Draft Four: Why does our newsroom exist? (4/4)

The last chapter of a project on a journalism of connection and hope.

This is the fourth and final letter in which I’ll be sharing a complete working draft of my CUNY News Innovation and Leadership final project. All our final projects, in short 5-min videos, are online. Thoughts or ideas are welcome, encouraged and appreciated. You can read all parts, in order, at the links below:

✦ Part I ✦ Part II ✦ Part III ✦

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A pitch for a pilot project

In the final third of DoR, the publication I co-founded and ran from 2009 to the end of 2022, we aimed to do journalism that centered storytelling as a tool for personal and societal transformation (and healing), that was informed by our public's needs (connection, discovery, serendipity, participation), and that was oriented towards spotlighting solutions. 

Our aim was to create a sense of possibility: in a world with many ills, there are ways toward better futures, and here are some potential ones. We served a bittersweet cocktail, with an aftertaste of hope.

The space we have left open has largely not been filled (at least not by a newsroom with a similar coherent mission), and talking to community organizers, civic activists, and expert facilitators has shown the need for journalism as connective tissue still exists. Arguably it's even greater now, especially if it can fulfill the need for complementary emotions to the anger most investigative-centered independent outlets provoke through what they uncover.

Context

The amount and quality of civic information in Romania has grown in the past couple of decades. Civil society actors have also diversified, and now you can see all roles on the social change spectrum represented: from organizers, to rebels, to activists, to helpers and so on. 

This chance has led to the emergence of numerous communities: from communities of practice, to communities of place or interest. 

Together, they have created a new civic space, a much more diverse ecosystem. Diana Ghindă, a host and facilitator with 20 years of experience has called the existing groups “islands of cohesion”, alternate ways of gathering and doing that are meant to supplant larger social systems and structures that are in disarray or crumbling. 

My friend, artist, runner, gardener, citizen, Mircea Drăgoi, made a series of illustrations inspired by this project.

Problem statement

Many existing communities interested in changing existing systems are isolated. They don't know enough about the other “islands” and how much they have in common. They are also sometimes disconnected within, largely a remnant of the pandemic and its lingering weariness of contact, and also struggling to stay afloat in a climate of precarious funding and external threats such as a war across the border in Ukraine, and rising illiberal tendencies in the region.

They are also learning by doing, Adela Alexandru, a feminist community organizer with Centrul FILIA says, which makes the process of growing the social change talent pool harder. The on the ground realities civic actors are working to change also don't allow for an ideal separation of roles, as theory would have it: one day you organize, the next you lobby for something on behalf of a group, then you get involved on the ground as a helper, and the cycle starts again. 

This also creates little space for reflection and engagement outside of the day to day work. 

Much of the initiatives they undertake require information – both in small cities, but also in a metropolis like Bucharest. That's because state actors intentionally or unwillingly dropped the ball, with faulty laws and regulations, poorly communicated, and often not implemented. Many civic actors thus end up doing both the work of public institutions (especially when it comes to social services or urban development), as well the work of journalists: filling freedom of information requests on public contracts, consulting experts on what to make of a new regulation, gathering information on air quality, and then packaging this for their constituents (often with no dedicated staff for this).

Sabina Mihăilescu and Iris Ursea from Între Vecini, an organization that aims to empower neighbors living in the same building(s), said they were recently working to find out the best flowers to plant in the urban garden adjacent to an apartment building. Eventually they found an expert that will teach the people living there, but couldn’t that information be useful for others, too? But is it them that have to repackage it and pass it on?

We journalists could have (and still can) filled that role, but somehow we didn’t. The image of the journalist is not associated with that of a guide to your daily needs and challenges. It’s just one reason people became largely skeptical, because what they see – when they see us – is mostly extractive, speculative, transactional, or sometimes careless. Those working with vulnerable groups say journalists don't come to listen; they just need “victims” to illustrate a broader story. Others say journalists come in, make a fuss about what's not working in a sector, and then go away, leaving other civic actors to deal with the fall-out.

All this leads to organizations and communities that are overwhelmed, under-resourced and with little bandwidth to gather together to learn from one another, collaborate, or strategize for systems change. These islands need to connect more often.

