Broaden your Engagement Skills
Join us for a day of educational inspiration with international examples of Engaged Journalism that take user engagement to the next level. The examples on this day of continuing education often show new ways to create constructive dialogue, new sources of revenue, higher willingness to pay, enhanced loyalty as well as building trust and enthusiasm among audiences and journalists.
User engagement has many meanings: for some it simply covers consumption of journalism, for others it means activity on social media, attendance at live events, letters from readers, crowdsourcing or something completely different. On this educational day, we dive into examples of journalistic projects where the role of users is absolutely central.
Over the past decade, frontrunners who see engagement as the foundation of a new type of journalism have come together around terms such as ‘Engaged Journalism’, dialogue-based and citizen-driven journalism. The movements test approaches where the medium and the journalist take on the role of involving the users in the production itself and facilitating communities and dialogue between them.
The examples will come both from projects that we find inspiring and from newsrooms that Hearken collaborates with. We look at examples across media platforms and events – and discuss along the way what value the different approaches provide for journalism, for the relationship with users and for the business. We will revolve around how users are invited in and which grips deviate from the norm, so that you have the opportunity to tie the inspiration up to your own reality as a journalist.
Teaching Method
The teaching is organized as a presentation interspersed exercises. Participants are encouraged to share their own experiences and thoughts on when user participation lifts journalism.
Provider Background
Hearken is a journalistic tech and consulting house that since 2015 has helped hundreds of newsrooms in the United States, Europe and Australia – including The New York Times, BBC, ABC and The Boston Globe – develop user engagement strategies. Our method is called Public-Powered Journalism and is about developing strategies to engage users into the editorial process to provide value for journalism, users and benefits the business. Our main message is that the true value of deep user engagement is not found in algorithms, but in how to plan, articulate and realize it’s invitation to users and build relationships.
Consultant
Morten Ro Jørgensen is Engagement Strategist at Hearken Northern Europe with expertise in the engagement method Public-Powered Journalism. With a master’s degree in media studies and more than 12 years of journalistic experience, including TV 2 News, Morten Ro specializes in workflows that allow for more collaboration and user involvement.