COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT WITH

Ashley Alvarado
NOVEMBER 27, 2019
 Community Engagement with Ashley Alvarado

ASHLEY ALVARADO
Ashley Alvarado is the award-winning director of community engagement at Southern
California Public Radio (KPCC + LAist).

Her work focuses on developing strategies and opportunities to engage new and existing
audiences across multiple platforms. Among her efforts is the engagement-driven,
community-centered live storytelling series Unheard LA, leading human-centered design
projects, and Feeding the Conversation, an ongoing series of engagement-sourcing
gatherings that bring together members of the community with KPCC journalists around
specific themes or coverage areas.

Ashley also serves as board president of Journalism That Matters, on the steering
committee of Gather, as mentor for Membership Puzzle Project’s Join the Beat cohort, and
as a curator for American Press Institute’s BetterNews.org.

In 2019, Southern California Public Radio won the inaugural Gather Award for engaged
journalism portfolio at the Online Journalism Awards.

DEMYSTIFYING MEDIA
The Hearst Demystifying Media seminar series was launched in January 2016. Curated
by Damian Radcliffe, the Carolyn S. Chambers Professor of Journalism at the University
of Oregon, it provides a platform for leading media practitioners and scholars to talk
about their work.

Through a combination of guest lectures, class visits, podcasts and TV studio interviews,
the series seeks to help students and faculty at the University of Oregon – and beyond – to
make sense of the rapidly changing media and communications landscape.

Previous speakers have come from a wide range of organizations, including the BBC,
Facebook, NPR and Vox, as well as leading academic institutions such as Stanford, Columbia,
Virginia and George Washington University.

Access the archive at: http://bit.ly/DemystfyingArchive

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 Community Engagement with Ashley Alvarado

Ashley Alvarado in the podcast studio at the University of Oregon’s

School of Journalism and Communication.

How do you define engagement and
engaged journalism?
With engaged journalism, what I’m really
talking about as closing the gap between
communities and the journalists who aim
to serve them.
How do we make an invitation that maybe
others haven’t felt over time into the work
we’re doing?
How do we equip community members with
the information that they need to be their
own best advocates?

That’s not at all a helpful definition for most
folks, but I keep it vague because I think in
that ambiguity, there’s a lot of opportunity
to discover new ways to do that or to revisit
things that we’ve maybe abandoned along
the way.
We’re talking about how do we make our
journalism more accessible?
And that shows up in a lot of different ways,
but at its core, is about listening and really
prioritizing diversity, equity, and inclusion
in our work.
“Unheard LA” and “Feeding the
Conversation” are two great examples of
things you’ve done. Can you tell us a little
bit about both of those projects?

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 Community Engagement with Ashley Alvarado

“Unheard LA” is our community-centered These stories are sometimes funny,

storytelling series. We just wrapped our third sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes
season and it’s part of what what keeps me really hard to hear, but they’re fantastic
going, because these are storytelling shows and they just allow us to develop empathy
that we do all over Southern California. in real time.

We’ve had well over a hundred storytellers When we first started the show, we thought,
participate now. When I say storyteller, I’m “Oh, we’re going to need a venue that’s like
using that term about as liberally as you 100, 1500 people,” and what we found was
possibly can. Many of the folks that we’ve finding something that had the capability to
engaged with have never been on stage do the kind of production that we wanted, we
before. They’ve never sat down to think couldn’t find in that range. We took a gamble
about what their story would look like, but and we said, “We’ll go to a 400 seat venue”
through the process, they’re coming together and we hit capacity in all three of
and they’re writing five-minute pieces that our first shows.
are first-person real lived experiences that
they’ve had either in Los Angeles or along It was just this opportunity to go like, “Oh
their way to Los Angeles. wow, people really want to know,” and this
is when we told them nothing about the
storytellers. All we do is introduce them,
I JUST LOVE IT BECAUSE have a little bit of a setup, and then we let
people shine and share.
AS WE SHOW UP IN THESE
DIFFERENT CITIES, OFTEN IN Then afterward, we do a mixture where
everybody gets to spend time together. We
VENUES THAT WE’VE NEVER
have lemonade and brownies, we have a
VISITED BEFORE, PEOPLE GET photo booth that people take pictures in, but
TO DISCOVER WHAT STORIES we’ve had this real community sort of sprout
from this work.
THEIR NEIGHBORS HAVE TO
LEARN, MORE ABOUT THE The reason we call it “Unheard LA” is
PEOPLE WHO LIVE AROUND something that I’m particularly proud of.
Being in Los Angeles, there are a lot of untold
THEM, THE PERSON THEY stories, but there are a whole lot more stories
MIGHT RECOGNIZE AT THE that [we] just haven’t spent the time [on] or
had the opportunity to listen to.
GROCERY STORE, BUT NEVER
DIG DEEPER INTO THAT
PERSON’S STORY AND HERE
THEY GET IT.