It's a state of affairs that needs to change, says Alina Kasprovschi, who runs Fundația Comunitară București (FCB), the most important community foundation in Bucharest. FCB started by amplifying existing hyperlocal civic initiatives through grants, and has slowly expanded its ways of working to include more capacity building and multiple stakeholder collaborations. As it now works on drafting a future strategy, Kasprovschi says the main goal would be to bring even more different civic actors together to connect, to foster belonging, and thus to create conditions for larger-scale change to happen (in time).

How can a new kind of newsroom help at this moment?

Illustration by Mircea Drăgoi.

Potential solution/mission:

Journalism is largely missing as a civic actor in the ecosystem described above. It could join to help gather and connect existing actors at human scale (vs. social media broadcasts from the sector, and other outreach initiatives), understand and explain issues relevant to multiple communities, spotlight existing or potential solutions, all with a mission of enabling collective healing and systems change.

It can listen together with civic actors to the needs of communities, it can use experiences as forms to create connections between change-makers and citizens, it can host conversations and gatherings as tools for collective sense-making, and it can be a guide for people to access services that improve their lives, and for civic actors to discover innovative solutions and new ways of working. 

A pilot phase of this project can be focused mostly in Bucharest over the next few years, to better engage local civic actors, strengthen the connections within the ecosystem, being the missing node that can strengthen a constellation, while also training a new generation of engaged/civic journalists.

A subsequent phase could involve creating new hubs of local journalism based on a similar model. They could be incubated by local community foundations or other civic actors, and can grow from there.  

Guiding principles:

• To distribute responsibility of care in the community;

• To create connection;

• To co-create with multiple stakeholders;

• To make conversations a product;

• To add context for a common understanding of issues.

Roles/Jobs to be done:

• Convener;

• Experience designer;

• Listener;

• Gatherer of facts, stories, solutions;

• Amplifier of success stories;

• Synthesizer of complicated systems;

• Challenger of existing practices.

Products/Outcomes:

• Experiences;

• Gatherings;

• Live shows;

• Solutions journalism;

• Stories of hope;

• System explainers;

• Guides to participating in communities.

Main funding sources:

• Large philanthropic grants from foundations that support the development of local civic infrastructure, such as the Romanian American Foundation.

• Unrestricted funding from the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) sector – these can be pooled from small or medium-sized sponsorships from numerous companies, which don't threaten the independence of the project.

• Forms of civic partnership, such as pooled funding from civic actors – mostly as a form of membership, which could include access to training in storytelling, reporting, writing etc.

• Direct support from the community/communities at large that participate, engage or enjoy the resulting storytelling. 

What can go wrong:

Everything. But here are three main areas of tension:

• People. Who do we start with? How do we upskill? How long will it take? Locally, there are very few journalists familiar with engagement concepts, even fewer that have practiced it. The main challenge of such a project is translating big ideas into activities/products, and this needs a core team that gets the vision, so we can build around them.

• Relationships. How do we thread the line between serving the larger community, and serving the civic actors we're collaborating with? Where do we draw the lines? Are there even lines that need to be drawn? How do we communicate our role as journalists in this ecosystem – to partners and citizens? How do we interact with the rest of the journalism world? Does it matter if we're branded as being outside the journalism space?

• Patience. Such a project might take 5-10 years to bear fruit, and even then most of the impact would be at a micro level (individual transformation). Who funds for micro level impact? If we promise mezzo (organizational changes) or macro-level impact (systems change) to secure funding, do we run the risk of mission drift and abandoning the ideas of connection and community in favor of more traditional accountability journalism practices? Can we be ambidextrous and do both human-scale connection and larger-scale systems changes?

(Ideal) calendar of next steps

June-September 2024: Continue interviewing both news innovators as well as local civic leaders, build on the project.

July-September 2024: Get feedback on the draft version, make a draft of the project public, get further feedback and invite stakeholders for more conversations.

September-December 2024: Fundraise for pilot projects, add dimensions to existing initiatives (existing newsroom coverage areas, niche newsletter, live events), strengthen a network of interested local journalists and other civic actors.

October 2024 - April 2025: Test some of these ideas in journalism conferences and forums.

March-April 2025: Bringing together interested parties for conversation and training at The Power of Storytelling in Bucharest, Romania.

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Thank you for sticking through till the end. My immediate next step, which will happen next week, is to read and reply to all of you who offered thoughts, feedback and support for this project over the past month. If, after reading this last part, you or your company/organization wants to contribute to making this happen (financially or otherwise), let me know — alongside former colleagues we have begun to put together a pooled fund for journalistic experiments could include many of the ideas above.