From Community Partners to News Series: WUSF’s Latest Engagement Journalism Project Highlights Black Mental Health

Image courtesy WUSF

WUSF in Tampa has been with America Amplified since 2019, so they are old hands with the strategies and tools of community engagement. In 2021 and 2022 the station’s priority has been to better serve the Black audience in the Tampa Bay region and, to do so, they forged partnerships with Black media organizations in the region. The partnerships and collaborations paid off with a groundbreaking series that aired and was published in July. Here’s Multimedia Reporter Daylina Miller’s description of the process and the rewards.

Tell us who you are, and share a brief summary of the reporting project?

WUSF Public Media has partnered with three Black-owned media in the Tampa Bay area: The Florida Courier, The Weekly Challenger and RoyalTee Magazine.  

The project is a month-long series on Black mental health. The series looked at the complex set of challenges Black Americans face as they try to maintain their mental health. On top of universal issues like depression, stigma and economic stress, they deal with racism, health inequities and the systemic effects of Jim Crow segregation every day. The Florida Courier, The Weekly Challenger, RoyalTee Magazine and WUSF Public Media created this series to highlight the stories of Black Floridians seeking emotional healing and wellness, and to provide resources for those needing support. 

All the partners participated in the entire process, from listening sessions to weekly editorial meetings. Our team includes reporters and editors from all four organizations and two visual journalists. Throughout, we also have received the counsel of Dr. LaDonna Butler — the Founder and Director of The Well, a Healing Space, prioritizing the needs and leveraging the strengths of BIPOC.

How did community engagement inform your reporting? 

The project was created after months of conversation between the media partners. We talked first about topics that would serve the Black audience, and identified a topic that really hasn’t been covered deeply in other media: mental health.

We collaborated and developed two separate virtual listening sessions, which allowed members of the community to share their experience with mental health as a Black person. A lot of different threads emerged from the conversations and the journalists collectively brainstormed and identified five different angles to cover: mental health misconceptions; the changing attitudes of the Black church; and the unique challenges facing Black women, Black men and Black parents. 

How did you build trust in the community you were reporting on?

The focus of our project was to first build relationships and trust with Black media. We felt that was a critical way to create journalism that truly served Black residents in our community. The partner newspapers are respected and established publications. Our magazine partner serves a demographic less likely to read newspapers: millennials. They will all cover the Black community better than a newsroom rooted in the traditional public media model. 

We reached out first to each organization, explaining our idea, and asking if their organization would like to consider working together on a collaborative journalism project. There were some tough questions about our motivations and intentions. We answered honestly about our goal to better serve everyone in our community. We also established a shared use agreement, letting each organization that they can publish any of our staff stories as well. 

As part of the formal agreement, WUSF paid each organization a portion of our grant money to cover the expenses for hiring a freelance reporter. WUSF provided all logistics, graphics and photographers.

We started meeting collectively to develop listening sessions, and the subject of Black mental health brought us together as a group.

How are you bringing this reporting back to the community?

The series was published weekly over four weeks in July. It is being published online and in newspapers. If the story is not produced for radio, a member of the WUSF is doing a ‘reporter debrief’ for the radio audience. 

What lessons do you take away from this project in terms of strengthening your engagement?

Don’t be afraid to cold call potential partners and pitch your idea. Be willing to let the collective create the work.