to you? You multitask. WNYC is going to where people are doing their chores – specifically, to laundromats for their “Suds and Civics” project
The WNYC team chose a number of laundromats in areas with historically low voter turnout and/or areas with highly anticipated races. George Bodarky, who leads WNYC’s Community Partnerships team, said the idea to engage people at laundromats was one he’d picked up from an ESL teacher, who was using laundromats to teach people English.
“I saw how well it worked. People had time between washing and folding clothes to learn English, and they were super engaged,” he said in February, when the station launched the project. He suspected it could work for community engagement conversations as well. He continued, “Laundromats are also places you can expect to meet a diverse group of people with a variety of thoughts and opinions. We’re bound to get a wide range of perspectives.”
The conversations with laundry-makers will fuel WNYC’s election coverage, and some have already made it onto the air as short audio pieces. The team has now collaborated with eight laundromats and will be stopping by repeatedly as election season progresses. Jodi Malarbe, assistant producer and fellow on the engagement team, told America Amplified the team also keeps an eye out for information gaps they can fill and resources they can share to close the engagement loop with the community members they speak with.
“Our engagement goal is to connect with community members in a more direct and meaningful way that encourages increased voter engagement and helps support community empowerment, constructive conversation, and candidate accountability,” Malarbe said.
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Collaborate with community members who are active and invested in their communities.
Use all resources you can access to engage the community and your audience in the process.
Having translation available is helpful to being in conversation with people we otherwise would not be able to speak with fully.
KUER: Optimize Instagram for busy viewers
KUER wanted to empower more young professionals (ages 24-35) to become more civically engaged and boost their participation in the political process. One way to do that is through their coverage – but there was a problem.
“Through our outreach efforts, we found that young people in the workforce or with young families rarely have time to read multiple news stories or dedicate significant brainpower to listening to an in-depth podcast,” Sean Higgins, politics reporter, told America Amplified.
To address that, the team began to experiment with short-form social media reels.
A scroll through KUER’s Instagram shows their efforts: Vertical videos of news team members briefly recapping their radio stories to the camera. They stand against varied backgrounds–a housing unit, a map, the distant mountains–and give the story’s highlights. Captions convey what the reporters are saying, in case viewers are scrolling on mute. This way viewers get a quick, easily digestible summary of the day’s news, even as they’re scrolling between tasks.
The new practice has boosted KUER’s visibility on social channels to potential new listeners. They’ve experienced a bump in followers, particularly on Instagram, and they are seeing more engagement in the comments than they have experienced in a while.
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Keep it simple. 30-40 seconds is the sweet spot for us.
Subtitles really help! Lots of people scroll with their phone muted.
Using props when appropriate or a fun background are great ways to grab someone’s attention while doomscrolling.
Vermont Public: Host office hours
Vermont Public is using public input to shape its citizens agenda approach to the 2024 election. To talk to Vermonters about their priorities, the station is hosting “office hours” at local businesses across the small state.
Vermont Public’s office hours are two-hour tabling events. They take a table and a whiteboard with a question of the day–something positive or neutral, like “What do you love about your community?” or “What do people misunderstand about your community?” They use this question to break the ice and start up conversations with community members.
They plan to visit every county in Vermont in the lead-up to the 2024 election. While Vermont is a small state, that’s still a big effort. To spread the labor around, executive editor Brittany Patterson shares an office hours “how-to” guide so that other staff members can rotate the duty of hosting office hours. They also have an “office hours box” containing everything needed for office hours: a mobile recording booth; a tablecloth; the whiteboard and markers; candy to entice people over to the table; and postcards explaining Vermont Public’s elections strategy and a QR code linking to their Hearken embed.
So far Vermont Public has held office hours at a bakery, a general store/gas station, a tea shop, and an outdoor shopping mall, with more planned for the future. Patterson noted that people Vermont Public spoke with expressed interest in meeting their elected officials, so the station is planning a “Picnic and Politics” event in June to respond to that need. And the embed questions–more than 200 responses at this point–are being used in two-way interviews for local mayoral candidates.
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Try for a designated point person to handle engagement efforts/volunteers.
Use different QR codes so you can gauge what materials are most effective in reaching people. For instance, Vermont Public used one QR code for postcards and one for posters. All QR codes pointed to the same embed, but using different QR codes helped gauge whether the postcards were more effective than the posters and vice versa.
Be patient. We may want to talk about elections right now, but the public may not be ready.