Topics covered
Why a reporter may not be on board
Techniques to try on reluctant reporters
The public-powered journalism model represents a significant shift in how newsrooms develop, select and report stories. Sometimes you’ll encounter members of your team who just aren’t on board.
Why a reporter may not be on board
First, try to find out what the stumbling blocks are for this reporter. There are a number of reasons a reporter may not be supportive of public-powered journalism. Some common reasons we've heard:
They don’t understand the process. If it’s a lot of reporters in this spot, contact your engagement consultant to set up a reporter training.
They feel like they’re too busy with their normal duties to take on anything else. Some may feel like this is another project they've been forced to.
They may not feel like the audience has anything valuable to add. Perhaps their only audience interaction may have been a critical or hateful comment or email.
Maybe they just need to complain a little bit, in which case you can try giving them a little time to get that out of their system in hopes of moving on.
The most important thing to do is to model the Hearken philosophy of listening first and address those concerns. We have some helpful resources to address some of those concerns.
But if your go-to strategies just aren’t cutting it, what do you do?
Techniques to try when working with reluctant reporters
Ownership. Give the reporter a chance to be involved. Let them pick three questions they like to go up in a voting round, and then they report out the winner. Or just let them cherry-pick a question from the overall list to report straight away.
Indirect peer pressure. Make the Hearken project team as big as possible, and made up of great people. Then, spread around the workload. If reluctant reporters see everyone else getting with the program, they are more likely to participate. You can also bring a list of great questions to your news meeting to share. When a reluctant reporter hears their colleagues affirming the great audience questions that have come in, that can slowly chip away the ice.
Do what needs doing. Rainbows do not appear for every assignment a reporter lands. Sometimes, there are boring press conferences or school board annual meetings or total busts of interviews. The public-powered process aims at removing bad ideas, by ensuring stories are filling an information gap and (if voting is enabled) ensuring there’s a ready audience. But if a reporter gets handed a question she’s just not that into, sometimes it’s just time to do it and move on.
Take one for the team. Find time to report something out yourself. Make it a good one, do the kind of job you’re wanting everyone else to do, and show them how it works (and that it’s not as bad as they’re worried it will be).
If all else fails
Bribery. Everyone’s motivated by something. Figure out what drives that reporter, and offer it as a reward for a job well done on a public-powered story. If workload is an issue, maybe you offer to take something off the reluctant reporter's plate so he or she can follow through on an audience question. Maybe it’s prime placement for the work, a favorite pastry, a gift card to their favorite coffee shop or time to work on their own pet project.