By Sahi Padmanabhan
Something that my high school journalism teacher always said has stuck with me to this day: journalism is about creating an informed community.
When I first started, that meant informing the students at the school about dances and events, football wins and tennis losses. It didn’t mean much to me because I didn’t put much stock into the idea of “community” at a high school of nearly 3,000 students. I barely knew 50% of my class.
By the time I was a senior in high school, however, the tone of my teacher’s message changed. The Naperville Sun had been bought out by Tribune Publishing in a huge deal that included many suburban newspapers formerly owned by the Sun-Times.
The turnover was rough; people in my town weren’t sure where to get their news anymore. My journalism teacher encouraged us to chase this opportunity and try and fill in the gap. Even without a strong newspaper, the people in Naperville still needed news, and our high school newspaper had the chance to give it to them.
In the end, our small staff of 20 high school students wasn’t able to meet that need, but that experience of striving for more and trying to give our community what they desperately needed always stuck with me. It lingered in the back of my head. It was a regret, something I wished we pulled off.
It wasn’t until later, when I got a chance to talk to Terry Parris, Jr., Engagement Editor at The City, that I realized what we had been doing wrong. We wanted to write for the community, but we never stopped to ask what they wanted to read.
As journalists, we often talk about our audience. Who is our audience? Will they be interested in this story? How can we make them interested in this story? Parris, however, offered a reframe of this idea: the audience will always be there. They are the people who read the paper every day and have the time and privilege to be able to afford that. They aren’t going anywhere.
However, the stories should be about communities. They can be something as small as a 300-word brief on a fallen street sign to long investigations of housing insecurity in a specific neighborhood. These stories are meant to enlighten the community, to help them understand what is going on around them and make informed decisions. To be able to do this, reporters have to actually talk to the community.
The City is helping set the tone for how community engagement, especially in local journalism, will have to function moving forward. Partnering with the Brooklyn Public Library, they have a program called Open Newsroom, where they encourage community members to engage with reporters and let them know what they want to read.
In our own city, City Bureau is striving for the same things through their Public Newsroom events. These events are meant to build trust between the newsroom and the community and help shape the way they report on issues that community members and stakeholders say are important.
Being able to tell the difference between audience and community is important. Focusing too heavily on the audience has ended up privileging those who have the means and access to read the newspaper every day and buy a subscription. These people are often wealthier, white and have the time to spend on reading the paper.
According to a 2019 study by the Pew Research Center, only 64% of adults who consume local news in the Chicago area said that local news was in touch with the community. Only 17% said they had spoken with a local journalist.
This reflects a necessary way for local news to grow in the Chicago area, according to another study by Pew. The issue with the changing media landscape is not video and multimedia, or the transition to digital media. Most Americans are fine with digital media to get their news, and will remain engaged with it. However, what they desire is a strong community connection.
If I could go back to high school and redo that senior year when I was on our managing staff, I would have done things differently. I would have invited the community in and asked them what they wanted to read. I would have created a discursive process that would allow journalists and community stakeholders to discuss what people need to know more about. I would have focused on the stories that would make the greatest impact for the people reading, rather than just the stories I was interested in.
It’s too late now for me to go back to that high school newspaper. All I can do is carry these lessons forward.