What happens when communities talk and journalists listen?

We’re excited to catch you up on the News Ambassadors program and highlight the amazing work done by our partners. If you care about strengthening communities and better supporting democracy, help us by following us on Instagram, donating or forwarding this newsletter to a friend.

📻One big story 📻 

What do the residents of Berwyn, Illinois have in common with your local community? More than you might expect. 

News Ambassadors partners Illinois Latino News (ILLN), Cicero Independiente and WBEZ hosted a listening event connecting communities with local journalists to better understand their information needs. Our News Ambassadors/Illinois Latino News reporting fellows will produce stories informed by solutions or depolarization reporting strategies and responsive to local concerns.

Berwyn residents say that they’re frustrated by a lack of transparency in local government spending and want to have a more detailed explanation of how money is allocated by the city council.  They also want more transparency and explanation of how building codes and regulations are decided on. 

“The vast majority [of Berwyn residents] are working class folks, and they don’t have time, and I speak with them personally, to go to the city council meetings or the school board meetings,” said Tomasa Ambriz, Berwyn Township Trustee. “Having someone that you can trust to give you adequate and accurate information at the end of those meetings, it’s vital.”

Read the story by News Ambassador 2024 Engagement Fellow Calvin Krippner. 

News Ambassadors ✨Story Spotlight✨ 

This print piece from a multimedia class in our 2024 cohort features a unique solution to restore the English Meadow in Tahoe National Forest with a complex history of environmental damage due to human activities like hydraulic mining, grazing, and dam construction. The once-thriving ecosystem has been impacted with erosion, drying and habitat loss. Meadows like the English Meadow play a critical role in offsetting carbon emissions. 

Meadows in California’s Sierra Nevada Range can sequester more carbon than tropical evergreen forests. While it’s too early to quantify all the benefits, past research suggests that meadows can continue to sequester carbon for up to 20 years after restoration.

Why we like it: The story is a good example of solutions journalism, reporting on how effective a solution is rather than treating one solution like a silver bullet. Read the full story here. 

🌱Knowing and Growing🌱 

For a long time, traditional journalism has over-focused on problems, often without mentioning how people can be resilient or better respond to the challenges we face. So in our work with future journalists, newsrooms and journalism schools that support them, we help participants build confidence and expertise in changing this pattern. News Ambassadors Director Shia Levitt explains how our organization trains journalism students and strengthens collaboration with communities and local news. 

What are some core concepts that News Ambassadors helps journalism students learn? 

The News Ambassadors program now has three different tracks: Solutions Journalism, Complicating the Narrative and Community-Responsive Reporting. 

Solutions Journalism.  This means a rigorous examination of how people are responding to challenges, evidence of how the responses work, and limitations and insights from these approaches that can be helpful to other communities addressing similar problems. 

Depolarization reporting strategies including a framework called Complicating the Narratives. These are strategies born from studying conflict mediation psychology- how people actually behave when they're feeling polarized and threatened by the other side - and distilling lessons that can help journalists improve our coverage of contentious issues. 

Community-Responsive Reporting, which is rooted in engagement journalism, starts by asking members of the communities we cover what issues are most important to them and what's missing from local news coverage of their communities, so that our reporting can help communities and their elected leaders better respond to challenges, including outside of election years. 

By centering the communities we cover, reporting on what they actually care about instead of what journalists think those communities should know or care about, newsrooms will begin to regain the public’s trust. 

What is one misconception about Solutions Journalism that you'd like to dispel?  

Solutions Journalism stories are not fluff pieces. They are impactful because they are rigorous -  evidence-based reporting on how a response works and asking what we can learn from those responses' successes, failures and limitations. This helps us avoid holding up one response as a perfect, ‘silver bullet’ or easy fix. Instead, we're helping to provide communities and local leaders uncover potential tools and strategies that other communities have tried so they can build on what's been tried before instead of having to completely reinvent the wheel.  

My favorite description of Solutions Journalism is that it helps reporters move from "watchdog journalism"  – investigative reporting pointing out problems – to instead "guide dog journalism" - investigative reporting focused on examining evidence-based solutions and responses to problems. 

What is one big lesson you learned this year from directing News Ambassadors? 

Many young reporters immediately see the value in taking on strategies focused on solutions and resilience and listening to people about what news they actually need. It also better aligns with why many of us [journalists] got interested in journalism.  Young reporters already know that some of the traditional ways of doing journalism are not working well to serve communities or support our democracy. 

They don't want to keep reporting stories about problems with no mention of how people can solve them. Toxic polarization has been a norm of national discourse for around a decade, and many young reporters are ready for depolarization reporting strategies so their own reporting can allow people with different opinions to disagree civilly in ways that don't dehumanize people who think different from each other. And when you tell young people about engagement journalism - that there's a type of journalism that focuses on talking to community members about their concerns and their information gaps and then shaping the resulting reporting on what they tell you they care about and need - instead of what journalists think they'd want to hear about. 

👓 What we’re following 👓 

NPR just launched a new special series called Seeking Common Ground: Conversations Across the Divide, which explores how some people are trying to bridge divides and work through their differences. This piece gives readers/listeners three tips for navigating the holiday season with a politically divided family. 

An invitation for storytellers, journalists and content creators

News Ambassadors Director Shia Levitt will be one of the speakers at a workshop hosted by Citizen University on the importance of new civic narratives that steer communities towards connection, repair, and progress. Register here. 

Our friends at Good Conflict also have an upcoming webinar on Dec. 12 on the best strategies for staying cool, present and curious in moments of high tension. Register here.  

That’s all we have for you this month, folks. We hope you’ll have a wonderful holiday season and we’ll see you in January!