Ethical partnering

By David Fortier

Introduction

The goal for this project, and by extension this website, is to promote an ethical approach with citizens driving the news in their locality. The workshop model has shown that it can provide an anchor of sorts for a small group of participants over a set number of weeks. It makes sense that the same concept can be promoted over a longer time period in regular public meetings.

In the research for the project, I came across several examples of news media doing their own variety of this type of outreach. Most prominent among these examples of public-participation, public-powered or engagement journalism, is a program called, Curious City, affiliated with a radio station, WBEZ Chicago. Coverage of its progress, especially in the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) is extensive, so there is plenty of information to design a local program from it. Here are two articles:

Below:

Partnership, click here.
Levels of partnering, click here.
Resources, click here.

Partnership

Partnership is key. For TBE, partnership, especially in light of our goal of providing citizens with more agency when it comes to news coverage, means an activity that occurs among equals. In many of the initiatives by the news media to involve readers the program is run “for” and not “with” participants.

A first hurdle to cross then is during planning to involve anyone attracted to an evening meeting would be how to get this idea across through the activities that are planned.

An evening TBE program might follow these steps:

Deciding in advance what it is TBE would like to accomplish, for instance, introducing one of the 5 core values: accuracy, independence, impartiality, accountability, and humanity.
Invite people to share their ideas for coverage.
Once a story idea is decided upon, ask participants to determine how their story addresses the particular value, say humanity.
Let people dig into the intricacies of as many stories that they can within the time set aside for the program, without going beyond it.
Ask for people who would like to participate in reporting that story.
Follow from there.

This is hypothetical because TBE has not held a session at this point. However, when it does, it will make a point of providing an account on online for those who were not able to attend, with the hope that they might in the future.

Levels of partnering

Something further to consider is the partnering may have several levels, which require attention of their own:

With volunteers within the organization
With members of the community
With other publications, either to approach them with a critique or to provide story ideas.