Build trust or lose readers, listeners, and viewers. That’s the challenge facing news organizations these days, says a key speaker for Radically Rural’s Community Journalism Track.
“You can’t change what people think in general about journalism, but you can recognize that peoples’ suspicions about and frustrations with national journalism are often valid,” says Joy Mayer, longtime journalist, professor, and founder of Trusting News.
Mayer, who will kick off Radically Rural’s community journalism sessions at 10:30 a.m., Sept. 22 at SHOWROOM in Keene, N.H. and live-streamed online, will discuss the mission and work behind her organization since its genesis in 2016. The New England Newspaper and Press Association is helping to sponsor Mayer’s and other sessions at Radically Rural.
During her extensive years working in newsrooms and talking to her students, Mayer has watched as the narratives surrounding the media became more and more muddled in the minds of consumers across the country. The national political landscape and perception of national media have become increasingly polarized and tense. As a result, the burden has fallen on local journalists to take into account and be responsible for what their readers, viewers, and listeners think about what journalism is.
“There’s plenty of irresponsible, partisan, unhelpful things done in the name of journalism,” says Mayer, pointing to the mass distrust of the media in the U.S. “But, too often, journalists say, ‘there’s nothing I can do about it because people have their mind made up, and I’m just going to keep doing what I’m doing and hope it gets better.’”
To address these attitudes, from those who produce news to those who consume it, Mayer and her team have developed strategies that local journalists can utilize to tell a better story about what goes on behind newsroom doors. These new methods for interaction invite readers to see their local journalists’ efforts as distinguished from a larger, national conversation of distrust.
“We see local journalists struggling with sources who don’t want to talk to them and a lot of myths and assumptions circulating about the business model of local newsrooms,” says Mayer. “It is time to move past these misconceptions in rural communities and promote a strong sense of pride in local news.”
The Trusting News Team believes that newsrooms need to understand the causes of user distrust before effectively taking ownership and prioritize earning back confidence in their work. At its core, Trusting News trains newsrooms to commit to standards of transparency and ethics, dedicate staff time to understanding distrust, explain the purpose, decision-making, and processes of journalism, and actively invite and respond to audience feedback and questions.
While trust is hard to measure, Trusting News is constantly engaging in research that helps news organizations better understand where mistrust stems. At Radically Rural, Mayer will share newly published insights from her most recent research.
Trusting News invited newsrooms to talk to right-leaning readers in their own communities and was able to collect 91 in-depth interviews that share what people say about their local news and not just the media in general. Journalists who conducted those interviews now have important lessons to share and strategies to deal with that research.
Mayer, who teaches professional journalism both online for the NewsU program and at in-person seminars at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla., also goes by the title of audience engagement strategist.
She will be joined at Radically Rural by Lynn Walsh, assistant director, Trusting News; Peter Huoppi, director of multimedia at The Day of New London, Conn.; and Crystal Good, publisher/founder, Black by God – The West Virginian.
Mayer and her panel hope to discuss ways in which local newsrooms can empower staff to engage and defend the integrity of the brand they are creating together. The discussion will include topics of race representation in the newsroom, how to work and engage more openly with the community and what it’s like to be a person of color consuming local news.
Mayer hopes to see journalists, local news consumers, community leaders and organizers, law and policymakers, and government leaders in her audience for her session.
For more information on Radically Rural’s Community Journalism Track and its other sessions, go to www.radicallyrural.org NENPA members can register to attend online or in-person using the code NENPA for a discount.
Story contributed by Annika Kristiansen.