WITF in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, has been working with America Amplified since 2019 and has innovated in all kinds of interesting community engagement projects, from embedding reporters in various communities around the state, to developing texting clubs for each beat in their newsroom. Recently they held an event specifically aimed at better engaging with conservative community members. The event was well attended and taught the station a number of important lessons about reaching out beyond your captive audience. Scott Blanchard, WITF’s Director of journalism, provided this write up.

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

WITF held one of its America Amplified-supported public engagement events in September at Gearhouse Brewing in Chambersburg, Pa. We wanted to go there in large part because the area is predominantly Republican, and we wanted to meet and engage with right-leaning people (i.e. not the usual suspects attracted to our events). 

We invited a speaker from Braver Angels, a national organization that works to bring “conservatives and progressives together on equal terms to understand our differences, find common ground where it exists, and help the country we all love find a better way.” 

More than 100 people RSVP’d, and 76 showed up – a high number for us in such public events. Linda Beck, from Harrisburg, joined us and put on an interactive presentation covering some of the basics of what Braver Angels does. We broke up into 8-9 small groups and, in different parts of the brewery, WITF staffers led those groups in discussions about what they had just heard and whether they learned anything they could use in their lives with friends or family.

We then returned to the large-group session and our Morning Edition host/special projects editor Tim Lambert led a discussion in which we heard from each group in turn. Tim then talked about WITF’s citizens’ agenda and engagement-based approach to election coverage, and ended the night by asking people what they want the candidates to be talking about while campaigning for votes.

After we ended the official program, attendees and WITF staff stayed for 45 minutes to an hour, continuing conversations. We received tremendously positive feedback from both attendees and from the brewery, which invited us back. We intend to go there again. 

How did community engagement inform your reporting? 

Our past community engagement informed this effort: We know that public-radio fans do lean left, and when we do an event, we are likely to attract our “fans.” It’s harder to connect with people outside that group. We have participated in other efforts to engage right-leaning people, such as with Trusting News, with positive results. So we knew we could find a receptive audience.

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

The brewer owners helped a great deal. They are both big fans of NPR and our station, as well as well-known in the community for cultivating an atmosphere in which people of any political stripe are welcome as long as they engage in civil and respectful conversation. So, they helped promote the event within their community, and they connected with Chambersburg institutions such as the Chamber of Commerce to get the word out as well. 

How are you bringing this reporting back to the community?

We got several good story ideas from the attendees. We plan to work on some of those stories and when we publish/air, we will contact them to let them know. We also plan to return to Gearhouse, although nothing official is set yet.

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

1. Go outside your comfort zone. Intentionally try to connect with people who may not already listen to you or may be skeptical of news orgs in general. 

2. Resist thinking you already know what kind of reception you’ll get, or how people will/won’t respond to you. Involve them in what you’re doing (see No. 4) and be authentically interested in peoples’ lives, and you may be surprised at the reception and participation you see. 

3. It helps to have a community connection that can smooth the way, especially when you are going somewhere you haven’t been before.

4. People LOVED the interactivity, both in the main presentation and the small-group discussion. One attendee told me it was better than she thought it was going to be. Why? I asked. “It was more accessible,” she said. I heard that to say that by actually involving attendees in the event itself and in our work, we may have broken a mold of “organization comes to your town, does a lecture about what they do/how they do it, and leaves.”