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 Community Engagement with Ashley Alvarado
Unheard LA. Via Discover Torrance.
With this work, we prioritize centering
stories of those who’ve been marginalized
or maybe not given that opportunity
before, which means we’ve had stories
from people who maybe have a hard time
speaking or have a really thick accent.
We had one person that we worked with,
Sean Sullivan–he’s on the autism spectrum
and he had a really hard story. His life was
challenging and he was nervous. We wanted
to make sure that we were supporting him
and putting the story on, but it was those
moments of just seeing him and his face as
he was doing it.
I’ll never forget the smile on his dad’s face
after the show and just seeing that pride and
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the release that he had in getting to share
his story.
This sounds like a huge undertaking. Can
you just talk us through the process of how
you put together an event like this and
what the benefit is for the station?
Before we ever did our first show, we had
more than four months that were dedicated
to engagement work, wanting to make sure
that we were present in community, that we
were honoring and respecting the storytelling
programs that already exist, the different
kinds of organizations that are working with
community members and serving them.
 Community Engagement with Ashley Alvarado

And just frankly leveraging our Rolodex, But this isn’t something that’s just a
making sure that those people who already project of the engagement team. It’s a
know our work, who believe in us could also collaboration with the events team and it’s
vouch for us. something that does take a lot of work.

But then beyond that, we invited people, and We work with our product team to make sure
this is something that’s evolved over time. that things look great.
We’ve learned some best practices. We have lights and video and social.
We have a story coach we’ve brought in who
We’ve made some adjustments, but not helps get people across the finish line.
wanting to be prescriptive in how people
tell their stories, we wanted them to have It’s a really big undertaking.
the opportunity to share [stories] in the
way that felt right to them. We have legal involved in figuring out the
venues and all of that, but it is so worth it.
People will send in sort of an idea, and now
the process is we follow up to each and every So you’ll broadcast these stories?
person that’s written in.
We broadcast them right now on our
Facebook page and our YouTube channel, but
we are an audio company and we now are
at a point where we have well over a
ONCE THEY GET TO A POINT hundred stories.
WHERE THEY’RE READY TO
We’re starting to look at more opportunities
READ OR PERFORM THEIR with that, but we’re also attracting younger,
STORY IN PERSON, THEY more diverse audiences in geographies
where we haven’t had a physical
COME INTO OUR STUDIOS presence before.
AND DO THAT. OR WE’LL It’s a way for us to say, “Oh, you know what?
DO A VIDEO. WE’LL FIND There are more audiences that are just
waiting to be engaged.” And that’s
SOME WAY TO TALK. WE pretty exciting.
PROVIDE FEEDBACK, WE
Andrew DeVigal here at the University of
PROVIDE SOME COACHING, Oregon has talked a lot about the spectrum of
WE DO A REHEARSAL, AND engagement and what’s passive engagement
and what’s really active decision-driven
THEN WE’RE ON STAGE AND engagement and you can’t get more
DOING A TECH REHEARSAL. engaged than attending a live event or
donating money.

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 Community Engagement with Ashley Alvarado

Ashley Alvarado during her Demystifying Media talk, November 2019.

As a member organization, we’re thinking We have to be really thoughtful about

about how do we build that love and loyalty having projects, having efforts that we
that will lead to membership? “Unheard LA” may or may not know have a sunset date,
so far has proved to be an a mechanism but we generally don’t tell our audiences
for that. about that sunset date going in.

You’ve kind of alluded to this, but through
experiences like “Unheard LA,” people
have really positive exposure to you.
You want to nurture and develop that
relationship rather than sort of parachute
in, take their stories, and then disappear.
With “Unheard LA,” one of the things that
we found is we thought that each show was
sort of stand on its own, but the community-
-the storytellers--started to feel a real bond
with each other and we wanted to be a part
of that.

