Conclusion

Curious City’s outreach initiative demonstrates the value that in-person, offline contact can add to digital engagement initiatives. Particularly when these are undertaken in partnership with organizations and institutions embedded in communities with established networks of trust, media initiatives can more efficiently connect with residents they may not otherwise reach. This can have a meaningful impact on whose voices are heard in the media and how participating residents view a media outlet—something that is particularly critical in communities that feel neglected or stigmatized by a history of negative media coverage.

Outreach initiatives like Curious City’s respond to calls for media to listen to communities. They also sit alongside recommendations by a previous Tow study on community-based solutions journalism in which residents of stigmatized communities called for more opportunities to connect with media throughout the storytelling process.³⁹ However, these initiatives have potential to go further if they address some key engagement gaps. For example, even a small financial investment would allow future outreach efforts to develop grassroots marketing tools such as flyers or even physical signs. This would increase the chances of engaging residents beyond their asking a single question, possibly even encouraging them to return to the project website to listen, ask more questions, and share and discuss their perspectives on programs heard. Likewise, investing more in post-broadcast activities to promote discussion and dialogue could be made more accessible to residents from these communities. Here, too, digital initiatives can be combined with offline strategies that draw from community organizing practices such as holding stakeholder convenings or creating community coordinating councils.

Hearken’s founder Jennifer Brandel explained that she and her team regularly encouraged members of their network to pursue online and offline engagement:

You know a lot of newsrooms will see our approach, see our format, and say, “Oh, can we just take the questions and do them?” I’m like, ‘You can, but you’re actually losing out on a lot of relationship building.’’ . . . That would be very extractive to just take their questions. Never follow up with them. Never tell them that you answered it. Never mention them in the final pieces that you’re doing. Never give them credit.⁴⁰

She acknowledged that Hearken could not control how newsrooms use its technical platform, but that it has put forward a model of best practice. She explained that ideally she would like engagement throughout the story cycle, extending beyond a story’s broadcast. “Afterwards, depending on what the story was about and who it served, figure out a way of extending that into the communities who would be the most interested or who would have the most to gain,” she suggested. Brandel shared her own experience from the early days of Curious City, when they organized in-community events to follow up on issues in partnership with local organizations. She argued that they connected residents who otherwise would have lacked the opportunity to get to know each other, while giving stakeholders a chance to follow up on issues in a way that might not be appropriate for a news organization.

Developing meaningful partnerships with community organizations and institutions takes a substantial time investment. This includes coming to common understandings of expectations and goals, and seeking ways that both partners can benefit. Because Curious City had limited time to invest and was focused on individual residents more than institutional ties, this was not generally possible during the scope of this outreach project. However, to make relationships with institutions such as libraries sustainable and productive over time, it may be worth investing in managing these relationships in a way that more directly engages the interest of the partner organization. Openly acknowledging the interests of actors and finding ways to balance them may be more realistic than pursuing partners that have “no agenda.” This sort of transparency may make it possible to broaden the pool of partners to include other community organizations as well. Similarly, cultivating partnerships with hyper-local/ethnic media outlets and youth media programs requires considerable time. However, the potential benefits could allow Curious City/WBEZ or other outlets to engage with community voices in a way that encourages conversation and avoids extraction.

Overall, journalists, residents, and community stakeholders were favorable about Curious City’s more engaged process and how it challenged some traditional journalistic practices. However, many also expressed that it was a way of working that had a time and place: “It would be weird to have a radio station or newspaper totally driven by, ‘Here’s what people told us to write this week,’” said one reporter. ⁴¹ Another journalist shared thoughts on why there should be limits: “Do I think we should live in a world where all news is started by the audience? No. I like the idea that there are journalists who help set priorities. And beat reporters whose continued doggedness on a particular area elicits new questions that we never knew we had. . . . I think too much of it, too much of anything . . . is not a good thing.”⁴²

Several Curious City question-askers from WBEZ stronghold areas were relatively conservative about the role non-professionals should play in making media, expressing a reluctance to get information from blogs and a preference for reading the work of professional journalists. “I appreciate the fact that they do programming based on their audiences’ interests,” said a question-asker. “But I also think they need to tell stuff that we may not know we need to know.”⁴³ Several of these residents spoke of Curious City as filling a supplemental role in their media diet. Many said they valued Curious City for its “quirky” stories, and saw it as an antidote to otherwise depressing news fare. In contrast to many residents from Curious City’s outreach areas, these participants expressed trust in professional media coverage and were overall more satisfied with how their communities were portrayed by media.

Nevertheless, some question-askers and journalists pointed to a critical need to question the status quo. Pointing to media coverage of the 2016 elections, one journalist critiqued the “stranglehold” the national press had on “what gets put forth in the national conversation,” saying: “I just think you listen to what people’s priorities are in their lives and what they’re interested in, and then you listen to what is on CNN all day—and it’s a disconnect.”⁴⁴

By actively seeking out questions from new geographies and communities, Curious City’s outreach went some way in expanding engagement in the cycle of storytelling—and, at least in a limited way, strengthening links in the local communication infrastructural “storytelling network.” The program could go further in challenging historic power dynamics between media and underrepresented communities by investing more in mutually beneficial partnerships and post-broadcast dialogue, as well as engagement that contributes to a feedback loop.

If the media seeks to alter gaps between media makers and communities, it will be well served to consider how a potential listener, reader, or viewer is situated within online and offline community networks rather than focusing exclusively on individuals. The people formerly known as the audience don’t simply listen to or read stories. They discuss them with friends. They argue about them with family. They refer a neighbor to check out a website or a post on a fellow friend’s Facebook page. They may even mention a story at a community meeting. Engaging with residents requires meeting them in the environments they inhabit, both online and offline. It is a messy and time-consuming business. But if media makers are to take steps to repair fractured trust with the publics they seek to serve, they may well need to undertake radical listening, and grapple with how they can create spaces not just to give voice, but to facilitate dialogue between voices.