Build Your Newsroom Strategy For Dealing With Difference

6:00PM Aug 24, 2023

Speakers:

Joy Mayer

Keywords:

newsroom

people

work

communities

talk

coverage

conversation

difference

journalists

issues

hear

important

dealing

pittsburgh

happen

journalism

concerns

question

dissent

stories

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me, sir, for Asian nations as they went through, they've been a longtime nation partner of ours and they went through the democracy SOS last year program. I'm doing the solutions. And Harkins interesting is it's like a three person year long fellowship. And then went through that so they they didn't do as much trust work there because it took us a long time they were doing like citizens. Citizens agenda work with Harkin and then solutions work. They're kind of leaning into that these days.

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stuff. Yeah. Like that whenever I try to put one out I want to make sure the tables were there with you. Yes. Hey, hello. Hello. Hi, everyone. We'll get started in just a minute. We are going to have you talking to each other. Just a little heads up. So Matt, that's not going to work for you Julia. That's not going to work for you. Please be at a table with other human beings. So we'll give you a minute. To get settled.

That's better. Thank you. Hi, happy Thursday. It is Thursday. Right? Good to see everyone I feel like we're sort of fractured i We are going to be sitting. I think for some of it will walk around for some of it but I'm gonna lean so I can see you guys too.

So this is a session on building your newsroom strategy for dealing with difference. We are not going to teach you how to solve all of the dissent in your newsroom all of the tension and arguments in your newsroom but we are going to suggest some things that we've learned that we hope can help as you navigate tension and points of tension and difference in your newsroom. So we'll introduce ourselves first and then tell you what we're going to be up to today.

Thank you so much.

Thank you so much for coming out. This afternoon. My name is Lotro Cruttenden and I am the director of inclusion and audience growth with the American Press Institute. The American Press Institute has been around a very long time since the 40s. But what we focus on now is really issues related to challenges facing local news. And that includes our work with table stakes that includes our metrics tools, but it also includes the inclusion index, which is our comprehensive program for dealing with issues related to difference both inside and outside the newsroom and that's what I'll be talking about a little bit more today.

And I'm joined air I'm the director of trusting news my colleague Molly mentioned is over here in the corner. And we have been around since 2016. And we learn as much as we can about how people decide what news to trust, what the signals of credibility are, and what newsrooms need to understand about why people don't trust them in order to actually do better journalism. So it's not just about like transparency. If we explain ourselves better, everything will be great. It's also about what we are missing and how we can do that better today so we do a lot of training about that shows up in coverage, like here's how to do better coverage. today. We're going to be focused in this session on internal stuff, obviously in service of better coverage. We would like to have better conversations in the newsroom and do a better job have a more respectful, inclusive environment in the newsroom, but we're going to be focused on on internal things today. So we are going to Latreille and I who we've worked together before we've taught some workshops before, we're going to share some questions we have found to be really transformative when you're as newsrooms are trying to work through cultural issues, especially around these things. We're going to help you envision how these questions might be able to help in the newsrooms that you are a part of or that you lead or that you participate in. We're really mindful of the fact that folks in the room have all different levels of sort of agencies social capital, official power, and I really hope that that this will that you'll find some relevance in this no matter where you sit in there. We have a Google Doc, where we're going to invite you to share observations and answers to these questions. And because you're not signed into Google, it's anonymous. So you could say whatever that you want. And that link is here and we'll also give it to you in a minute when we put you to work so we're going to share some like like foundational questions and sort of the framework that Luttrell and I bring to the work and then we're gonna have you work on your own for a minute and talk to the people around you about how you might answer each of those questions. So in terms of where what Luttrell and I bring to the work at trusting news, we have been doing some work around a concept we call dimensions of difference which I totally stole from an HR editor as she talked about principles in her hiring and what she looked for in terms of visible and invisible difference. We asked the question who would feel seen and heard by your journalism, and who would feel neglected or misrepresented by your journalism? And there's a lot you could do with the answer to that question. If you answer it honestly, it answering it needs to involve also a look at your staff because who we are as human beings influences how we do our work. So what we find interesting, what we notice in the first place, what we find good what we find problematic in our communities is influenced by how we see the world. And so who was on your staff influences how, what shows up in your coverage. Who is your newsroom equipped to relate to, to under to find sources with to understand and to tell accurate, honest stories about one of the problems we notice is that people's experiences and lenses are not always valued inside newsrooms. And so the people who are heard from are not always the people who can help you provide accurate reflective cover relevant coverage to people that you aim to serve. So that is kind of where I'm coming from is how can we how can newsrooms better lead make room for each other with this project? I just wanted to mention this project dimensions of difference was co created with Eve Chrome and of spaceship media. And they are experts in dialogue and how you get people to talk to each other about differences. And so we're applying that to internal newsroom cultures.