I’ve started to think about when you use the One way that we do that is we have a
word “project,” it’s not that far off Facebook group. It’s a private Facebook
from “parachute.” group dedicated exclusively to those who’ve
been involved in this show and they show up
and they support each other.

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 Community Engagement with Ashley Alvarado

They are building the network for us. They’re

advocating for people to participate in those THE OTHER THING I
shows. They’re sending us notes about which
venues to attend. WOULD JUST SAY IS THAT
WE’RE ALSO TRYING TO
They really are just champions of the work
and that’s the kind of thing that we want we FIGURE OUT, AS WE START
keep fostering. TO ENGAGE NEW-TO-US
One of the things that we’ve noticed, too, is AUDIENCES, WHAT ARE
they come in for “Unheard LA,” or they come
in because their cousin was in “Unheard LA.”
THE WAYS IN WHICH THEY
And then they want to get involved. And WANT TO STAY INVOLVED
then we realize, “Oh, you know what? This
is somebody who should be in our reporting
OR THEY WANT TO STAY
we’re doing on the anniversary of Prop 187,” IN TOUCH? BECAUSE IT’S
or this and that. They continue to show up
and to be involved in the work we’re doing
NOT THE SAME THING FOR
and allow us to have reach in communities EVERYBODY.
we didn’t before.

Developing those relationships, and then
maintaining them, is time consuming. One
of the things you’ve talked about whilst
here is the expansion of your team. It sounds
as if a key part of that is that maintenance
and nurturing of relationships.
As part of the “Unheard LA” team we have a
dedicated engagement admin. I think that as
we are starting to understand the boundaries
of engaged journalism as we know it now and
how it needs to grow, really thinking about
the administrative work is huge.
Because in having that and now in having an
engagement producer role, what that allows
me to do is to step away from the everyday
maintenance and to think about the strategy.
But unless we’re handling both of those
aspects, we just can’t do it
We’ve done a lot of work unrelated to what
we’re talking about now with black infant
mortality. We met a lot of parents. We try to
figure out what’s the best way that we can
demonstrate our continued investment in
them and in covering issues that matter
to them.
So we’re doing a weekly text message that
goes out.
Sometimes it’s a news story, sometimes it’s a
question, sometimes it’s a photo and a “How
are you?”
But it’s a great way for us to continue that
involvement and then to figure out down
the road, what are the other ways that we
can continue to have them reflected in
our reporting?

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 Community Engagement with Ashley Alvarado
Ashley Alvarado and Damian Radcliffe in the podcast studio.
Journalists can be a cynical bunch. Some
people might say, “Well, this all sounds
great, but we are resource strapped in
our newsroom. We are constantly under
financial pressure.” Layoffs or realignments
are happening everywhere.
How do you convince a skeptical newsroom
editor and owner the benefit of this type of
work and the return on investment?
It’s funny how often I now feel like I need to
tell people that we didn’t have a team a year
and a half ago, that the kind of engagement
that I’ve been doing for nearly ten years is a
scrappy form of engagement.
Now that we have a more robust team, now
that we’re able to flex some of that muscle,
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we’re thinking a lot about the metrics that
matter to our newsroom leadership.
What I would do is challenge any skeptic
to spend some time talking to newsroom
leadership, figure out what are those metrics
that are important to them.
For us, it’s knowing the percentage of
loyal and local readers on any story on our
website. We now track stories that are
tagged as having come through community
engagement versus those that haven’t and
see how they perform. What we now know
is the median performance of stories done
with engagement outperform those done
without, in the metrics that matter most to
us. That’s a big one.
 Community Engagement with Ashley Alvarado
The other thing is, if you’re learning the
principles and the practices of community
engagement… it becomes a way that you’re
able to address some of the problems you
may be having as an organization.
I went out and I learned facilitation so I could
bring it in. I’ve facilitated convenings that
we do at work for employees. But I’m also
building buy-in and figuring out, how do we
position what we really want to do because
we believe in it as a solution?
Sometimes that means, when we were talking
about “Feeding the Conversation” earlier or
started to [talk about it], that’s a small group
lunch series most of the time.
All it really requires is some time and
catering. I work with our underwriting team
to identify the trade opportunities we have in
our organization. So we get that food in and
that means the only money we’re spending is
tip and staff time.
In terms of metrics, how does something
like “Feeding the Conversation” feed there’s a kind of expertise that lives outside
into that?
What is the cost to the organization?
We’re leveraging those same principles
of engagement that we use to engage
audiences and community members outside
the organization internally, looking at our
resources, partnering with our underwriting
team to identify unused trade so that we’re
able to basically cater these conversations
for free. All we end up paying for is the tip
and the staff time. Then we think about, what
is the ROI or the metrics that would matter to
the journalist participating in order to make
this worth their while? What we have found
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is that when we do these conversations,
when we use prompts that are written like,
“Imagine we’re getting your story right, what
does that look like? How do you recognize
it?”–then we’re able to have folks paint a
picture of their experiences and what they’re
hungry for in a way that’s appreciative and
not complaining.
Because if you ask community members,
“What are we getting wrong? What are we
missing?” They will tell you, but it’s not always
super helpful as far as like what you can start
doing. The other part of that and why I love
it so much is that journalists are getting to
have that feeling of discovery. They’re getting
to have those moments and have things click
in their head on their own as opposed to
me jumping up and down next to their desk
saying, “You’ve got to talk to so-and-so.” All
that to say that we have these conversations
and then new stories come out of it. Or new
understanding come out of it. We like any
newsroom are guilty of going back to the
same sources, the same university experts
over and over again, but understanding that
of academia. And that’s part of what we get
with “Feeding the Conversation.”
Let’s step back a bit to kind of how you fell
into this area of work. You were born just a
couple of blocks from where we’re talking
today, here in Eugene.
How did your experiences growing up in
Oregon shape your approach to journalism
and engagement?
 Community Engagement with Ashley Alvarado

