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📻One big story 📻

What happens when newsroom reporting centers community needs? 

This month, we’re highlighting the final 2024-2025 Berwyn reporting collaborative story by our News Ambassadors/Latino News Network Engagement and Reporting Fellow Calvin Krippner. After Berwyn residents asked for greater understanding and transparency on local funding allocations, Krippner reported on local efforts to make financial decision-making more transparent and participatory. He then looked to learn from attempts to boost financial transparency and community engagement in other communities beyond Berwyn, including how citizen advisory boards in Edinburg, Texas are bringing residents’ voices into the local budget allocation process. 

Why we like it: We are proud our News Ambassadors Fellows took time to gather input from Berwyn residents to inform their 2025 local reporting, and we love that this story “closes the loop” by writing about the engagement process within the story itself. Journalists can build trust and address reporting gaps when we listen first to learn about local needs. It’s important to complete this process by letting community members know when their ideas help shape your stories!

Broader context: Our work in Berwyn highlights how multi-newsroom collaboration boosted our collective ability to respond to local needs. Engagement experts and collaborators from Illinois Latino News, WBEZ and Cicero Independiente supported News Ambassadors student journalists during several months of surveying and community listening. WBEZ’s Al Keefe joined Engagement Fellow Santiago Posada-Jaramillo for an afternoon of community canvassing, helping Posada-Jaramillo put engagement theory into practice. “After that, it felt a lot easier to do it myself,” he says.

For Krippner, the hyper-local, bilingual newsroom Cicero Independiente was a “cultural and social bridge to Berwyn,” boosting the effectiveness of the collective engagement effort. Our collaborating newsrooms published student reporting about the process itself in Cicero Independiente and Illinois Latino News) and some stories were amplified nationally by Latino News Network and The Fulcrum.

Newsroom collaborators helped us compile community feedback into Information Ecosystem Assessment reports in English and Spanish, which shaped our student reporting fellows stories around what Berwyn residents told us they wanted.

Recent news about federal agents detaining local residents and adding to a climate of fear for many neighbors, underscores the reality that local needs are dynamic - and journalists need to have ongoing channels for community feedback to make sure their reporting can be responsive to local priorities. We want to give a shout out to the staff at Cicero Independiente who continue to listening sessions with local residents to ensure their coverage continues to meet the moment .

Tip: Use a Solutions Journalism framework to move your reporting from “watch dog” to “guide dog” journalism - and shine a light on ways your community can better respond to challenges. Exclusively problem-focused journalism can contribute to burnout and news avoidance — so remember that peoples’ responses to problems - including how we build resilience in the face of challenges - are newsworthy too!

📣  Listen to the audio piece and check out the companion story, Berwyn, Illinois and Edinburg, Texas Share Ideas on Enhancing Civic Culture, published in Illinois Latino News and amplified nationally in The Fulcrum.

News Ambassadors ✨ Program Spotlight: Training-Packed Fall ✨

This fall we’re focusing on leading Depolarization Reporting Strategies trainings for J-schools and newsrooms, centered on the Complicating the Narratives method. We love meeting bright and passionate emerging journalists and early- to mid- career reporters, including several from reporting fellowship and similar journalism programs across the country. This year we transitioned to charging as part of an effort to build longer term sustainability into our model, after hustling to fundraise so we could offer these trainings for free during the first two years of our program’s existence.   

We’ve been tailoring trainings to match where each group is, and typically follow up to help reporters apply concepts to their own in-progress stories. Next up this fall: trainings for PMJA’s Opening Doors Fellows, Temple University and Prairie View A & M University. We can’t wait to see the stories everyone reports this year.

About our core trainings for 2025-2026: News Ambassadors offers J-school and newsrooms accredited training on two methods: 1) Solutions Journalism and 2) Depolarization Reporting Strategies, centered on Complicating the Narratives method, designed by High Conflict author/journalist Amanda Ripley and her Good Conflict colleague Hélène Biandudi Hofer. The strategies were born from researching conflict mediation psychology studies -- how people actually behave when they're feeling suspicious and threatened by the other side -- and distilling lessons journalists can use to improve coverage of contentious issues. Designed for journalists to use covering contentious issues, the tools have applications for many different types of reporting – and beyond the journalism field.

Interested in bringing a depolarization training to your classroom or newsroom? Fill out our Training Interest Form!

News Ambassadors ✨Resource Spotlight✨

We’ve got a few cool resources to share with you this month: 

1. If you’re interested in exploring engagement journalism with your classmates or colleagues, check out our starter exercise for (Solutions) Journalism professors ready to weave some light community engagement into their classroom. This can be a first step towards having community input help shape your reporting priorities. (We have a similar resource focused on newsrooms- reply to this email if you’d like a copy! We are happy to share it with you!)

2. Strategies for audio/radio folks who want to improve voicing technique: NPR’s George Bodarky shared this helpful guide for marking up scripts to better prepare for VOICING. We especially recommend this tool for early career audio journalists and professors who teach them. Check it out!

