Involving readers helps both trust and reporting

Readers: What do you know and what do you want to know?

Increasingly, you may have noticed, the Star is reaching out to its community for information that can broaden and deepen the reporting that any one reporter or newsroom can do. In recent weeks, the Star’s city hall bureau sought input on your ideas for the future of Ontario Place, transportation reporter Ben Spurr asked what you want to know about how the Presto card works and immigration reporter Nicholas Keung continued to deepen his relationships on this critical beat through a Facebook group of more than 1,200 members.

Newsrooms and individual journalists around the world these days are making greater efforts to reach out to their audiences to make their journalism more interactive and engage readers in the process of gathering and publishing information that matters to your lives. Now labelled “engagement journalism” this is a vital movement to utilize and recognize the important relationships between newsrooms and the communities they serve.

“I suggested reaching out to our readers about Ontario Place because they, and other Ontarians, own it and should have a say in what becomes of their once-beloved landmark,” David Rider, the Star’s city hall bureau chief told me of this recent effort to engage readers.

“Journalism organizations are soliciting and amplifying public opinions more, I think, because of social media, including Twitter and Reddit. We have great tools to quickly get feedback from readers and foster discussion and debate that can expand into media and beyond,” Rider said. “I personally think this is healthy.

“Social media has made journalism much more of a conversation, with journalists sometimes confessing ‘I don’t know what’s happening here’ and non-journalists chiming in with rele- vant facts and opinions.”

Indeed, these “callouts” to news audiences recognize the fact that there are most always people in our audiences who know more than any one journalist can about any given topic. Listening to them can make journalism better.

City hall reporter Francine Kopun shared Rider’s enthusiasm for the Ontario Place callout. She has long regarded reporting as an enterprise that takes place “not just between reporters and editors but between readers and reporters.”

“I think many minds focused on a single problem are more likely to come up with unique solutions to problems and interesting angles on issues,” she said.

Considerable research tells us that making greater efforts to engage news audiences in the process of information gathering can result in greater trust in journalism.

Indeed, this new technology-enabled engagement journalism was presented as a “tool for trust” at the International Journalism Festival in Italy last spring by Jennifer Brandel, founder of the U.S.-based Hearken, a platform aimed at creating more audience interaction with journalism.

“What we’re learning is that these stories that involve people are more likely to lead to trust – not only trust of the audiences of newsrooms but trust of newsrooms of their audiences,” Brandel said of the benefits of working toward a “reciprocal relationship” between newsrooms and their audiences.

Taking steps to create meaningful conversations with readers, using the many tools of connection that now exist, is indeed a “different mentality and workflow” for many journalists, Brandel said. But doing so can create an environment of inclusiveness and reciprocity, that provides a foundation or mutual trust.

To begin, a key question a newsroom can ask its community is, “What do you not know that we can find out for you,” Brandel said.

“What we’ve created is a story cycle in which the public can participate in the reporting process and help reporters make better, more relevant decisions and where they are included in the entire process, which leads to trust because they can see how stories are made,” she said.

Of course, newsrooms cannot simply turn over information gathering to our audiences. As with all information we publish, we must keep our journalistic standards front of mind. Some information from audiences will require further verification; some can be presented transparently as input from the community.

So, what do you know? What do you want to know? Trust me, I want to know. Kathy English is the Star’s public editor and based in Toronto. Reach her by email at publiced@thestar.ca