Special Edition

When it comes to challenging and changing the culture of local news organizations, we have to start with the basics by stepping back from the complexities, which can over-inundate us with so much data that it becomes impossible to move in the right direction.

This is a column on how to measure well-being for yourself and your organization. By the end, you’ll have a clear direction and quantitative ways to chart a healthy path forward for your journalists.

Before her newsroom adopted Source Matters Breaking News Reporter Raquel Torres said it was easy to jump to the first available interview at a scene, [...]

To re/build that trust it’s critical that you clearly connect your work with your mission to serve your community and be transparent about why you’re examining who shows up in your journalism.

One of the lessons we’ve learned by working with newsrooms is that by better representing your community’s voices in your journalism, your news organization becomes a better reflection of who your journalism serves.

In a year when the stakes are high for local and national elections, when 80 anti-DEI bills have been proposed in 28 states and when local news is in crisis, well-intentioned source tracking initiatives can come under fire. If that happens or is something your newsroom is anticipating, you can prepare for it and respond in a way that’s transparent about your work and consistent with your values.

Source tracking has inspired newsrooms to change their reporting practices and set new internal policies, improve efforts in community listening and trust building, tell untold stories and inform longer-term sustainability strategies.

As news organizations work to grow and nurture relationships in their communities, many are focusing on ways to not only track their outreach but also build in the accountability necessary to improve.

You need to convince your audience that your local coverage is not only important because of this grand, often intangible idea of the role of journalism in this country, but because it’s valuable and useful to their lives and communities.

Keeping yourself organized when it comes to marketing efforts can ensure that you and your team don’t miss some critical opportunities to reach out and engage with your audiences.