And let me tell you a little bit about my work with the inclusion index. As I mentioned, it is a pretty comprehensive effort. To understand deficiencies as it pertains to connecting with communities of color specifically, but it can actually be used for connecting with all sorts of audiences. But we take a look at what a newsrooms capacity is or what they're doing as it pertains to six different areas plus one so the six different areas, diversity in your newsroom. When you look at diversity in your newsroom. When you look at the level of inclusion in your newsroom. It's not just about diversity, do people actually want to stay there and can they thrive? We look at your engagement strategies. We look at your content, we take a look at your understanding of key community assets. And we also take a look at your level of trust. And when we actually do how we do this is through interviews with community members, interviews with people in the newsroom and also surveys and other research. And we've just we actually just wrapped a project in Pittsburgh, where we actually led 40 Different newsrooms through this process. And we're actually launching based on part two where we're doing deep community listening now you can find and read much more about the project if you go to the link, but this is basically a summary of what we found is relevant to this particular session. I have a mirror. Yes. Why do I have a mirror? The best way to really summarize a lot of the findings that we had in Pittsburgh is that what you do inside of your newsroom is also reflected in your relationship with your community outside of the newsroom. If you have a toxic newsroom, you probably have toxic relationships with your community members. If you're a flaky newsroom when it comes to dealing with issues you're probably very flaky in dealing with your community members. And if your efforts are typically token, you do something one time and then you let it go. That's going to be the case when you're dealing with issues in your internal culture and you're also when you're dealing with things externally. So so when you're really looking at internal culture, and solving those issues, it will have an impact on how you relate better to your communities.

All right, starting off with some truth and a mirror. Okay, so we're gonna give you two questions and give you time in this doc that I promise we'll put the link up again in just a second. We're going to give you two questions that we want you to think through. I want you to think through what the answer would be for you in newsrooms or organizations if you're not currently in a newsroom, whatever comes to mind for you, as you answer the question, and we're going to give you a few minutes to make some notes on your own, and then talk to the folks around you. So let me tell you a little bit about how I answer this question and then we'll put the question back up. Actually, literally, you go first on this one.

Absolutely. So going back to the mirror, just to be a little bit more specific is that if you are listening to only certain voices in your community, and elite voices, and they typically are the only ones that are heard, the chances are that you have those same problems in terms of listening to different individuals inside of your newsroom. And that's one of the things that we actually found with our research and Pittsburgh. Criticism if you are pretty I don't take criticism very well, from community members. You may have that same situation inside of your newsroom where you're punishing individuals or you're neglecting individuals who have deep concerns about internal culture issues that need to be heard or you don't have an infrastructure for dealing with that. If you're also paying attention to communities, when only bad things happen, there's a chance that you only pay attention to journalists who may be struggling or who may have concerns when they are messing up instead of being proactive and really understanding and listening. That's the key listening to what their concerns happen to be and having infrastructure for doing so. And the same as with celebration. Are you celebrating all of your communities? And are you celebrating the wins of all of your journalists? Whether it's big or small, because those are things that make people feel connected to your newsrooms?

Let me just say with Charles got a PhD here's a doctor Latreille is dropping some dropping some information that really comes from like deep research, not just not just a gut sense. So I could talk a while and I won't go deep into it. But I'm happy to share more information about all the ways journalists are different from the communities they serve. Like we know that we're whiter we know that we are different socio economically than the average by mindset if not by actual bank account. We know that we are more educated. We know that we are less often less religious, often less likely to have come from rural backgrounds, less likely to have served in the military, like so many experiences that the community has that we don't mirror. And journalists are also not immune to the social sorting that the country is doing. We gravitate to people who are like us. And so more of the newsrooms used to have people who've been in the military newsrooms used to have people who hadn't gone to college, right, like we're getting more and more like each other. And that is a real problem when it comes to coverage. It's also true when it comes to just how we see the world and what we see as normal. And the dominant culture in newsrooms often silences dissenting voices. I hear from journalists more often than I wish I did about the things they do not feel like they can say in their newsrooms. So that could be about your coverage of guns. Do you have anyone in your newsroom no matter what their what their current daily practices who comes from a deep appreciation of and respect for people who own firearms for a variety of reasons that can come for how you cover law enforcement? Do you have people who come from a background of that it comes from people it has to do with like how we cover religion and people who see the world through a lens of faith in ways that that newsrooms just are not often paying as much attention to. So when you look at those gaps and experiences and perspectives, how can we help our communities have nuanced, respectful conversations across some of those societal differences? If we're not talking about them enough in newsrooms, I see coverage that looks like it has come from a set of assumptions and values that does not seem to take into account things that would be normal to the rest of the community if that makes sense. It also shows up intergenerationally sometimes when newsrooms come at this dimensions of difference work they want to talk about I don't know you know, the debates about like kind of old school new school journalism, objectivity, activism. I hear from a lot of sort of traditional journalists that they feel like there's a social activism driving, why some younger folks get into newsrooms. The interesting thing is in a newsroom I was in recently, when I when we when we talked about why we got into journalism, one of the older editors talked about her frustrations with the Vietnam War and how that would like was a real driver for her. So it was social activism of a different unit that looks different than than how we engage with Black Lives Matter. Maybe But, but talking across those differences is very difficult. And if you look at who in your newsroom has those two points of view, just use kind of an extreme example, which one of them likely feels more comfortable sharing it and which one of them is actually directing your coverage? So I would like we invite you first to pull up this Google Doc on whatever platform you have. And I'll project it up here as well. And add some notes or give a little thumbs up to to someone else's notes about the question, whose voices dominate in your newsroom and in your coverage. So we're going to give you five minutes to do that on your own and we'll see what is emerging in the document.

