Preparing to Engage
Station Managers
How do I set the stage?
It’s critical to be clear about how you see community engagement fitting in with or changing your organization. That means you first have to evaluate your station’s stated mission, establish a vision for how community engagement fits in with that, and then align your organization to deliver on the goals and priorities.
The road to successfully incorporating community engagement into your newsroom’s culture must be paved with clear intention. We encourage station managers to review these steps – whether you are just beginning your journey into engagement journalism or your newsroom has been practicing it for a long time.
Connect mission to engagement.
Work with staff to review and revise your organization’s mission statement and stated objectives to reflect your commitment to community engagement.
What is your station’s vision for community engagement and how does it fit with your station’s established mission, if it has one?
Talk with your leadership team about incorporating community engagement in your mission statement in some way.
Here are some examples of mission statements:
WFYI — Indianapolis:
MISSION: Trusted journalism, inspiring stories and lifelong learning.
VISION: An informed, inspired and inclusive Indiana. WFYI is committed to representing the rich diversity of our community and amplifying stories that represent the experiences of all.
Grady Newsource — Georgia:
First and foremost, our mission is to serve the residents of Northeast Georgia by informing them in a way that helps them make decisions about and understand their lives and communities.
Germantown Info Hub — Philadelphia:
The Germantown Info Hub is a community journalism project that seeks to share information and stories of and for residents of Philadelphia’s Germantown neighborhoods.
Assess your staff and resources.
Take stock of your staff’s current obligations and priorities. Consider these questions:
Do you understand what everyone on your staff is responsible for?
Does everyone on staff have a clear job description?
Find your leaders.
It’s imperative that you have an editorial lead who is in sync with the organization’s vision to pivot to an engagement strategy. Get buy-in from your News Director, podcast or talk show executive producers, or all of the above by sharing impactful resources and case studies that underscore the power of engaged journalism.
If you have the resources, hire a Community Engagement Director to build an engagement team.
Engage the organization.
Support your newsrooms’ efforts to identify who’s included and who’s missing from your current coverage. See our guide on source diversity tracking.
Establish metrics for success.
It’s important to establish what you’ll be measuring before the work begins. Work with your newsroom manager to establish a system to track some key metrics of impact, and then continually share that impact with your community, your Advisory Board, with other stations and, most importantly, with funders:
Story ideas coming to your from the community
More diverse voices on the air
Partnerships brokered with community groups and or other media
Attendance at listening events (diversity of people present at such events)
Types of enterprise stories produced
Number of new sources/contacts established
New skills acquired by staff (live video streaming on Facebook; organizing and tracking a texting club)
An increase in station membership as a result of community engagement
Digital audience growth as a result of engagement
Policy changes – locally, statewide – as a result of the stories that have emerged from engagement
Consider creating a spreadsheet or document to share with newsroom leaders and staff that tracks the metrics you are measuring. Set up a workflow to ensure that staff are contributing to that spreadsheet and that you are sharing measurements of success with the organization as a whole.
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WATCH: Where Metrics Meet Mission with Hearken’s Jennifer Brandel and Summer Fields
Review Trusting News’ advice on explaining your mission.
Ready to continue your journey?
You are here.
