'A Journalist Should Step Correct:' Building Trust in Local News

"How can journalists and community members build trust and have more constructive, collaborative relationships?"

This article provides a summary of months of assessment and conversation about local journalism with two demographically different neighbourhoods in the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States (US) metropolitan area. From November 2017 to February 2018, the authors, four fellows at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism, conducted a study examining residents' news practices and attitudes toward media. They then organised a series of workshops for study participants, community leaders, and journalists to generate ideas to address the challenges raised by the study.

For two Saturdays in a row, the research team organised workshops in the communities that had taken part in the earlier study - first in Germantown, a majority African-American urban neighbourhood, and then in Montgomery County, a majority-white, politically divided suburb. At both, they gathered area residents, leaders of community organisations, members of local business associations, representatives of universities and student media, and journalists from local newspapers, public and community radio, and television.

Each workshop began with a presentation of key findings from the focus groups, story diaries (in which participants logged stories that captured their attention and how they shared them on and offline for a week), and interviews that were conducted with residents. These included reflections from Germantown residents, whose distrust of media was deep and not simply sparked by the 2016 US presidential election coverage. Study participants lamented that their community received too much disproportionately negative coverage (e.g., of crime) and not enough nuanced coverage of issues that affect them personally, such as education, gentrification, jobs, and transportation. They attributed inaccurate coverage to a lack of experienced journalists and a lack of journalists from their community, as well as to financial or political motives. In Montgomery County, study participants put a greater emphasis on local news gaps, with several referencing the consolidation of ownership of several local newspapers. Their comments also reflected partisan patterns in what constituted trust.

Commonalities between the residents' wish lists in both areas included wanting more coverage that explored attempted solutions to local problems and constructive initiatives in the community, opportunities for media to work with communities to create coverage, and an openness to media facilitating discussion on community issues.

The researchers then welcomed to the workshop leaders of initiatives centring around "engaged journalism" (which explores the changing relationship between news producers and audiences and the methods journalists can use to secure the attention of news consumers) and "solutions journalism" (an approach to news reporting that focuses on the responses to social issues as well as the problems themselves). Next, they transitioned to small groups with combinations of journalists and community stakeholders to brainstorm ideas that would respond to concerns and facilitate possible interventions.

Themes that emerged around strengthening the connection between communities and media included:

• Participants pointed to the power of existing informal networks such as neighbourhood Facebook groups and community newsletters, as well as community organisations, churches, and historical societies.
• Participants suggested collaborating with an area college and/or a local civic group such as the Rotary Club to train citizens and students to do basic reporting, or possibly exploring citizen documenting models. Participants discussed a range of possibilities around training and payment for community contributors.
• While pointing to various ways community members are sharing information that matters at the hyperlocal level, participants contend that this information does not circulate evenly within communities.

With regard to representation, participants urged that media outlets need to not only represent their community more fairly and in a less stigmatising way but also in a way that acknowledges history and context. Ideas that were floated for supporting this ranged from holding community history roundtables, to connecting new reporters to existing community groups and historical centres, to gathering personal stories from elders at senior centres.

Conversation in both communities focused on how to connect residents of those areas to one another, allowing them to access the basic community information they need to participate in civic and social life. However, there was a recognition of the power and influence of larger regional legacy media, such as the city's major newspaper, local television networks, and other city-wide outlets. One participating journalist opined that legacy outlets are genuine in wanting to build better connections with communities.

Following the two workshops, the researchers shared their findings at the Northeastern Society for Professional Journalists conference held in Philadelphia. Initial conversations between journalists and community advocates are exploring possibile approaches to increase communication and deepen understanding between media and communities. These may include: developing structures for regular accountability conversations, using engagement platforms to connect existing community influencers and organisations, and creating training and community outreach collaborations between universities, media, and community stakeholders.

Editor's note: A community journalism pilot project, the Germantown Info Hub, grew out of this research.