And if you need to work with somebody next to you, that's fine too if you don't all have easy access

What's that? Go back go back to the link Yeah, totally.

We're typing how exciting retyping already thanks for playing along friends.

And if for whatever reason you don't have a way to type you can certainly also take some notes and we can collect them later and also add them to the document if that's more comfortable for you. But we would prefer to type

If it's problematic

it's a big one.

Start using these

right if you're just joining us we are in this Google Doc leaving notes about whose voices dominate in newsroom conversations and in coverage.

And again, if you for the sake of time if you just want to jot your notes down, that's fine as well. And we'll be doing a share back briefly.

So once you've typed something if you want, I'd like to chat with the folks around you about it while folks are still typing. Be social instead of doing something else while people are still typing that be great.

This is a big problem. This one speaks to the question we get so often when you have experience with something I can't cover. I think

it's gonna be good for us. So use that

okay. We are at about one minute.

not the time to take more time with the conversation

all right. You guys are going to town thank you so much the power of anonymity right. We will ask you to share things that you have put in here that seem especially resonant or important or things that you see that you did not type something your neighbor just said to you. Can we just hear back from you a bit about what what you're noticing

Would anybody like to share? No come around

and also give us your name and where you are based in your organization.

I am merely Baca and I'm based in Jacksonville, Florida, at the Graham Media Group station to be Jake's t. So I believe the loudest voices are our upper rank newsroom managers who've been there the longest our assignment manager, our assistant news director, news director, and myself, the digital director. We tend to make most of the decisions and have kind of the loudest voice in our editorial meetings. And I believe that's a problem. We're all like mirrors of each other like you were saying we're educated white women from middle upper class communities. And there's four of us and we really have similar backgrounds. And we're all kind of in the same age range of 30 to 50.

So, wow, that's a lot of sameness

is a lot of sameness. Yeah. So I think it'll be good to hear what everyone has to say and and learn from this. Thank you.

Thank you for sharing. Anybody else want to go?

Hi, I'm Elizabeth Dunbar from MinnPost. And we recently decided to end comments on our site, because we did an analysis showing that about 70% of our comments came from the same 20 people and 19 of them appear to be male just we make people use their real names or we tell them to sit next and that was our

conjecture. So yeah.

Hi, I'm Rachel with Gwinnett. And one of the things that I've been noticing in myself and in newsrooms recently is around co workers who I don't want to say think like you but have similar ways of brainstorming or communicating people who are also extroverted or he's who speak up in meetings or who prefer slack over email, but people who approach problems or approach communication in the same way tend to work really quickly together, and so they make decisions really quickly. And I think that it doesn't always leave room for people who are more introverted or want to contribute in other ways.

No, that's an excellent point. We often don't think about how people work and how that impacts their ability to communicate.

I actually had not thought about introversion as being one of these dimensions of differences, but it's so interesting.

Yeah, that actually made me think of something that I wanted to like just build upon, which is that to me, yeah, introversion for sure. But there's also I think, to like what you said some people have a, like a quicker way or an auditory way of processing things or approaching problem solving and other people need to kind of contemplate and approach the approach the solution, you know, after having a chance to get give some thought and if if the organization is so focused on forward momentum and problem solving in in you know, in real time, then you're going to hear from the people that can keep up with that or are more comfortable with that than the people who may really have great perspectives and offer better solutions if they're given the opportunity to process on their own time. So yeah, not just introversion and extraversion, but also like, how do you process and how do you interpret and how do you problem solve?

Yeah, what's rewarded

but just the similarity of people being journalists and only working in newsrooms or journalism for their whole career, I think is a really specific way to view the world and we can get self important really quickly. So yeah, people without perspectives of other lines of work or life experiences

outside. I was thinking about that during your session this morning on news of what it's actually because we tend to think that people who aren't following the news constantly are like not as smart or not as like invested in the world around them or something.

And I've often heard from people who are coming from non traditional backgrounds and they enter newsrooms that they're viewed differently or they're treated differently because there's this assumption that they don't know what they're talking about. Because if you go to J school, then you're a journalist. But if you don't go to Jay school, then what are you doing here? And they often are treated differently in their voices are often marginalized. Yeah,

I think there's a lot that we don't like, we talk. There's just a lot of side effects that come from kind of the over professionalization of our industry and I don't think we recognize that as a bias when we talk about biases of like, thank you the specific vantage point that we have in that world.

Yes, thank you.

