Connecting Journalists and Community Members

Abstract

Chapter Two explores an effort to involve residents in the process of making journalism. It follows the case of Curious City, a series produced by WBEZ Chicago public radio that invites listeners to nominate questions about Chicago that they want reporters to explore, using the Hearken digital engagement platform. Curious City undertook a foundation-supported experiment to determine the most effective outreach strategies to elicit participation from residents of historically stigmatized majority Black and Latinx neighborhoods as well as some majority white suburbs. The chapter finds that through offline engagement they strengthened, to a limited extent, what communication infrastructure theory calls “storytelling network” ties –particularly the links between local media and community members. However, because they failed to establish two-way connections with residents, stories were often told about communities without giving residents in those communities opportunities to listen to stories and participate in dialogue.