Seven months after local news nonprofit The 51st started publishing in Washington, D.C., it organized the first edition of Ask A D.C. Native, Live!, a trivia game show that gives native Washingtonians an opportunity to serve as experts, cultural preservationists and historians of a city that’s often associated more with its transplants than the people who grew up there.
Christina Sturdivant Sani, executive editor at The 51st, asked D.C. native and trusted messenger Dwayne Lawson-Brown to host the event.
Following the success of the game show, Dwayne partnered with The 51st through its Community Connector program, which hires people as contractors to help bridge the news outlet and the communities it’s trying to reach. Dwayne, along with fellow Community Connector George Kevin Jordan, engage with historically underserved audiences, such as native Washingtonians and D.C.’s Ward 7, a majority Black area that’s home to 90,000 residents with some of the widest socioeconomic disparities in the city.
Sturdivant Sani wrote for API that working with trusted messengers gave The 51st the feedback it needed to build an editorial strategy that would serve these audiences and continue strengthening the trust that Dwayne and George began building through digital events and in-person outreach. Here’s how they’ve built a successful partnership with local leaders.
Tips for working with trusted messengers for community engagement
While our Community Connector program is very much in its infancy, we have some early insights for newsrooms seeking to work with trusted messengers to engage with news avoiders and other target audiences.
Look within your network. Both George and Dwayne were in our ecosystem. We knew their character and communication styles, and we were confident they had deep and meaningful ties to the audiences we wanted them to reach.
Map out people in your orbit — sources, community partners, freelancers, volunteers, longtime readers — and see if they identify with people within your target audience.
Promote their strengths. While some of their goals and tactics are similar, we’ve allowed each of our Community Connectors to curate their own work plans. George was excited about chatting with neighbors one-on-one and hosting listening sessions with small groups, while Dwayne saw the value in creating video profiles of D.C. natives. When trusted messengers can lean into their natural communication styles, expertise, and lived experiences, they will be most effective and authentic.
Set goals and metrics. Even though their work is relationship-driven, we structured work plans with clear and measurable goals. In each Community Connector contract, we spell out deliverables, timelines and communication expectations. These metrics help everyone — from our Community Connectors to our editorial and operations teams — to stay on the same page.
Be transparent and iterate. Community engagement isn’t linear, so be open and flexible in this work. Early on, George found that getting people to complete a long survey from an organization they had never heard of was a challenge. So we created a shorter survey based on how familiar people are with our news outlet. Not only were we transparent internally, but we also shared this with our readers.
Apply for funding specific to the program. As your initiative grows, treat it as its own line of work that deserves dedicated resources. Funders are interested in community engagement and audience development, so take advantage of that when building out your newsroom’s fundraising plan. Keep track of your wins, challenges and impact to include in funding applications.
Broaden your search for trusted messengers. Once you have a solid footing, you can look for trusted messengers beyond your inner circle. With our expansion, George created job descriptions for two new Community Connectors. This was a chance to cast a wider net and open the program to new voices that reflect more of our target audience, not just people closest to us.
One of the main insights surfaced by Community Connectors was that to bridge the trust gap, Ward 7 residents want to see their communities reflected in our news coverage. So, The 51st’s editorial team made a point to prioritize Ward 7 pitches. We created a tag on our website to track those stories for easy access and accountability.
For Dwayne, we created a version of the Ward 7 survey that was unique to native Washingtonians, and they have distributed it at local events and festivals. Dwayne also launched an Instagram video series highlighting D.C. natives involved in political, social and creative work. Meanwhile, they continue to host Ask A D.C. Native, Live!, with the second edition last fall drawing twice as many attendees.
Christina Sturdivant Sani is the Executive Editor at The 51st. She’s freelanced for more than a dozen publications, highlighting Black life and culture in Washington, D.C. and unpacking issues faced by marginalized communities. Read her full essay here.