Another point I wanted to add is that just thinking about innovation recently, a lot of the innovation is coming from people who are from outside of the newsroom. So I think it's really important to listen to voices who don't necessarily come from a traditional background.

I'd love to flag this. This comment up here about people with disabilities being underrepresented. I think the comment here that they're reporting is often viewed. I mean, I think they're underrepresented in a lot. of ways that matter a lot. This one point that somebody typed here about their reporting being viewed as bias. Because of that, I think the question of how your lived experiences inform your work and whether that's a value whether that's a liability or an asset is such an important one.

Yeah, so I want to add, I'm a student so probably like years away from where you guys are at but from a student perspective in the newsroom. I just want to say that what I mainly see you're like, sis able by the presence in our newsroom, and that sometimes lead to us forgetting how to report foster communities and it's really a question of how do we bring those communities in to our newsroom? Not necessarily having to be are having to happen background within journalism, but it's that involvement. I don't know if I can call them our audience or just the communities that surround us within our newsroom and say, Hey, what's the problem and tackling our stories in a way that is that is filled with social awareness, I guess and understanding of a community that we are not necessarily involved in. Thank you.

I wanted to ask about obviously, these are all really good things to think about when it comes to diversifying our newsroom and looking internally at how we can do better work externally. Something that I've been hearing a lot, especially from interns and fellows and entry level workers is the country isn't an equal place to live, especially for people of color for women in a lot of different ways. And so sometimes we have a hard time, you know, getting someone to want getting women for instance, to want to go to a place where there are no abortion rights, and I have a very hard time blaming them. And I've been thinking a lot about what diversity in newsrooms look like. As journalists are also people who have different ideas of the kind of people they want to live with and the communities they want to be in. And as our communities get more different from each other. I can believe in diversity and that doesn't mean that I want to live in the community. And I've just been thinking about what that looks like in the long term and would be curious for your thoughts.

I can touch on that real briefly. It's something that came up in my work in Pittsburgh. And the fact of the matter is that there are certain communities that people of color LGBT people want to live in and then are other places that they're less likely to try and go to. One of the things that happened in Pittsburgh, quite frankly, was the turnover. Rate with journalists of color was very high, but take with one exception, if you were from the area. So one of the things that I've recommended for newsrooms to do, because that's not necessarily going to change in many ways. As you mentioned, it might get worse you need to find people and build local pipelines that will allow you to tap into the talent in your particular communities. And that's where for instance, trying to find alternative pipelines, people who didn't necessarily go through J school may be beneficial. They also help help you better connect to your community. So that's one thing that you should really consider if that is something that you're concerned with. We have one more in the back.

I was just gonna say I saw it on this list in a few different ways. But in every legacy newsroom I've worked in in a city. Most of the people in the newsroom and especially most people in leadership, making coppers decisions live in the surrounding suburbs, not in the city. And then there's that translates to a perception of that art made subscriber base is also in the suburbs. And I think that's important to know. But I think I just wanted to also name like, the economic reality whether it's real it's definitely perceived that people without a disposable income can't be subscribers, and if they're also not represented in our newsroom, I just that definitely affects our coverage.

And that's a major thing that impacts it's just this is a secret that's not a secret that you're going after certain communities and you're neglecting other communities in your pursuit of profit. And one of the realities is the nation is becoming more diverse and you can continue to think that you're going to be able to live off of a very narrow set of voices. That which is why it is imperative to try and engage new audiences because you have no choice. So getting out into the communities that have been neglected. That's not why I think you should do it, but it is a profit motive. If you want to keep running that's something that you really should be considering.

Alright, move on to the next question. Then we'll talk again, okay. So second question. What are the ideal conditions for building more inclusive, respectful newsrooms? Pretend we actually want to talk about this stuff? What does that look like?

And from my work again, one of the things that I'm going to walk around because I am a walker, I need to get my stepson. So one of the things this is a key thing, can everybody in your newsroom thrive at their job and you have to think about that. What does that mean? Do they like where they work? Do they enjoy coming into work? Can they thrive professionally, you are giving them the tools to do their jobs? Are you providing for their mental health? Are you overworking them? Or do you have an imbalance where you're putting all the labor on this particular group? But and people see that well, where others there's an imbalance there? Do you have counseling available to your newsrooms? And you have to think socially, one of the things that I heard with a lot of my research is that a lot of journalists, particularly journalists of color in predominantly white newsrooms feel socially disconnected from their peers. They're not invited to go out anywhere, even if they don't want to go they'd like to have at least the invitation. When they come in, if they're coming from another community, where can I get my hair done? That's a very significant thing. Where is the church that I might be able to go to providing for those social aspects for them to feel connected to the community? Because if you feel disconnected from your newsroom, and from your community, you will leave. So that's one of the keys as you're dealing with the entire team of can that individual ability thrive. Also, are you looking at your practices that you have in place if you have them? To see whether your training programs are working to see if you have a dei committee? What is it actually doing? Are you actually looking at that? Which gets to the larger issue? Do you even have systems? In an earlier session? I basically said infrastructure, infrastructure infrastructure, you need to build infrastructure. around all these different things. Whether it's your mental health, whether it's professional training, whether it's even social. If you don't have an infrastructure, there's a very good chance that you're not going to sustain that work. And the last thing I'll say is, if there are things that happen wrong, do you have an accountability? Do you have accountability for what may happen? If something goes awry, and it doesn't necessarily mean that somebody needs to be fired or doesn't necessarily mean that it's harsh? It's Do you have a system for dealing with problems in your newsroom? I mean, I can tell stories and I'm about to tell one, but I'm not going to, but there was a lack of accountability in a situation with somebody that I used to work with who was harassing older. 20 year olds in a newsroom. And the result of that wasn't favorably seen and a lot of people left as a result of that. So these are the things that you have to consider.

