As you're planning how to use Hearken or considering other areas that could benefit from audience engagement, here are some examples of different editorial use cases from our partner newsrooms.

The BBC uses Hearken after big breaking news events. For instance, after the Brexit vote came down in November 2016, the BBC put out a story with all the information they knew at the time, and put a Hearken embed at the bottom of the story to collect the questions readers were left with after reading the article. In the course of just a few hours, they'd collected more than 1,000 responses, which was extremely helpful in focusing how to do  their day 2 reporting. This story became one of their top of the day because it was so packed with information the public was wondering about. 

Partners in Austin, The Texas Tribune and The Austin-American Statesman, used Hearken for follow-up reporting after Hurricane Harvey. They asked people for questions related to the storm and produced a number of stories that were very helpful, timely and relevant for the public. One example:  What assistance is available to those affected by Harvey and what can I do if I get denied federal aid?

When something big happens in your community or around the country, people will often ask their questions about that event right in your existing form embed. Here are a few examples from our partners:

Want more on breaking news coverage with Hearken? Check out our guide!

If you just did a lengthy investigation or multi-part series on an issue, chances are you know the issue thoroughly and could get more mileage out of your hard work. After you put out your big story, you can let your audience ask you follow-up questions. This extends the shelf life of your investigation and gives your audience a more productive avenue to respond to and learn from your reporting than comments would.

This is what Reveal did with Hearken. They’re a non-profit investigative news outlet. They spend months at a time reporting long form investigations. In 2015, they were doing ongoing reporting about the California drought. Once the investigation published, they used Hearken to solicit follow up questions in response to the story. They solicited questions by asking “What questions do you have about California’s ongoing water crisis?” After collecting questions, they first responded to a handful of easier questions in  Q&A roundup posts, tackling quick questions like “Are almonds a big part of the problem? Should I stop eating them?”

(Then, they ran a voting round of a few good questions, and published a long form story in response to the voting round winner. So you can also use this strategy to do higher-touch, audience-driven longform investigations!)

WUWM has rolled out a new Hearken project,  Beats Me. The station developed three prompts for three of its beats, Environment, Education and Race/Ethnicity. They're asking the audience to submit questions on those beats, and the reporters will then turn to those questions as they plan the stories they cover. A beat-focused Hearken project lets people interested in those topics build a connection with the reporters covering the issues, shape the coverage in a meaningful way, and helps reporters generate a following among stakeholders.  

ABC's Curious Canberra uses Hearken for a general assignment series: soliciting and answering audience questions about Australia’s capital city. They publish weekly web stories and 5-10 minute podcast features. They also occasionally publish video stories as well. Often, the producers bring question-askers along for the reporting process, making them true characters in the story and creating a relatable hook for the rest of the audience. The benefit to the general assignment model is that all aspects of the Hearken process have a clear narrative throughline, and all stories have a recognizable brand, signaling to the audience, “This came about thanks to audience input and you can get involved too.”

NPR’s Goats & Soda (a web vertical on global health and culture) does not have a dedicated Hearken series. Instead they’ve opted to use Hearken in a more ad hoc manner. Every few weeks, they publish a web post using Hearken to solicit questions on one of the vertical’s common topics (e.g. global disease, girls in developing countries), then ask their audience to vote for the best questions, and then publish a final story on that subject, before moving onto the next topic. Although their Hearken strategy isn’t unified by a series name and it doesn’t have a centralized homepage, they’re careful to connect each part of the Hearken process to the next, even from topic to topic. They plan ahead so that when they publish their final story on one subject, they’re already soliciting questions for the next one, so they can put that new form embed at the foot of the published story.

WBEZ’s Curious City noticed that many of their listeners submitted questions about architecture and urban design. So they developed an ongoing partnership with the Chicago Architecture Foundation (CAF). They created a co-branded embed to solicit questions specifically about architecture. Curious City collaborates with a researcher from CAF to answer those questions, and features her in the final stories. Both organizations share the work of promotion and they each get access to the other’s audiences.

You can take this approach with an organization or foundation, that would slot in well with topics you know your audience is interested in, such as transportation, education, history, etc. 

During the 2016 election season, New Hampshire Public Radio broadcast live town halls with the candidates for local office. Ahead of each town hall, the station invited listeners to share the questions they had for the the candidates. NHPR’s journalists selected the best questions from each batch, and pose them to candidates during the live broadcast. Immediately following each event, the station compiled the candidates’ answers to audience questions into a separate post, complete with relevant audio clips from the broadcast. KCRW uses a similar process for live panel events.

NHPR also regularly solicits questions from their audience for their call-in show, The Exchange, on topics or for high-profile guests.

A number of partner newsrooms have used Hearken to fuel local, state, and federal election coverage. They've used questions to power town halls with candidates, voter guides, ongoing coverage of major ballot initiatives, and more.

Learn more about using Hearken for elections coverage.

Grist uses Hearken to power their long-running advice column, Ask Umbra, in which they give advise readers on living during climate change. 

LAist also collects questions for their advice column, LADYist, covering "sex ed for grown women."