How journalism is falling short to engage local communities

And what I’m doing about it.

Personally, I constantly think about how my actions, words, and presence can make the most impact for literally everything I do. I seek for ways that I can influence others and for ways people or information can influence me. This affects my decisions on what I choose to learn based on its valuable takeaways and opportunities. I’m quite stubborn, honestly. I look forward to reading essays and watching documentaries much more than fiction or nonsensical content. Overtime, I’ve narrowed my options for consuming information — years ago I got rid of my TV services and, now, I’m feeling the same frustration and repulsion against social media and news websites. And, I’m not alone.

With my time spent in local journalism, I’ve learned how myself and other readers may have a purpose-driven attitude toward local news, but that the news doesn’t always meet us halfway. Like other businesses, newsrooms are being blindsided and challenged as they try to make sense of how to reel and sustain engagement with young readers. I don’t believe they understand how critical it is to deliver purpose these days, and if they should be the ones responsible for providing it.

Out of 979 respondents (U.S. residents), we discovered that a majority (over 75%) are aware of opportunities to get involved and voice their opinion in their community. However, 75% did not see it “very important” to actually take action and participate in their community. Today, it is ever-so-easy to just learn about what’s happening locally through Facebook (78%) or community websites (73%) but it seems these resources are limited to push a resident’s community interest to engagement.

The key insight gathered from this study was that invitation and guidance for community engagement has a lot of room for improvement. Thinking back to my purposeful ways, I can relate to them. A major reason why I wouldn’t take action on something would be either if I wasn’t asked or guided to do so, or if the topic wasn’t my current priority.

I spent the next 5 months learning if and how these factors (invitation and guidance) are correlated to local news engagement and where exactly they fell short. During this time, I kept 3 hypotheses in mind:

Therefore, the higher the level of encouragement to participate in communities, the higher the interest and engagement residents will give to its local news.

So, shouldn’t it be in the journalist’s best interest to support community engagement? Where does it fall short today?

To better understand exactly how invitation and guidance are currently handled in local news, I took it upon myself to begin a handful of experiments as you’ll see here and further below.

Early this year, I gathered just over 100 news articles from around the U.S. and analyzed them to identify their approach for community engagement. When I finished reading an article — I would ask myself two simple questions: “With this information, why is this important to my community? and, what can I do about it?”

For a vast majority of the articles, I could not find answers.

The journalist did fantastic job at telling me all about a problem or topic in the community, but seemed to make absolutely no effort in stating why exactly it’s important to the community and what my responsibility is as a resident. With this, it was left entirely up to me to think of how I could engage.

Here are 3 examples of news where I saw a lack of invitation and guidance, even when I explicitly asked for it…

What I concluded with after this analysis is that there is indeed a widespread lack of invitation and guidance for engagement in local news. However, it’s important not to blame journalists… entirely.

So, who is accountable?

Furthermore, overtime, residents have become more independent and local communities have become more fragmented. Our instincts and habits have drifted farther away from engagement with neighbors and local resources. Pulling residents back into communal interdependence is another deeper challenge that must be overcome. The invitation to engage meets this challenge face-to-face and must be stronger than the average.

These factors are turning out to be absolutely necessary. To help sustain local news engagement, invitation and guidance must be present at all times — and not just for elections and other popular topics but for every-day news.

But if the journalist is hands-off, how can this be accomplished?

I’ve identified two changes to local news could help create and emphasize the invitation for readers to engage with the topic at hand, either online or offline.

#1: A shift in context

Shifting the context of the local news narrative from problems to possibilities is the main exit out of the Stuck Community. It’s an opportunity to transform news from information into one of influence and inspiration. To honestly state that the article does not have all of the answers, and explicitly list where there are opportunities for readers to become a participant or contributor. I believe it would help bring readers, across labels and deficiencies, together as one to be accountable for their community’s stability. (I have more recommendations for this implementation but will leave them for another article soon.)

#2: Community-driven CTAs (call-to-actions)

We’re all a bit open-minded and creative these days but, for the past decade, we’ve been bowing down to the same CTAs — the “like” button, “share,” “read more,” and “comment.” It’s about time that changed. Local news has the opportunity to have unique CTAs that are relevant to its topic and are mission-driven for those purpose-demanding readers.

CTAs have the potential to capture the reader’s engagement at their highest point of interest. From the research mentioned above, engagement is the stage that people currently hesitate at — meaning the CTAs are somehow faulty. If they were more impactful, personal, and prominent, there’s a big chance we could see an improvement.

I believe both of these changes are equally valuable and, however, controversial. With strict protocols and ethics currently embedded in each newsroom, it seems absurd to advocate for this type of change — at least on my own. I began to research what type of resources were already out there that took this approach with local news but, aside from those with promising mission statements, I couldn’t find any organization that was actually doing it.

So, I continued experimenting with my own resources to see how a change in context, invitation, and guidance could be accomplished.

ACT: A solution starting to form

What all of this insight combined into was magical. In between the two events in April, I entered into Techstars’ Startup Weekend Competition whose theme was, coincidentally, Social Impact. As 3 fantastic team members joined me during the work-packed weekend, we powered overtop 40 ideas to proudly place 3rd and decide on an official name, ACT.

ACT has adopted the mission I’ve been after these past months — a solution to bridge local news and community engagement. It allows newsrooms to remain safely hands-off from advocating community engagement, yet provides invitation and guidance for residents to take action, build their role in the community, and become more interested in local news happening nearby. ACT focuses on showcasing purposeful and personalized opportunities for readers to volunteer, attend events, collaborate with neighbors, and donate to causes that are closely related to recent news. As future generations of readers are sought out more from journalists, we believe ACT will serve their needs by fueling more purpose into local news and help inspire them to become a loyal member of their community.

Three members of our team are still active and dedicated toward the project today. I’m truly grateful to have had the opportunity to meet them. Since the competition we’ve continued to research, experiment, and have even launched our first prototype in June to test with our friends and family.

I hope our experiences and insights so far have helped you better understand this critical gap and make you more aware of the possibilities for engagement in your newsroom or community.

I would love to hear your opinion or experience on this approach, and I’m happy to answer any questions you have as well. Please share in the comments below.

Thank you for reading!

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