Lessons for Vermont Public from a Citizens Agenda approach to primary elections
Image courtesy of Vermont Public
When it comes to covering elections differently this year, one brave little station has been pushing the envelope since the primaries. Vermont Public is testing a variety of outreach ideas this spring and they’re getting ready to apply what they learned to the fast-approaching general elections. From snail-mailing postcards to hosting in-person office hours across the state, executive editor of news Brittany Patterson told us what’s working and what’s next.
Tell us about your engagement Initiative or project?
This election season we've adopted a "Citizens Agenda" approach to coverage. Simply put, we're asking Vermonters to drive our coverage by sharing with us, "What do you want the candidates to be discussing as they compete for your votes?"
What was the main objective of this engagement initiative?
Our main objective is to center the needs of Vermonters in our coverage -- both our current audience -- but also make a concerted effort to reach folks who don't know us.
How did the collaboration between America Amplified and your public media station help shape this initiative?
We've been batting around the idea of taking a "Citizens Agenda" approach for a few years, but planning and execution felt insurmountable. Working with America Amplified gave us a structured timeline to follow and helped us be accountable. It's also given us lots of resources and language to use to get buy-in from across the organization. Shout out to our America Amplified coach, Chelsea, for providing a ton of one-on-one support!
How did you build trust in the community you were reporting on?
We're prioritizing showing up across the state. We're hosting what we're calling "office hours" where a reporter, host or producer arranges to table inside or in front of a business or at a local community event. The goal is to listen. A story isn't required. With permission, we do take notes and input any answers folks give us to the Citizens Agenda prompt. We have a goal to hit each county multiple times between now and the election. After office hours, we distribute posters with a QR code that takes folks to the Hearken embed around the community.
We're spending extra time in two counties that the newsroom doesn't get to as much as we should. That means multiple office hours and attendance at community events as well as hosting our own event. Based upon the feedback we heard during our initial outreach, folks wanted to connect with their community more and had lots of questions about the economy - both are the focus of our upcoming community picnic and listening session.
What engagement tools shared are helping your station to better engage with this community?
Going old school with posters and postcards (and soon bookmarks to be distributed by local libraries and booksellers) has been awesome. Showing up in person goes a long way too.
How are you bringing this reporting back to the community?
We've been categorizing the responses we receive through the Citizens Agenda prompt and plan to do a month of coverage for each of the top 5 issues that have risen to the top. The hope is to send an email to folks who put those categories down with our reporting. We're also partnering with a local company called Front Porch Forum (it's kind of like Next Door) and we'll be sharing our reporting there as well. Nearly every town in Vermont has a forum through Front Porch Forum, so we can do some geo-targeting based on zip code to report back out issues that rose to the top of the pack for a specific place.
What lessons do you take away from this project in terms of strengthening engagement?
Showing up is so important! Also, it's hard to explain the vision, but once staff finds a way to see engagement in action it becomes a lot easier to execute.
