How Journalists Might Better Meet the Information Needs of Communities: An Interview with Andrea Wenzel

Andrea Wenzel, the author of the 2020 book, Community-Centered Journalism: Engaging People, Exploring Solutions, and Building Trust, graduated several years ago from the USC Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism. While there, she worked with the Metamorphosis research group which has developed a distinctive vocabulary for talking about the narrative resources and networks that inform community life. I was lucky enough to have her as a student in my PhD seminar on the Cultural Studies of Communication and to have introduced her to my former MIT student and sometimes writing partner, Sam Ford, with whom she has been doing some collaborations around understanding the special challenges of providing quality journalism in small towns and rural America. Community-Centered Journalism explores a range of alternative models for how journalists might more productively engage with the citizens in their local areas to insure that their information needs are adequately met, that they are empowered to participate meaningfully in the decisions that impact their lives, and that trust is built and maintained across the process. This book could not be more cutting edge in the ways it explores what’s happening to news today even as it addresses core challenges which I recognized from my time as a local reporter almost forty years ago. For those of us who are invested in alternative models of participation, the book provides frameworks for thinking about how journalism might fit within a more participatory culture. I hope this interview will serve to introduce Community-Centered Journalism to readers who would not have encountered this book otherwise.

You write in your introduction that “dominant journalism norms and practices...often act as barriers to strengthening ties with local storytelling networks.” What are some examples of these “local storytelling networks?” What value do these networks bring to civic life? 

Local storytelling networks basically refer to the idea that in every geographic community you have different kinds of actors involved in telling that community’s story. There hopefully is some sort of local media, but often community organizations and other networks of residents also play an important role in how people find out what is happening in their area. Researchers have found that when ties between different actors in local storytelling networks are strong, residents tend to have higher rates of civic participation and a shared understandings of community issues. But the health of these networks depends on their being trust between these different parties, and in communities that have historically been stigmatized by negative news coverage that is often not the case. 

What aspects of dominant journalism seem to be having harmful consequences on how they operate? What other factors contribute to the relative strength of such networks?

 Probably the most problematic journalism norm that still circulates in many newsroom is the idea of “objectivity.” While that norm can be interpreted in many ways, the dominant interpretation has had the effect of creating distance between journalists and communities, and reinforcing whiteness. Even when journalists don’t intend for this to be the case, traditional ideas about what makes an authoritative source lead to overrepresenting people in positions of power, who are often white men. At the same time, many journalists avoid collaborating with community organizations due to fears of been perceived to be biased. All of this can strain relationships between residents and community groups and local media. Those relationships can also be complicated by factors such as political polarization, or divisions along lines of race, ethnicity, class, and language.

Speak about the paradoxes of local journalism. In many places, there is little or no local news being produced, but where it is being produced, it often plays a central role in the life of the community and is often a site of innovation in terms of how reporters relate to their readers. 

 We know too well that local journalism has been in crisis for some time, with a failed business model, and countless news outlets closing or becoming ghost newspapers that do not serve local information needs. At the same time, places that may at a glance have very little in the way of traditional news outlets can still be rich with communication resources. And, unfortunately, places that have multiple news outlets may not be serving all the communities in their coverage footprint equitably—complicating some interpretations of the idea of news deserts.

In my book I look at several cases where local journalists work to build relationships with residents and existing communication assets to develop coverage with and for communities. This includes initiatives I was involved in that grew from a process of assessing information needs and assets, discussing findings with groups of researchers, journalists, and community stakeholders, then collaboratively designing interventions that that combined elements of solutions journalism and engaged journalism. 

This community-centered process led to a project in rural Western Kentucky where an outlet called the Ohio County Monitor reimagined the local tradition of having society columnists to start a new community contributors project to give residents a chance to share first-person perspectives on a range of issues. They also organized listening tours in the cafes of convenience stations around the county where groups of local regulars would gather for coffee and conversation at self-described “liars tables”—which despite their name were often the best way to find out what was happening in the area. 

A similar community-centered process alto led to the creation of the Germantown Info Hub in a majority Black neighborhood of Philadelphia where residents wanted an alternative to historically negative and crime-centric coverage of their community. That project has grown into a community journalism project where a community organizer and a community reporter conduct outreach, share neighborhood stories online and on a community radio show, and host community discussions. 

 How might we contrast solutions journalism with a more conventional notion of watchdog journalism?