First, I should say I love Oregon. I miss
Oregon all the time. But growing up here as a
person of color . . . my sister and I are Korean,
Latino, and Scandinavian. There were times
where we were the only people of color in
our school.
So when I knew that I wanted to become a
journalist, it was really with this idea of, “I’m
going to change this part of it, I’m willing
to work to be more inclusive. I’m willing to
work to let people feel that their experiences
matter, too.”

I didn’t know how I was going to do it and

IT WAS OFTEN THAT I because I’m somebody who really likes
WOULD LISTEN TO THE stability, in college I became convinced that
I’d be a copy editor because I knew they would
NEWS, WATCH THE never get rid of copy editors in newsrooms...
and I was 100% wrong.
NEWS, READ THE NEWS,
AND FEEL LEFT OUT OF But I ended up in a magazine that was targeted
to English dominant, upwardly mobile
THE CONVERSATION. IT Latinos in Los Angeles. In that experience, it
WASN’T WRITTEN WITH wasn’t a community engagement job. We
didn’t even have that language then, but
ME IN MIND. IT WASN’T it was this experience of what it felt to see
WRITTEN WITH AN myself in a publication, to see people who
looked and sounded like me, who weren’t
INVITATION TO ME TO necessarily full this or full that, but who
FEEL LIKE PARTICIPATING were living life in LA with some of the same
perspectives as me. It was just
IN THE NEWS, THAT I WAS really powerful.
PART OF THE COMMUNITY.
The other part of it that I loved is that it never
AND I WAS REALLY pandered to Latinos. It wasn’t every other
HUNGRY FOR THAT. word in Spanglish. It was just getting to like,
“This is who you are. This is who you can
be at.”
It wasn’t something that I can necessarily
articulate when I was in high school, but as And that’s pretty great. When that magazine
I moved to Southern California, I was really folded, because we were ahead of our time, I
looking to experience diversity. went into freelance work for a while.

I was also looking because I’ve just so loved Then I ended up being connected by a former
journalism and had an understanding that professor to a man named Mark Katches who
information is what allows us to be our own was launching California Watch at the Center
best advocates since a pretty early age. for Investigative Reporting.

