news media

Civic media seeks to understand, honor, and convey people’s life experience, em -bracing their complexities rather than flattening them into actors within a predetermined narrative. Instead of holding journalists apart as “neutral” bystanders, civic media producers embrace an ac -tive mission of serving people’s information needs.

Newsrooms have to understand that they’re in a relationship business, and reorganize themselves around that simple fact.

But “when it comes to quality information that affects what they’re doing and how to feed their families,” Bair said, “people are hungry for that.”

In thinking about my audience – what do I want them to know? What opportunities for self advocacy are coming or upcoming? What narratives am I interested in unsettling? What information is my audience most craving and/or lacking?

Local media is closely tied to polarization. When you don’t have access to a local source of quality information, you’re less likely to vote, to volunteer, or even trust your neighbors. But when you do have access to that, it helps connect you with your neighbors around issues that really matter and builds common understanding.

Valuing context. We recognize that our job is not simply to accurately record a series of facts, but to provide those facts in a form that is coherent and meaningful, empowering our reader to place a given event or development in concert with other current events and with history.

the draw of a distinctive writer can be more important than breaking news.