“I’m putting together a crew”: How to hire for engagement
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When it comes to accomplishing your goals, it’s important to consider who is on your team, and what their roles are.
After all, ensembles are important. Every good heist movie starts with a mastermind putting together a crew: A quick-fingered thief, a flashy con for distraction, a heavy for when the situation requires muscle. Everyone has a specific role to help the crew get the goods and make a clean getaway.
Most newsrooms aren’t attempting to pull a heist. (Generally speaking. Then again, we don’t know your lives). But when your goal is producing journalism that is deeply engaged with your local community, it’s just as important to put together a team specifically designed to do that.
So, how do you hire for engagement?
It can be a tricky question to answer. There’s no one way to do community engagement, and there’s not really one standardized definition for a community engagement practitioner. What’s the difference between an editor and a producer? Or a specialist? Or a reporter? What do any of these things mean? This “industry” is in its early stages, and is just beginning to define these jobs. All that can be refreshing on the one hand, because you have a lot of freedom to define things yourself. It can also be overwhelming.
Instead of starting with the position name, ask yourself: What do you need this person to do?
We need someone in the newsroom who can build bridges between the community and our newsroom.
Sounds like you’re looking for a Community Engagement Specialist! This person can pound the pavement, cultivate and maintain a portfolio of community contacts, and generally keep a finger on the pulse of community concerns. They can produce content, but it’s not primarily what’s expected of them. Their specialty is more along the lines of holding listening sessions and keeping track of community priorities, then communicating their findings to the newsroom so the newsroom can act upon them – creating opportunities for the community to influence and give feedback on the work the newsroom produces. Sometimes, not being a reporter can really be to their benefit, as it was for me at Side Effects Public Media when we were reporting on the chaos of the Medicaid pandemic protection rollbacks. People with community organizing experience can be particularly effective in these roles.
A quick note: If you have an engagement specialist like this in your newsroom, make sure they are on the same level as reporters. This is a job that requires a lot of skill, and if it’s essential to the reporting process, it should be compensated accordingly.
Actually, we’re looking for someone who can do all that, and produce content themselves.
In that case, you might be looking for a Community Engagement Reporter or Producer! Ideally, every reporter can employ community engagement practices, but sometimes it can be helpful to have at least one person who can use engagement practices to gather information and transform it into content themselves, in addition to sharing insights with other content producers in the newsroom. A reporter can do this on their own for digital or broadcast journalism features; a producer might think about how community insights can be realized through multiple content streams, including social media. A producer might also have multimedia skills they can use to get those pieces done, or help others get those pieces done. Check out the way Amy Feiereisel, the engagement producer at North Country Public Radio, implements community engagement strategies to collect feedback the whole newsroom can use.
That sounds great! What if we really want this person directing engagement strategies? Now we’re talking. That’s an Engagement Editor. Where specialists, reporters and producers can make recommendations for the way the newsroom as a whole implements community listening, an Engagement Editor can enforce those decisions. They are leaders in the newsroom, and their “beat” is making sure the newsroom’s coverage centers the community’s priorities. They have knowledge of community engagement practices and can ensure their reporters are implementing those practices on a daily basis. They can carve out and protect time dedicated to community engagement, lead the charge on cultivating relationships with community groups, and they’re knowledgeable enough about the community’s priorities to judge whether the content produced actually meets the needs and wants community members expressed.
You could also consider a Community Engagement Manager. They don’t do as much editing, but they do occupy a leadership position and can decide editorial priorities based on their engagement work, like the way Robin Tate Rockel informs the Indiana Public Broadcasting team.
Wow! We might actually want someone like that to make sure everyone at our station is using community engagement strategies!
Congrats! You have worked your way up to a Director of Community Engagement. Like an editor, they occupy a managerial and leadership position, guiding community engagement practices across multiple teams–including outside the newsroom. As Hearst Newspapers described in a 2022 job posting for a Director of Social/Engagement, this kind of position must be able to “develop and lead a cross-market social and engagement strategy, working with newsroom leaders to grow and execute against audience goals, subscription goals and reader needs.”
In many newsrooms there’s also the role of Audience Editor, which is focused on the newsroom’s audience: Building that audience, maintaining that audience, understanding the audience’s particular needs and preferences, and designing an experience that keeps the audience coming back for more. These folks are usually very involved in the website and digital side of things. A good, important job, but you won’t be expecting this role to do what a community engagement professional does, which is looking beyond the audience to specific communities who may or may not be part of that audience.
Again, the engagement field hasn’t yet made hiring an exact science. Roles can be fluid and squishy. Figuring out what you want your engagement staff member to do, as well as what level of decision-making ability you want them to have, is a necessary first step. From there, you can write out a list of duties this person would be responsible for and match them with one of the descriptions above. Or mix and match! Blend positions together! Go wild!
For additional sample job descriptions, check out these resources:
Examples of engagement positions from the America Amplified Engagement Playbook