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 Community Engagement with Ashley Alvarado
At the time he said, “We have this manager of
public engagement position. We don’t really
know what that means yet, what it entails,
but we’re looking for somebody awesome.”
And my professor was like, “You should talk
to Ashley Alvarado.”
I have no idea why she made that leap
recommendation, but I’m eternally grateful.
AT THE BEGINNING, A LOT
OF THIS WORK WAS DRIVEN
BY INSTINCT. IT WAS DRIVEN
BY THAT FEELING OF HAVING
BEEN LEFT BEHIND.
But over time with my work with Journalism
Matters, with the work that the University of
Oregon facilitated with Gather, the experience
of Elevate Engagement conferences, I
started to be able to marry that instinct with
knowledge with an understanding of the
methodology and the theory and a growing
understanding and appreciation for the
journalism that we can do.
Through that, I feel like I’ve really developed
as an engagement practitioner. But it your super power.
takes time.
For a lot of us who’ve been in the practice
for a while, we’re learning and evolving as
a practice does. It’s not this thing that was
set, we’re making it up as we go along.
So now that we’re here, it’s an opportunity
for us to think, how do we continue to make
the business case for engaged journalism?
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How do we have really real conversations
about the ethics of engaged journalism?
How are we potentially inviting vulnerability
that we’re not supporting in the work we do?
How are we making sure that it’s relational,
not transactional?
How are we promoting diversity,
equity, inclusion?
How are we retiring some of the phrases
that are just perpetuating stereotypes
and racism?
It’s a lot, but it’s a really exciting time to be
able to coauthor that with the community.
You [could] say I’m really pumped up
about this.
For students who share these passions,
many of whom might not have known
before they met you that these kinds of
jobs existed, how do you encourage them
to embark on their engagement journey?
The first thing I would say is, for a lot of us,
whatever you think is that weakness that
you’re trying to hide from your classmates
and your professors, it may very well be
So understanding that the thing that makes
you feel different can be leveraged into what
makes you great at what you do and what
you can bring to journalism.
That’s the first part of it. The other thing is
that what I do did not exist when I was in
journalism school. It didn’t look like it was on
the horizon. Nobody knew.
 Community Engagement with Ashley Alvarado
Yet when you look at the work I did when
I was in college, when you looked at the
projects that I was dreaming up, there were
bits of this in there.
I think for students who are thinking “I
wish this existed,” [well] it can. You just
need to work on it. You just need a stick
to it and you need to prove yourself as a
journalist and to create the space in your
workload to make it happen.
Then I would also say that there’s a lot of
room to be excited because of the number of
newsrooms that are starting to or that have
dedicated resources to this. So now more
than ever, there are opportunities to get your
foot in the door.
Can you tell us about the organizations
you’re involved with and why they matter
to you?
I was really fortunate in having a professor,
one in particular that really advocated for
me and the more I look back at that, she was
the one mentor I had. I really want be as
available as I can to people who are moving
into either this field or just journalism
more generally.
YOU CAN’T OVERSTATE
THE IMPORTANCE OF
MENTORSHIP AND HAVING
SOMEBODY WHO IS GOING
TO HELP YOU GET YOUR FOOT
IN THE DOOR.
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When it comes to Journalism That Matters,
I had a really meaningful shuttle ride to the
Kettering Institute something like five or six
years ago. It was freezing cold. We were all
bundled up getting onto this bus to go have
a conversation about the importance of
journalists embracing ambiguity.
I sat down next to a woman named Peggy
Holman who co-founded Journalism That
Matters after 9/11.
The long unspoken name of the organization
really is Journalism that Matters In A World
Gone Mad.
Peggy had been working on something called
Engagement Hub and thinking about how the
practice of engagement completely outside
of journalism could inform journalism, can
make it stronger.
She remembers that conversation because
of something I said. The thing that I told her
that day–and she was asking about a project
I’d done–was, with everything I do, I sit
down and I think, “Who’s most affected
by this issue? And what do they need to be
their own best advocate?”
What can journalism learn from
other industries?
There’s a movement right now within some
conferences to start to bringing in outside
industries. I think that’s hugely important
because as journalists, we like to think we
know the answers.
 Community Engagement with Ashley Alvarado
Ashley Alvarado during her Demystifying Media talk, November 2019.
We like to bring our editorial sense of
judgment into things, but there are so
many things that other industries and
other people are figuring out. When we
lean on some of that awareness that they
bring with that understanding, I think it
only makes us stronger.
I’m fascinated with radical hospitality, it
shows up in different ways, but part of it
is, how do you give people a really great
experience? How do you make them feel
unbelievably welcome in your space?
More and more sports teams are doing this.
They want you to have a special time.