3. The Future is Digital, Local, and Read All Over: Visions for Library-Newsroom Collaboration: How can libraries, journalists, and newsrooms collaborate to create the future of local digital news? Library Futures’ new report Exploring the Future of Library-Local News Collaboration by Thomas Alexander seeks to answer that question.

4. Recent graduates and college seniors: Check out this big list of internships and early-career jobs compiled by Sacramento Bee reporter Emma Hall.

📅 Upcoming Events/Opportunities 📅

You’re invited to attend Covering Threats to Democracy Through a Solutions Lens. — a one-hour session from the amazing team at Advancing Democracy (SJN, Trusting News and Hearken, Inc.). Oct. 15 – Learn to report on polarization, political violence, and free-speech crackdowns without fueling despair or news avoidance. Guests: George Chidi (The Guardian), Brandon Tensley (Capital B), Lisa Kurian Philip (WBEZ / Open Campus Media). October 15 @ 2 p.m. ET / 11 a.m. PT  »REGISTER HERE«

Press Forward Webinar for Newsrooms: Words That Work: Making the Case for Local News. The way newsrooms talk about their work can determine whether communities tune out or step up in support. Press Forward, in partnership with Beekeeper Group, has conducted national polling, focus groups, and message testing to identify how newsrooms can communicate their value in ways that resonate across demographics and political perspectives. Leave with a deeper understanding of Press Forward's public opinion research, published in a new toolkit for newsrooms, and a clear, tested messaging you can put to work right away — in your appeals, grant applications, and everyday conversations. Oct 15, 2025 @ 12 noon ET »REGISTER HERE«

Solutions Journalism Network is offering the opportunity to apply for a nine- month Solutions Journalism Revenue Accelerator program designed to help you turn solutions journalism into revenue to grow more solutions reporting. This round will be focused on “reader revenue,” like membership and donations. ⁠⁠Perks include: Coaching and training from SJN and the fine financial minds at Blue Engine Collaborative;⁠ Airfare, hotel and some meals for a two-day kickoff meeting;⁠ The opportunity to receive a $10,000 grant;⁠ and the chance for your newsroom's staff to become certified solutions journalism trainers.⁠ ⁠U.S. newsrooms of any size can apply by Oct. 17  »APPLY HERE «

Immigration reporting: From political scorecard to democratic principles

From our friends at Trusting News: The default frame of immigration discussions is often a partisan one, with people deciding how they feel based on party identity, language shortcuts, or a scorecard of winners and losers. The same is true for a lot of news coverage. Yet so much of what’s at stake actually relates to core democratic principles — to the basic social construct people in the United States have with their government. Due process. Checks and balances. Equal treatment under the law. What could it look like for journalists to make those core principles more visible in news coverage? And would it help people to connect to public debates in more useful ways? October 20 @ 1 pm ET/10 am PT  »REGISTER HERE« 

Attention Newsrooms: Report for America applications for 2026-2027 host newsrooms are open!  Are you dreaming about new beats, new voices and new ways to serve your community? Report for America recruits a slate of exceptional, energized journalists, provides ongoing training and support, covers half of their salary the first year (and salary support the second and third years, too), guides newsrooms in raising local funds, and connects them to a network of more than 100 like-minded outlets committed to strengthening local news. »LEARN MORE AND APPLY HERE BY OCTOBER 20« 

Chicago-based journalists (and those attending News Product Alliance): Check out Information Campaigns that Work: A Workshop for Journalists by Public Health advocates. Why? Because journalists need to invest in learning from people in other fields who share some of our challenges and goals. This FREE in-person workshop organized and hosted by Perspectives and co sponsored by Trusting News, American Press Institute, Press Forward Chicago and Second Story. October 22 @ 7:30-9 pm CT @ Revival Impact Theatre »REGISTER HERE«

New York state journalists: Attend this two-day primer on investigative journalism skills (and then combine these skills with your Solutions Journalism framework to investigate solutions - not just problems!) Investigative Reporting Basics Boot Camp. October 25 and 25 in Syracuse, NY. »REGISTER HERE«

Hearken’s 10-year Celebration: Engagement Lessons for Journalists: It's been 10 years since Hearken started helping newsrooms connect with their communities! Please join Hearken staff and special guests for a conversation to reflect on how the field of audience engagement has shifted over the past decade, and where we might head next. October 30 @3 pm ET »REGISTER HERE «

Early career US journalists: The 2026 Journalism & Women Symposium (JAWS) Health Journalism Fellowship is now accepting applications! This unique opportunity includes a $4,000 stipend, workshops, mentoring and more! The fellowship is open to women and individuals who identify as women with 2-7 years’ professional journalism experience. Questions? Contact [email protected]. »APPLY HERE BY DECEMBER 5«

That’s all we have for you this month, folks. We’ll see you in November! 

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