I say this fully admitting I’m an active, proud and lively member of the Pen and Pencil Club, a private journalist’s association and bar in my hometown Philadelphia.
Journalists, especially community and beat reporters, should spend a lot more time with their communities than with other in news media. For sure, you can get great professional development and important understanding from meeting with your colleagues. But count up the number of hours you spend with other reporters and compare it with your community in person: which one is the bigger number?
This was among my clearest points from a talk I gave at the third annual Entrepreneurial Journalism Educators Summit organized by the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. Below are my slides and some notes.
Likely this isn’t a shocking statement: reporters need to know their sources better than other journalists. But, gosh, it sure doesn’t happen in practice.
Spend time with your community. You develop empathy. You find stories. You build trust.
One way we do this at Technically Media is through regular events — from conferences and networking meetups to curated stakeholder sessions. We did lots of it from our Technical.ly Tomorrow Tour series. So in my CUNY presentation, I introduced our company but used that as a helpful case study to share.
Here are some tweets from others:
.@christopherwink : journalists should stop hanging out w each other and hang out w their communities #sotrue #edjsummit @cunyjschool
— Marie Gilot (@louiegilot) July 15, 2016
At #edjsummit @christopherwink says journalism is a strategy not an industry. Hmmm.
— Jeff Jarvis (@jeffjarvis) July 15, 2016
"We see events as the bedrock of the journalism that we do." @christopherwink #edjsummit
— Jan Schaffer (@janjlab) July 15, 2016
LIVE on #Periscope: Events as listening, says @christopherwink of Technically Media #edjsummit https://t.co/cTfnBTybih
— Tinashe Mushakavanhu (@tinsmush) July 15, 2016
"Relationships are all that ever mattered. Pageview = crummy approximation of the level of trust." – @christopherwink #edjsummit
— Jennifer Brandel (@JenniferBrandel) July 15, 2016
I like the idea of surveying in your community about your brand penetration/trust as a core metric. @christopherwink #edjsummit
— Julia Haslanger (@JuliaJRH) July 15, 2016
mission first, tools second. "we do journalism to make our communities better": @christopherwink #edjsummit
— asmaa malik (@asmaam) July 15, 2016
Journalism is a strategy, central axis of Technical.ly mission. Interesting talk by @christopherwink #edjsummit pic.twitter.com/wzq4ZQLxmi
— Carmina Crusafon (@CCrusafon) July 15, 2016