When it comes to some facilitation… do you
have somebody come in for a conversation,
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or do you put flowers on their table? Do you
put [down] a tablecloth? Do you make them
feel at home?
I think that it’s a reminder of what these little
sort of nods can do for folks and let them feel
or open them up to.
I think there’s also a lot to be learned
from therapy.
When I go to the ethics of engaged journalism
and what we’re needing to learn about,
something that I’ve been confronted with
more probably in the last year than any other
point is the vulnerability that we’re asking
people to give us.
 Community Engagement with Ashley Alvarado
We’re creating conditions where people are
sharing their trauma, maybe knowingly or
not. But they’re letting us into really painful
places or moments in their lives. Are we
supporting them?
We want people to be okay to be challenged,
but we also want them to know this shouldn’t
be something that’s injuring them along the
way. I think there’s a lot to be learned
there, too.
Then there’s also the faith community.
As we’re thinking about the sustainability
of journalism, how do we bring some of
the spirit of tithing into what we’re doing?
How do we make people so believe and
feel so welcome, or even learn about the
principles of membership or saving to
continue the work that we’re doing?
I grew up going to a couple churches here
in Eugene, but I always remember being in
Sunday school and they gave us checkbooks
and it was to teach us about tithing. I just
really like money, though, so I thought it was
really cool that I could write checks and it
was from the Bank of God, which I thought
was pretty exciting, too.
There are different ways that we get folks
started early in life and when it comes to
faith and we think about the Children’s Bible,
or think about entertainment . . . An example
I often give is when Disney started working
its way into maternity wards. A baby’s first
diaper had Mickey Mouse on it.
How do we bring journalism to kids? How do
we get them excited about that?
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How do we have kids as nerdy as I was
growing up who just want to go home and
watch the news?
I think that there’s a lot to learn there.
Can you conclude by telling us a little bit
about some of the big projects you’re
working on at the moment?
What I’m extremely excited about right now
is the 2020 census. It is something that
being in Southern California . . . we are in Los
Angeles County, considered the hardest to
count county in the country.
We’ve known for a couple of years that this
was going to be a big story for our newsroom
because we’re talking about hundreds of
billions of dollars in distribution.
We’re talking about redistricting. We’re
talking about the numbers that journalists
are going to be using and referencing for
the next ten years. We have some pretty big
hurdles to participation.
As an independent, nonpartisan newsroom,
we are not telling people that they need
to go out and do the census, although it
is a constitutionally mandated event. But
what we are trying to do is to activate
people to want them to learn more and to
make informed decisions.
We did human centered design, in order to
better understand the information needs and
the media consumption habits of Angelenos.
There’s a lot that we learned, including that
the storytelling we were doing so far
wasn’t working.
 Community Engagement with Ashley Alvarado
People who listen to NPR all the time did not
know anything more about the census than
those who didn’t.
WE ALSO STARTED TO THINK
ABOUT WAYS THAT WE CAN
MORE EFFECTIVELY ENGAGE
COMMUNITY MEMBERS WHO
ARE VERY MUCH TRADITIONALLY
OUTSIDE OF OUR REACH.
THAT MEANS A LOT OF PEOPLE
WHO ARE CONSUMING
COMMUNITY ETHNIC AND IN-
LANGUAGE MEDIA, NON-ENGLISH
LANGUAGE MEDIA.
AS A NEWSROOM, WE’RE NOW
COMMITTED TO COLLABORATING
WITH THOSE NEWSROOMS.
There are more than a hundred community
ethnic and language and media newsrooms
in LA.
We understand that for the communities
they serve, that we as KPCC / LAist, we’re not
the trusted messenger, but what we do have
is expertise in data, expertise in engagement
and a bunch of really great journalists.
We can leverage that and in collaboration
and produce more necessary very reporting
and think of new ways to engage and better
reflect the whole of Southern California.
That’s something that I’m just really, really
excited about because I think that in doing
that we might create the infrastructure for
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kind of collaboration that can exist long after
the census.
The other thing that I’m particularly excited
about right now is if you’ve heard of Jay
Rosen’s approach to election coverage that
he’s been advocating for since the 90s. So
since I was in high school.
It’s called, “Citizens Agenda,” and it’s a way
that we as journalists are able to get a little
bit away from the horse race coverage, a little
bit away from deciding what our communities
care about to instead asking community
members, “What do you want the candidates
to discuss as they compete for your votes?”
Then having that set the agenda for what we
do and what we ask.
We are fully committed to doing that going
into 2020 and I’m really just excited to see
how that changes things. There’s been some
elections outside of the US where they’ve
been doing this in Dublin and Canada, and
it’s changed their reporting.
It’s also been a way for them to engage
community members in different kinds of
ways. I think there’s a lot of potential there.
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