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📻One big story 📻

Local newsrooms strive to serve their communities—but how can they know if they’re doing it right?

This week, we’re highlighting the latest reflections on ongoing community engagement efforts by News Ambassadors partners at KBIA and University of Missouri School of Journalism. Both organizations have also been working with the awesome folks at America Amplified, a leading  organization in supporting community engagement journalism in public media.  One recent event took place at a local library in Centralia, where students have been spending much of the year so far working to understand residents’ news and information needs. Maria Arce, who authored the piece for America Amplified, said she was struck by the enthusiasm and focus of journalism students as they interviewed Centralia residents. 

Here are some of the key student takeaways: 

• Engagement should be collaborative, not extractive. Newsrooms thrive when they actively involve communities in shaping stories, rather than just pulling information from them. In Centralia, residents were eager to share their voices when given the opportunity to collaborate with students on stories that mattered to them — through guided listening sessions that invited open dialogue and prioritized community-led concerns. Holding the session at the local library, a familiar and trusted gathering place, helped create a comfortable environment that encouraged participation and made it easier for residents to show up and speak candidly.

• Building genuine relationships leads to better stories. As students interviewed residents, they saw firsthand how building relationships shed light on deeper and more nuanced narratives that truly reflect the heart of Centralia. 

• Solutions-focused journalism highlights community complexity. Instead of just reporting on challenges, this approach paints a fuller and more empowering picture by shining a light on positive changes and progress within communities. Through this process, students learned that the complexities of a place often reside in the answers, not just the problems.

Dominique Hodge is the project manager for KBIA/University of Missouri’s News Ambassadors engagement work in Centralia. She helped organize in the Centralia listening event and sums up the importance of engagement journalism: 

“There's nothing wrong with being a journalist in the news cycle and doing the daily news routine. But what engagement teaches you is a reflective process. It helps you look within and teach you. Have you been a good listener? What could you be doing in your daily reporting to make sure that you are truly serving the needs of your community? How could you reach or speak to your community if you've never listened? If you put yourself out there and try engagement journalism, you'll find better ways to help establish trust and perfect relationship-building in your news and reporting,” Hodge said. 

Why we like it: We admire our Mizzou and KBIA partners for their ongoing commitment to deep listening workin Centralia. Maria Arce from America Amplified, moves beyond theory and offers practical, field-tested strategies for local newsrooms aiming to build stronger connections with communities they may have overlooked. She also emphasizes the growing understanding that journalism must be collaborative, not extractive in order to remain relevant and serve the public good.

Broader Context: Collaboration between students from the University of Missouri and residents in Centralia highlights a vital effort to keep local journalism connected to the needs and voices of local communities.

Tip: Whether you’re an engagement pro or new to engagement, consider how to incorporate feedback from the communities and communicate exactly how they’ve contributed to reporting after a story is published. University of Missouri students, working with KBIA, didn’t just gather information from residents; they collaborated with them to ensure their stories were reflective of the community’s lived realities.

Read the full story by Maria Arce which highlights the engagement work of our collaborators at University of Missouri and KBIA. 

✨Student  Spotlight ✨

News Ambassadors Prairie View A&M University Engagement journalism fellow Kirsten Prince presented her Prairie View Community survey to a local City Council meeting at in Prairie View, Texas in March. News Ambassadors partnered with students at Prairie View A&M University in Prairie View, Texas to help survey their community as a way to learn about local information needs and address them with community responsive reporting. We asked Kirsten what the experience was like sharing the survey at City Hall and what she’s learned from our program so far:  

Kirsten: News Ambassadors introduced me to so many amazing people that are in the industry and they’re so helpful! It helped push me out of my comfort zone, especially socially because I’m usually shy around my peers. It also helped me believe in myself more.  I actually have a story to tell and I know what people need in my area.  It’s very liberating.

Going to City Hall and passing out the survey was a big leap for me and  I didn’t know what to expect… I got to put faces to the issues that I was hearing about in the community. I got to see who these problems were affecting. There were a lot of kind elders. They reminded me of elders from my hometown in Mississippi and It seemed like they had a lot of history and knowledge of  the city. You can see it in their eyes.

What does Kirsten think of engagement journalism? 

I never heard of engagement journalism until I became a journalist. I think it’s a very unique approach to journalism. We want to collaborate with communities and let their voices shine. It’s so interesting to see other people‘s needs and wants in the community, what they want to see broadcasted for Prairie View.

What has she learned? 

You get a lot of no’s. You will meet a lot of people and get a better sense of the town that you report on. Every person that you encounter is a gem or a clue in the scavenger hunt to find the truth. Overall, I could take all the things that I learned in this program to any career that I choose. I am able to actually dig deeper into conversations.

Want to explore if News Ambassadors could benefit your newsroom or journalism students? Fill out the News Ambassadors potential partners form! 

📅 Upcoming Events 

Ready to level up your reporting? There are a bunch of exciting training opportunities we are eager to share with you all this month from some of our favorite journalism support organizations and longtime friends of News Ambassadors. Below are invites to four awesome trainings - three from our friends at Solutions Journalism Network and one from our friends at Trusting News: 

• There are TWO upcoming depolarization reporting strategies trainings from Solutions Journalism Network on the “Complicating the Narratives” method. Both are led by former Complicating the Narratives Fellows (and collaborators of News Ambassadors!) You’ll learn tools and resources to report more thoughtfully on complex or polarizing topics through a solutions-focused approach.

• Depolarization Reporting Strategies training led by Hugo Balta: April 16 @ 1 pm EST on Zoom. About the trainer:  News Ambassadors partner Hugo Balta is publisher of Latino News Network, Executive Editor of the Fulcrum, and former president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. >>Register here<< 

• Depolarization Reporting Strategies training led by Dana Amihere:  June 3 @3pm EST on Zoom. About the trainer: Dana Amihere is a data journalist, designer and developer, and is founder/executive director of AfroLA. (She’s also a News Ambassadors mentor!)  >>Register here<<. 

• Covering Immigration Through a Solutions Lens: April 18 @12 pm EST on Zoom About the training: “Join seasoned solutions reporters, editors, and trainers for a conversation on how solutions journalism can provide a rigorous, evidence-based framework for covering immigration. This session will explore how journalists can tell these stories with depth and nuance — focusing not just on problems, but on how people, organizations and institutions are responding to them."  >>Register here<<

• How freelancer journalists can earn trust and demonstrate credibility: May 1 @ 3 pm EST on Zoom. Join the nationally recognized experts at Trusting News for a FREE training in collaboration with the Society of Professional Journalists Freelance Community. They'll walk you through strategies and connect you with resources for freelancing. <<Register here>>. 

News Ambassadors ✨Resource Spotlight✨ 

How can we move beyond the tired “pro vs. con” framing that can flatten complex local issues? 

This month, we’re amplifying a powerful tool that’s been central to the Complicating the Narratives depolarization reporting strategies we teach: “22 Questions to Complicate the Narrative.” The tool is designed to help interviews dig deeper into peoples’ underlying motivations and the experiences that shape their views. The tool provides a road map for journalists — even those new to depolarization reporting strategies – to avoid inadvertently amplifying toxic polarization in our coverage of contentious issues. Several newsrooms have posted this one-pager in their newsrooms as a reminder of these great questions reporters can ask in interviews. 

When journalists invite communities to define their perspectives and underlying motivations in their own words, they not only complicate the narrative but also build trust with readers seeking more than a headline-level understanding. From abortion to education to housing, these strategies push us to go deeper — and ultimately, to serve the public better.

Check out the resource here.

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