Solutions journalism, using the definition espoused by the Solutions Journalism Network, is essentially a call for journalists to rigorously report not just on problems but on responses to social problems. It challenges the traditional theory of change associated with watchdog journalism—that just adding sunlight to reveal a problem will automatically lead to change. Proponents of solutions journalism argue that in order for people to take agency to improve a situation they need to understand what change is possible, how it works, and the limitations of such efforts. 

 What relationship might we posit between engaged journalism and so-called citizen journalism?  Can one be engaged and objective at the same time?

Engaged journalism is a term that can and has been interpreted in many ways. I think of it as a range of practices that aim to build relationships between journalists and the public, to assess and respond to their information needs and interests, and to involve the public to varying degrees in the journalistic process. That involvement could include citizen journalism, but it can also involve people in different ways—contributing to the creation of stories or discussion of them. There can be a real spectrum of participation depending on the interest and labor citizens are able to contribute, and the degree of comfort professional journalists have in sharing editorial power. As I alluded earlier I think the dominant interpretation of objectivity has been operationalized in journalism in a way that is problematic. At the same time, I think most practitioners of engaged journalism would say they are not advocates for any particular issue but rather advocates for a community and its information needs.  

In the early 1980s, I was hired to be a feature writer for the Smyrna Neighbor Newspaper in what was then still a semi-rural suburb of Atlanta. Having never lived in that community before, I had little sense of what the needs or interests of the community were and felt bunkered in the newspaper office not sure where to go in search of good stories. Previously, my work as a student journalist had been within communities -- my high school and my university -- where I knew the people well. What are some of the options that a young reporter today might have as they sought to develop a deeper understanding of the community and its needs?

This is a great question and one that I think many new (and not so new) journalists grapple with. One of the competencies that I wish were taught more universally in journalism schools (or in newsrooms) is how to adapt community organizing strategies for journalism. These strategies often center the idea of relationship building and understanding local power dynamics and being mindful of one’s own positionality with these dynamics. Organizations like Free Press News Voices do a lot of great work and have some helpful online resources. I’ve seen them work with journalists on strategies like having one-on-one meetings with community stakeholders, asset mapping to understand local communication resources and power dynamics, and convening community discussions.  Another strategy I’ve seen work well is to have accountability conversations where journalists who cover a community join residents to talk about their coverage, creating 2-way feedback loops and opportunities to build relationships. And even for new reporters who may have limited resources, a lot can be accomplished by simply showing up to be in the community when not working on a story—be it for a community meeting or to go to a coffee shop (in a non-pandemic reality). People appreciate reporters who show up to get to know a community and not simply to extract quotes. The Listening Post Collective has some great tips about how to get to know the information needs of a community and build relationships.

As you describe across the book, your own journalistic experience and research has included work in public radio in Chicago and Afghanistan, in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Kentucky. What similarities and differences have you found in the informational needs of these very different communities?

A lot of the argument I make in my book is that you can’t impose a one-size-fits-all approach to local journalism. The same things that make an intervention responsive to a community’s information needs is the same thing that prevents it from really being scalable. That said, I’ve definitely seen a lot of common themes pop up in all the places you note here. This probably has something to do with the fact that many of the people I have spoken with in my work have come from communities that have been marginalized or stigmatized in one way or another. There have been common frustrations with feeling like outsiders—coming from another country or another part of a city—have not represented their stories in a way that felt fair or respectful to them. People in all of these places also shared with me a hunger to see more stories that highlighted community-driven solutions—be they a farmer in Afghanistan or a community organizer in South Los Angeles. Finally, while the specific information needs varied, in each there were often gaps between the actionable information residents often prioritized and the ideas journalists might have of what would make a story compelling or newsworthy—some of these complaints connect with calls by some to rethink a hierarchy of information needs in journalism. Reflecting back on what I learned from all of these different contexts, my big take away was actually pretty simple—community-centered projects are not really scalable, but a community-centered process is portable. I think listening to and working with communities to respond to both information needs and assets is our best hope for strengthening the communication health of communities. 

Andrea Wenzel is an assistant professor of journalism and communication at Temple University. She is the author of Community-Centered Journalism: Engaging People, Exploring Solutions and Building Trust (University of Illinois Press, 2020). As a Knight News Innovation Fellow with Columbia University’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism, she has led projects on local news with a focus on marginalized groups in rural, small town, suburban and urban communities. Her projects have explored issues of equity and inclusion, engaged journalism, and solutions journalism. She is the co-founder of the community journalism project, the Germantown Info Hub.