How KCUR added critiquing their own content into the newsroom process
Donna Vestal is a veteran editor who has devoted the last 10 years of her career to public media collaborations at NPR affiliate KCUR 89.3FM, first as founding editor for Harvest Public Media and then as director of content strategy for the station. She was America Amplified’s managing director from 2020-21 and shared this process.
Public radio stations produce a ton of local content on a wide range of platforms: news features, digital stories, videos, talk shows, newscasts, announcer breaks, promos. But it’s difficult to actually listen and read in real time to evaluate how well we are serving communities. News directors and other managers may carve out time to evaluate the work, but we really need more diverse observations to continually improve.
That’s why KCUR in 2018 embarked on a year of critically examining its own content.
I assigned two staffers each week to listen carefully to content on all platforms and read carefully through digital content. I usually matched one person from the content team with someone from another part of the organization. Including everyone (including the GM) helped diversify perspectives and build rapport and enthusiasm.
The two-person teams were not expected to listen to everything, but to listen as much as they could and to try to put themselves in the role of the audience (core and non-core). They were instructed to ask themselves these questions in regard to local audio content, including newscasts, features, talk shows, and podcasts:
1. What was the best moment?
2. What was the worst moment?
3. Did our work hold your attention? Why or why not?
4. What would you like to have heard?
5. Do you think KCUR was ‘in the moment’ most of the time? (Note: Being more ‘in the moment’ was a stated goal for the year.)
6. Any ideas for what we could do better?
Also for the KCUR website:
1. What was the best work here?
2. What was lacking?
3. Is the website content relevant?
Each Monday, the teams from the previous week shared their feedback during the regular staff meeting; many staffers also wrote expansive summaries. Nothing was off the table. I summarized feedback in the weekly staff memo, and would — when warranted — make immediate changes in how content was being created.
More importantly, the staff used this information to adjust job expectations and ultimately the yearly content plan/goals.
My year-end summary stretched to 1,800 words and included dozens of action items that had more buy-in because they came from staff. For example:
Reporters: Work with our community engagement team … ask people what they think and what they want and what they’re talking about.
Don’t just react to the many press releases that we get each day, but set our own agenda.
Make sure if a story is discussed in a newscast or talk show that the relevant story is back on our home page.
Daily newsletter: Be careful that it sometimes reads like a liberal media outlet.
Tips for newsrooms
Critiques are a great way to build in time for internal feedback and ensure everyone’s voice is heard. You must, though, come up with a plan for how your station can learn from and build off these critiques.
Do not let these important observations fall into a vacuum.
In addition to the questions posed by KCUR, your content critiques could incorporate questions along the following lines:
What communities are we covering?
What communities are not included in our coverage?
Who is framing the issue at the center of our stories? The community or the journalist?
Are we meeting our community/ies’ information needs in our content?
You should provide regular summaries of feedback to the entire organization. This could incorporate both these staff observations and what you are hearing from your audience.
After six months of content critiques, meet with your news leadership team to distill the feedback into three or four priorities for change. Be sure to communicate with the news staff some metrics for changes in content based on those three or four main points. And, of course, welcome further feedback.
Bottom line: Make it a priority to listen to what the people in your organization have to say about your product. And give them the time to focus on the content.