So when I think about what it looks like to have these conversations, I think you know what I've heard a lot lately when I take newsrooms through this dimensions of difference workshop, that they don't really know each other that well, I think remote work has taken a real toll on our ability to talk to each other. I was just talking to somebody who said her staff meeting start with like a What did she call it something like a remember to be human moment where people just like shared they would like ask a question like what's a random encounter you've had with wildlife lately? Or something like a random question just to try to get a little humanity in the newsroom? Because we're so task oriented on Zoom. So even knowing what does it look like to get to know each other well enough to know what voices we might have that we might not be tapping? So one of the links that's in the shared Doc is to a hiring guide we put together with the help of some partner newsrooms. You can't ask people for example, when you hire them, tell me if you grew up in poverty, tell me like how you vote. Tell me about your family background. Tell me about your disability status, but you can ask questions like who do journalists cover well, and not cover well, and invite people to share something about how they see the world. You can ask something about, like how people show up for work and what support they need. And you can ask people, you know how they get to know new communities. You can just get to know how people see the world because somebody might want to they might be totally ready to talk to you about, like, what you can ask when people are involved in the community, right? People might be really ready to talk to you about their faith, or they might never want to talk to you about their faith. But once you know that they're a person of faith and that that guides how they see the world. You know, who to talk to, when you're covering something. So the same way that I could say in my last newsroom, you know, oh, Scott fishes all the time. So if you have a story about fishing, be sure to ask Scott or Joy's the one with small kids. So if you have a story about the schools, go ask joy. We need to be able to do that with each other on all kinds of issues and we're just not really set up to do it a lot of times. So we know that. What's strong leadership is really needed in order to lay the groundwork for conversations to sort of build a container for our conversation, as the trial was saying strong leadership is required to know when you're crossing a line. And when you are when something is okay, so here's something I think about a lot. And there are a lot of issues that that our country is losing the ability to talk about, right and figuring out what is problematic. What is offensive. What is just challenging what you're allowed to say and what you're not allowed to say is really difficult. And I think journalism, one of the reasons journalism struggles to help communities do that is because we don't know how to do it ourselves. So if there is somebody in your newsroom saying, Man, my I grew up shooting a gun with my grandpa. And the way this newsroom was talking about guns does not allow for that experience at all. I bet none of these people have that experience. Do they feel able to bring it up? If somebody is saying, you know, one of the newsrooms I work with heard recently from from a listener was a public radio newsroom. They were covering mental health and they heard from a listener, you didn't talk about faith at all in this whole series on mental health. I can't process the topic of mental health except through a lens of faith. So was there anyone in that in that newsroom? Who was saying, Hey, why aren't we interviewing a minister or Rabbi about this? Why are we you know, or or are those people feeling like they've got to just keep quiet? And so we're really talking about how do you value sort of skepticism and being a check on each other, playing the devil's advocate asking routinely who would feel seen and and understood by this coverage? And who would feel neglected or misrepresented by this coverage? And do you know your own gaps and your own community well enough to answer those questions? And if you and then pay attention to who in the newsroom speaking up and find a way to invite people to speak up who are not feeling empowered to do so automatically? So we're gonna pull the doc up again, and ask the question and answer the question. In your opinion, and in your experience, what is needed to build a respectful inclusive newsrooms where people feel comfortable speaking up what are the elements that need to be there? And then so we're going to, again, type on your own talk amongst each other and then we'll come back together

Yeah, we'll give you five minutes

may have already started typing.

If you've already typed give a plus one to other people's like, add some feedback multitaskers.

I guess I thought it might Yeah, I probably will. Next Oh sure. Next.

This is

deceit space

honesty privilege.

Someone asked about hiring someone to paste this down there.

Salary transparency Yes. Oh, these are good. You guys are smart.

Again, once you're done, talking, I mean, typing feel free to talk chat with your neighbors.

This one gets to what you're saying about the different processes, or what Rachel was saying about the different processes and ways of working.

The middle we don't talk about think about our students, extremely introverted. And my concern is that he's concerns that he doesn't express himself even though he's mortal, and in some cases, he knows what's happening. And I have to give him some what does

it mean to demonstrate exactly?

