Priming the newsroom

Many newsrooms approach the idea of influencers apprehensively. What can you do to assuage staff concerns so there is space to get excited about the opportunities? This can be one of the most challenging and time-consuming parts of this work, but you can’t bypass it. Avoidance often results in these concerns bubbling up and derailing the collaboration further down the line.

Building buy-in starts with creating a space where people can share their concerns. Consider listening sessions and/or a survey to collect questions and concerns asynchronously by following these three steps:

1. Identify what you’re trying to accomplish and what you need to learn: By the end of this tour, I need to understand [blank] so that I can [blank].
2. Decide who you need to hear from. Is it the whole organization? Is it just the newsroom? Should different parts of the organization be in different conversations because their concerns might differ?
3. Share what you’ve learned from these conversations and research, with a clear overview of what you want to do and why. Include any ideas you already have for safeguarding the organization throughout. Examples from other organizations can also help.

You can also use this worksheet that Ariel Zirulnick created for SRCCON.

Later this week, we’ll publish a strategy guide that includes common concerns, coupled with advice on how to overcome them. Stay tuned.

What others are doing

Cohort participant PublicSource partnered with essayists and freelancers they’d previously worked with to promote the outlet’s nonpartisan election coverage. They wanted to work with people they had existing relationships with due to the experimental nature of the partnership.

Frequent communication and transparency with the rest of the newsroom were key to building on the work, said Halle Stockton, PublicSource executive director and editor-in-chief, in her learning memo from the project.

“We kept the team aware of this project throughout, and there was some skepticism at first as to why we would do it…but the response when it actually came to fruition was relatively neutral as our efforts were mission-aligned,” she said.

The team working on the project kept the rest of the organization aware of what was going on, allowing them to ask questions, share concerns and ideas and get involved if they were interested, Stockton said.

“While we didn’t have a lot of folks trying to jump in, the open sharing quelled some skepticism that can often exist between journalists and content creators.”

Dig deeper

A lot is being written about influencers right now — whether they’re called creators, news influencers, trusted messengers or something else. Here are some reports and breakdowns you may find helpful as you consider what an influencer partnership in your news organization might look like.

• The mainstream media will lose its last grip on relevancy from Nieman Lab’s 2025 predictions for journalism sets the stage for why news organizations should be having these conversations.
• The Art of Influence: How social media leaders shape the world gives a quick breakdown of what to consider when working with influencers from a marketing perspective
• America’s digital newsroom and the rise of news influencers is a good primer on the influencer landscape and the topics they cover
• The Power of Influencers in News: Navigating the new media landscape digs into a Pew report on the topic, highlighting relevant trends and statistics.