Journalism is a struggling profession that has been trying to find its way for decades. Ideastream Public Media, which reports local and national news on WKSU-FM and WVIZ-TV, believes it has found one bright path forward.
It’s called “engaged journalism.” Journalists consult with communities and involve local citizens in reporting the news. They also ask them what news needs covering.
Marlene Harris-Taylor, director of engaged journalism at Ideastream, says engaged journalism is helping to restore trust in the field.
“Public media occupies a unique space because the public still ranks us higher in trust,” Harris-Taylor says. “But even with that, journalism has lost the trust of the public.
“Engaged journalism rebuilds that trust because we are being transparent about our process and bringing the public into the process,” Harris-Taylor says.
Connecting the Dots
In the beginning, Ideastream was practicing engaged journalism before anyone there even heard of the term. In 2020, Ideastream launched a project called Connecting the Dots Between Race and Health. This was shortly after the city of Cleveland and Cuyahoga County declared racism a public health crisis.
Connecting the Dots examined inequities in health and how race creates the health inequalities. Ideastream invited everyone and anyone in Greater Cleveland to participate, and 16 local community and media organizations, freelance journalists and citizens were selected. Ideastream even shared its funding with them.
Examples included news organizations, like FreshWater Cleveland, that published stories about race and health care on its websites. The Greater
Cleveland Association of Black Journalists organized a townhall discussion on the subject.
Meanwhile, Ideastream produced and aired stories about race and healthcare on WKSU and WVIZ. The content was picked up by National Public Radio.
“Living For We” emerged from the Connecting the Dots project. The podcast discusses quality-of-life challenges Black women face in Cleveland.
Then, Justin Glanville, deputy editor of engaged journalism at Ideastream, began an audio series called “Sound of Us,” in which community members talk about matters important to them. For example, Ideastream recently partnered with Second Harvest Food Bank of North Central Ohio in Lorain to identify food bank clients willing to tell their stories of food insecurity.
“Justin spent several months going to community fairs and events asking people what issues they thought we should look into,” Harris-Taylor says.
Ideastream recently hired Richard Cunningham, a producer who worked for the national radio show “Marketplace” by American Public Media. He will be heading up a Community Storytelling project in which he trains non-journalists how to operate a recorder, edit recordings and write copy for their own radio reports.
Listening to Learn
At some point during all this, Ideastream President and CEO Kevin Martin heard that four public radio stations in Southern California, Minnesota, Boston and Chicago had come together to create a movement called engaged journalism. “He said this really is the work we are already doing at Ideastream,” Harris-Taylor says.
In April, Ideastream started working on Connecting the Dots 2.0. This time it’s investigating gun violence. As part of the process, Ideastream hosted Listen and Learn sessions in Cleveland, Lorain, Akron and Canton to hear what residents had to say about the topic.
Ideastream is now preparing stories based on those Listen and Learn sessions and conducting foundational research for “Living For We” Season 2, which will focus on community gun violence.
“We want to stay connected with the people,” Harris-Taylor says.