Just asking the question what makes people feel able to honestly participate? Most students would not ask that question.

One more minute.

stuff

getting them to open up. All right. Gosh, I'm seeing some themes here. I'm seeing a lot of love for the idea of modeling from the top. I would love to hear someone say what that what does that look like when it's done? Well can we start there? What does that mean? I know we can all say what it does not mean. What does it mean?

All right. So one of the things I wrote was a flexible schedule on paid time off that allows people with different lifestyles to participate in journalism. You know, because people have different needs that they have to take care of at home. People have to take care of disabilities any kind of thing. And my executive director and former co Executive Director modelled that from the top all the time by taking time off and making sure that everyone knew that they were taking time off and you know what it was for that they were like, oh, you know, I'm going on vacation. Don't bother me like, like, do not like it is not our job to be, you know, interrupting other people's vacations either. And then we also take a week off as a group each year so that we are all not bothering each other on vacation. Awesome.

I think it also looked like inviting descent. So like in the conversation, okay, now's the time, you know, to like tell we should also consider other points of view like anyone have any that they could suggest you or anyone that have to mentally could bring them but we are not considering and like also making sure that that enough people in the conversation have the space, you know, so really facilitating a lot to make sure like, Oh, I really want to hear from this person. I haven't you know, things like that. I love that.

And if you build that into the infrastructure, that's something that becomes normalized, and that will open up more dialogue.

So we were talking at the table and I was explaining how a lot of the members of my team are younger and they don't want to spend time with me outside of work. And I'm trying to figure out you know, everything is transactional in the newsroom. We all have a job to do we have deadlines, and it's very much just professional environment. And that's it. So when we talk about getting to know each other on a different level, it's it's really interesting because I want to just sit down and say, you know, Hi, how are you today? But then even that, to me sounds phony and and authentic and kind of forced. So it's just, it's a big challenge.

One thing that you can possibly do and this is one of the things we even do with API's, we designate some time during sessions often to just have a social event. Where we're having trivia night or we're having trivia night or something of that nature, where you're getting people to just dialogue. It'll be virtual, and you do get to learn about people that way. And it is a way to open up and it's something that might you might be able to do that's not necessarily that cuts across age barriers, race vendors, gender barriers, so that's something to so just building some time to just socialize or having that into your schedule.

awful tough when your whole day is structured around meeting the deadline for the next show. Though, I know.

So as a relatively new news director, I have a challenge directly related to what you just said, though, which is that when my team gets real social, other members of my team feel left out. So how do you work around that and make sure that they're having fun but in an inclusive way.

So the thing is, it's just asking, so this is an analogy I often use. People will get invited to a party and they'll have music and food. Did you ask them what they wanted? Did you ask everybody what they wanted them in terms of the music, they have some participation in the music, they've helped design the menu so that they feel included? And again, as I mentioned, in some cases, there's going to be things that yeah, I'm not you guys do that. But it's just the whole idea of making sure you're creating opportunities where everybody can frame or do things socially. And everybody has an opportunity so where it's even like what's a friend group? I remember in college, my friends wanted to go to this one place all the time. I'm like, I don't want to go here all the time. It would have been nice to ask, well, what would you like to do and you have to do those same things inside of your newsroom to make sure that everybody's voices heard.

One thing we do at the American Press Institute actually my project is co hosted there. Is fill out a personal user guide when we're hired, where we talk about how we prefer to communicate, kind of strengths and weaknesses and like it's okay to text me or it's not, and also share whatever you'd like to share about your life and that does give you fodder then for follow up conversations.

Okay, well, thank you. Yeah, this minds on topic. So thank you for Thank you for seeing um, so I actually think my organization does this pretty well. And I want to give you the caveat that I am not with a newsroom. So sorry. Please don't throw me out. But, um, I think that I wanted to echo one of the things that you just said about staff being given the opportunity to, to to like, share what they would like. So my organization circulated a document and basically said, like, if there's a day that's important to you, or like a cultural celebration, it's important to you to celebrate, like, put it on this list, and we'll acknowledge it and we'll celebrate it and we do in person opportunities, but there's some people who are hybrid staff who don't come in and can make it for that. And so, we also have virtual opportunities to do things like that. So like a couple of things that came to mind when you were talking earlier, we just did we just had a, an informational day on left on left handedness. Lefty Day, National lefty day was like last week or something. And in a couple of weeks, we have a pet parade for like all the virtual employees who can't come in so they can like walk their pets past on Zoom and everybody gets to like ooh, and ah, and it's not going to apply to everyone, like not everyone is going to find themselves in all those events. But I think the important thing is that we give we give people the opportunity to have that voice and to be able to say like this is something that's important to me, and then they also get to choose their level of involvement. In producing that event. So if some people just want to say this is an idea, but I'm like introverted, and I don't want to be a part of it. We have a social committee that will then like step up and do a couple of things to help them So

sounds like your social committee might need to consult with this Jacksonville major member here. Okay.

Yes, it is like a lot.

