Engagement journalism
Meeting communities where they are to learn how to best meet their information needs.
Photo by Danielle Fox/USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism
Engagement journalism involves connecting with community members on a grassroots level to learn about their information needs, rather than telling them what they need to know.
Engagement journalism was essential to Substandard of Living, a project examining poor rental housing conditions throughout San Luis Obispo County that I completed with fellowships from the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism. My engagement editor and I didn’t have any data on the prevalence of substandard housing conditions, so we teamed up with the Promotores Collaborative of San Luis Obispo County to create our own dataset. The Promotores are volunteers who provide Spanish-language health resources to the county’s Latino communities. We partnered with the organization to survey tenants throughout the county, hold focus groups and create renters’ rights guides in English, Spanish and Mixteco. The surveys formed the backbone of my data project, and some residents we spoke with served as sources in my stories.
