We’re all in on engaged journalism. Now we need your help

Since the Engaged Journalism Accelerator was announced back in April, there’s been a lot of work behind the scenes at the European Journalism Centre. The team (say hello to Kathryn, Madalina and Ben) is now in place and work has begun.

Our first task has been to think about the questions we’ll need to answer to help news organisations across Europe reach a new place of trust, dialogue and resilience.

We know one thing for sure — that we want to make newsrooms think twice about their organisational culture, their relationships with the people they serve and the impact they create for their communities and the wider society.

But there’s a lot to do and we don’t have all the answers.

That’s where you come in.

In order for the Accelerator to truly reflect the needs of news organisations, we would like to hear from journalists who are already practising engaged journalism and those who want to do more of it.

We define engaged journalism as that which puts engagement with a clearly defined community (geographical or topical) at the centre of its ownership, reporting, distribution, impact and revenue.

In doing so, we believe engaged journalism has the ability to restore trust in media, provides citizens with information they need, develop a sustainable revenue model and enhance plurality and diversity in a crucial part of society’s information ecosystem.

Help us to help you

We want to know about what works in your newsroom and for your community.

We want to understand the organisations that you look to as examples of engaged journalism — be it newsrooms, local initiatives, national campaigns or other community groups.

We also want to know about your frustrations and the stuff that holds you back from taking an engaged journalism approach to your work.

Our short survey will hopefully tell us all of that. It should only take five minutes and will really help shape the Accelerator and its outcomes.

As well as our survey, we will:

• Speak to as many people as possible who practice engaged journalism in Europe (Are you someone we should talk to? Email us)
• Keep our eyes and ears open for people and organisations we haven’t come across (Know someone smart? Tell us)
• Visit newsrooms that already work closely with their communities to find out how others can learn from them (If you’d be happy to host us, drop us an email)
  

It’s not just journalists we’re looking to speak to. We also want to hear from people working in:

• journalism and media academia/research
• subscription or event marketing
• media law (in areas such as intellectual property, GDPR and copyright)
• HR and finance
• business development
• product development
• citizen engagement and community collaboration
• behaviour and culture change

Many of the pioneers of engaged journalism struggle in these areas so your input is just as vital as that of the people producing stories. If you know someone that fits the bill, send this post onto them and ask that they get in touch.

When we’ve spoken to as many of you as we can, we’ll share what we have learned and explain the next steps of the Accelerator.

Don’t be shy

If you want more information about what we’re doing or want to collaborate with the Accelerator, you can contact us via:

• Twitter @ejcnet or our individual accounts
• Email us at [email protected]
• Phone by ringing +447749716468 (or, if you’re abroad or addicted to the tiny blue tick, WhatsApp us)

Thanks for reading,
Kathryn, Ben and Madalina

This post was first published on the European Journalism Centre's Medium page.