I think, I believe one of the few steps, not few, but when steps to building a more respectful and inclusive newsroom is first of all, focusing on Stylebook while I was in the conference in early August they mentioned a sort of inclusive style book in which we will newsrooms will input our implant certain phrases that you can and cannot say when you are writing your articles or stories or doing whatever type recording that you are. And I think that's important because if we can show if we can tell each other Hey, I'm from this community, this phrase doesn't go You cannot. You cannot say this phrase or like, even like grammatical issues like capitalizing B when you were mentioned and when you're mentioning the black person or anything like technical in LGBTQ like it's okay to say queer or is it not okay to say queer because there's still a debate within the LGBTQ community. So I feel like the Sol book, focus on diversity inclusion is something that will help build a more respectful and inclusive user.

We actually have a molly we were gonna newsletter about that. Didn't we like gathering up style books and stuff? Yeah, we can add a link to this doc in case that's useful you guys

hello, everyone. I'm bringing them in from Radio Free Asia based in Washington, DC. Hi, everyone. You know, like when we were talking about this, what occurred to my mind is that, you know, like, in our newsroom, you know, we don't have any racial discrimination because we're all Tibetans working. But the landscape of journalism is changing, and it's changing because of the age differences. Now, we're getting many newcomers and then as we grew up, and as my friend said, you know, there's a lot of difference, but to overcome that difference, you know, what I experimented is that I tried to pick up myself as a role model by helping the younger ones and then gain their trust, you know, and help them anytime they wanted. That way. You know, we can make them inclusive and get the respect from them and then they hear you. That's my own experience. So I wanted to share that. Thank you very much.

And thank you for sharing that because one thing I did want to that I want to bring up is your newsroom is monolithic in one way, but no single community is monolithic because people will still have different opinions, different age different lifestyles and backgrounds. So when you're even thinking of diet, hiring, diversity or things of that nature, understand that not all your Black Journalists have the same interest or are the same. And if you treat but if you treat everybody the same, or they're all black or even when you're thinking about your community, that's not how you should be doing work. You have to understand the difference the levels of difference, even when within mana more monolithic communities.

So what does it look like to ask the question as a leader, who else might see this differently? What does it look like in a in an in a staff meeting, to say to just be sure you're pausing long enough and inviting people who with dissenting perspectives to bring that up? And what does it look like? Other like not everyone feels comfortable to the introvert extrovert question, right? Not everyone feels comfortable doing it in a staff meeting. So is there more than a performative invitation to other folks to reach out privately to submit a note? Oh, Allison. Yeah, it's something to be mindful of who feel safe with who Yeah. Yes. Okay. Thanks.

I knew some got a lot of flack as a lot of legacy newsrooms have, you know, fumbled this where we ran a headline that leans heavily on police narrative. The story itself was actually much more nuanced than the headline reflected but that's not the point. The headline did harm and we got a lot of pushback. from people about that as we should have. But a couple of my direct reports, one in particular, was younger, newer in the newsroom had a lot of specific concerns and critiques of that line of coverage. But felt intimidated to go to upper management about that felt so you've talking to me, but then I I had an urge. She was very clear about what she felt comfortable with me relaying and how much she felt comfortable with me attributing to her and then our upper management field did that really well. And wanted to hear more from her but didn't put her on it didn't put her on the spot didn't make her do extra labor in a way that was like disproportionate or whatever, but ended up I don't know if I'm explaining this, but you are. What we did is we had a meeting with the three of us with our executive editor, with this young reporter and with myself, present in the room as well to talk about the coverage and basically it just felt really thoughtful the whole way throughout that felt like validating her concern but didn't put her on the spotlight didn't make her speak in front of the whole newsroom were in front of people that she didn't feel comfortable or safe around or make her make a whole case for things that were reflective of her own experience. And then and then we did like that. Her concerns were heard. And then upper management messaged about them but from their own perspective and directed the coverage in a way that like did meaningfully shift that coverage going forward when we did a lot of good, but didn't put her like in a position that made her uncomfortable at all throughout and I just was really heartened by that whole thing. It felt like our upper management like model change really well. I mean, that's

what happened was

that's very important is you have to provide multiple means of people to offer critique because sometimes there are going to be issues that they don't wish to error out unnecessarily with an editor or that they don't want to because there could be an issue there. I've heard that or there could be some other issues. So actually, one of the clients that I worked with in Pittsburgh created multiple ways of communicating there. Was a box where you could just type things in and they mandated the editors ever at least once a week, we're going to go in here and look at what's actually happening and document everything and then offer the opportunity for somebody to provide feedback or we'll have an entire staff dialogue about it. But the idea was, some people want to be anonymous when they're critiquing things. So you do have to offer different means of way different ways of connecting with your newsroom in terms of any types of challenges.

So it goes back to the trolls smear because, right like journalists actually should want to hear from their communities and be responsive to what they like you should be rewarded for critiquing coverage. And you should be rewarded in a newsroom for saying something unpopular or something that could make someone else's life harder. If you're doing if the work is important. So we hope that you will take these questions back to your newsroom question. Yeah,

so um, we had a situation my staff is fairly small about 30 employees. And we had a situation about a month ago, where on one of our like Slack channels, there was a conversation that happened that was about kind of like current event type stuff that was going down and you could tell that there was definitely a commonly held opinion about what was happening. Yeah. And it turned out that there was a dissenter on that channel, who was very like, impacted or harmed by the conversation and had a different dissenting viewpoint. And it just has become this disaster like there's it's just a mess. So I was wondering if you have suggestions for how to deal with something like this or advice about like, we want to provide people the opportunities to express their their differences or what makes them unique or et cetera, et cetera. But how do you do that? How do you do that without like, some people basically feeling trampled because they have a different opinion, especially if it's the minority opinion.

Can we I just I want to respect people's time. Do you mind if I just like close this out for a second and then come back to you for any reason? Not really. Okay. So just wanted to say in this slide deck, which is linked at the top of that deck is the dimensions of difference newsroom guide that has a bunch of exercises you can take your newsrooms through about how they see the world, how they're different from their communities, how you can recognize bias in coverage, that sort of thing. We have a newsletter. There's also a sheet in the middle of the table if you'd like to subscribe to that. And I also stuck I meant to mention I stuck at the top of the doc, a hiring guide that we put together. Oh, I did mention with like questions you can ask as you're hiring. And this is the link also to the literals inclusion index work, which is really fantastic. So we hope you'll keep in touch. I know it's 330 so folks need to step up. That's great, but I would love to talk about this for a minute.

The one thing I would say is those flash points are going to take place. That's why it's important to create an environment where you can actually have conversations in a healthy way. And if you don't necessarily have that environment set up, then when you have those flash points, it's I don't know what to do with this. So but if you have an environment that you've built up over time that okay, this is how we're going to talk talk about these different issues. We're gonna allow people to express their opinions and do so in a way that is respectful of each other, then I think that situation would have been different.

Did you want to say something this,

I know this matters to?

You matters a lot to me. No, I absolutely agree with you know, we have to start with this culture of dissent, but it has to be respectful dissent. And that's really hard to start. When it's been, you know what you're describing, you know, turn up the volume a great deal. And so that I guess that's my question is like, what's that first step? I imagine it's different for every newsroom. But everyone has to take that first step because it's you're gonna have a lot of conflict at first. Hopefully moving to that better place my answer, my first answer would be modeling from the top, but there has to be others that I'd like

to hear. Yeah, I mean, I would say as part of your regular newsroom conversations, as you're talking about an issue and saying, Man, this is a tricky one. Are you just saying what are the ways people see this and validating like we talk interesting news about the word pluralism, like what that means is that there are a lot of ways to go through life and to see the world and there's a lot of value in different ways, right when the goal is not for us all to see the world the same. So are you even talking about stories and talking about societal issues in a way that makes it clear that you want to hear and reflect those multiple views?

And this is where I would pitch my inclusion index, because in all reality, we go in there and we study what is your internal culture? And in many ways, what I can do is an after report will say hey, your newsroom, I'm not saying that. This is your newsroom, but your newsrooms pretty toxic. Your newsroom people don't like each other, which actually, in some of the reports and one of their newsrooms, people did not like each other. So we actually had to let them know this is an issue and you need to start doing some exercises or doing some work on team building on building a culture of respect. And that's why again, to pitch if you go to the inclusion, what we do is we go in there and we actually talk to staff look at do surveys and understand what is it that you are actually struggling with? Because if you do that blind and this is this is why I think this is important. If you're going and starting to do that blind, then you might have challenges that you haven't anticipated and it will blow up anything that you're trying to design.

The one thing I was gonna mention is in the second question, we didn't quite have the conversation about how our coverage will also influence our newsroom structure as well. And that may have even been something I read of yours honestly when I was looking about diversification of a newsroom and if you are not being representative in your coverage, you can't expect you know people can't see themselves in your coverage. Your audience now can't see themselves in your coverage. Why would they will read your watch you and then why would anybody come and work for you?

Why would anybody come and work for you?

And so, you know, the coverage is just as important as the culture I think that you set within it. And I drew line to I mean, Michelle had a great session just before this and solutions journalism just as the idea of you know, the helped me with the asset first or asset forward type of framing you know, highlighting aspiration if you're going to be covering an issue highlighting the aspirations of, you know, the population or the group or whatever you're covering, rather than start with the problem and the deficit frame right away. So see a lot of connections.

And one last thing I'll say is it everybody needs to be mindful of this. People talk. They know what your newsroom is, like. Yes. So if you're not dealing with those issues, and you're wondering why people aren't applying to your jobs, that's why because all these people in the hallway talking about your different newsrooms. So that's another reason why it's important to deal with these issues. Because if you're trying to have any type of long term sustained impact, and you're not dealing with it, then potential staff members will

thank you, everyone. Appreciate the conversation so much