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Hearken Partner Newsrooms: Editorial How-To's
COVID-19 Engagement Efforts
COVID-19 Engagement Efforts

A collection of exercises and examples from March, April and May 2020

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Written by Support
Updated over a week ago

This page contains tips, exercises and examples shared in the Engagement Energy Boost newsletter and/or during a COVID-19 response webinar. 

Sections:

  • Collecting questions about coronavirus

  • New phases, new questions

  • Organizing questions using lists 

  • Strengthen your form embed design

  • Refining the types of questions you get

  • Rounding up answers

  • Outreach during shelter-at-home

  • When and why to reach out to question-askers

  • Examples of organizations asking for financial support

  • Examples galore

Collecting questions about coronavirus

When people are scared or confused, they have a lot of questions. Your organization is in a position where you can help calm nerves by finding answers, or in some cases, explaining why answers are unclear or unavailable. 

As the virus spreads, and it affects people's day-to-day life more, the questions will multiply. Your audience might have questions about how schools, hospitals, churches, or other local places are preparing or dealing with the virus. Your audience might have questions about business, or travel, or keeping healthy. Your audience might have questions about the science behind the virus or creating a vaccine. There are so many angles to this story - by focusing on answering your audience's questions, you'll know you are putting you reporting resources on valuable stories.

New phases, new questions

Your community may be moving to a new, still-murky phase of pandemic response. Now's the moment to shift your prompt, if you haven't already. A few ideas:

  • Focus on changing rules: “What questions do you have about how restrictions are loosening?”

  • Focus on a certain population: “What questions do you have about how the coronavirus pandemic is affecting students and schools in Wisconsin?”

  • Focus on a process: “What questions do you have about applying for unemployment in Tennessee?”

  • Focus on a resource: “What questions do you have about food banks or food pantries?”

  • Focus on a community pillar: “What do you wonder about how the Cardinals or other local sports organizations are dealing with the pandemic?”

Organizing questions using lists 

When you're receiving more questions than you can address individually, it can be helpful to organize them so you can find just the kinds of questions you're looking for at a given moment. You can create new Lists to group questions together. For example: 

There is one list that is the one automatically created when you make a new form embed, so all questions that come in through that embed are automatically are sent to that list. But then you can go through that list, and mark questions for additional lists (such as here: Chicago-specific or statewide). Questions can live on multiple lists.  

How to create a new list: On your Lists page, click "+ New List"

Some ideas for list names:

  • "Questions for the liveblog to address"

  • "Schools-related"

  • "Explainer questions"

  • "Already answered"

  • "Assign to [reporter name]"

  • "[Editor]'s favorites"

  • "To discuss"  

(Sidenote: If you don't already have questions flowing into Slack so your (hopefully now remote) team can discuss them asynchronously, here is our step-by-step guide to getting that set up. You can send questions from any list into any Slack channel.)
​

How to add a question to a list: 

From the Questions page (or the results page for any search of questions), check the box to the left of the question, and at the bottom, choose which list to add the question(s) to:

This allows you to add multiple questions to a list at once.

If it's helpful for keeping things organized, you can archive all non-COVID-related lists to remove them from the dropdown menu, and then in the future un-archive those lists.

Strengthen your COVID-19 embed

1) Invite people to opt-in to your special coronavirus newsletter, alerts or updates

If you've created a special newsletter for your coronavirus coverage, or re-focused an existing newsletter, make sure the people who are sending in coronavirus-related questions see the opportunity to receive that. Instead of just leaving the default text "Sign me up for your newsletter", try being more specific about the content and the frequency, such as "Send me the latest coronavirus news every morning" or "Sign me up to receive a weekly email with COVID-19 news." Three examples:

Next Avenue clarified the opt-in to read "I'd like to receive Next Avenue's email newsletters, so I see coverage of COVID-19":

Capital Public Radio offers "Sign me up for CapRadio's Daily Coronavirus Newsletter":

 The Texas Tribune is asking people to "Sign up for our daily coronavirus update":

2) Add fields for phone number and/or ZIP code

If you're inviting responses from people who may not have internet access at home, I'd recommend adding a field for phone number. You can make the field optional (by just naming it "Phone number (optional)"), or even label it "Phone number (if preferred over email)" so as not to discourage people who want to submit responses but feel uncomfortable giving out their phone number. You can also add an optional field for ZIP code, which can help your organization get a better sense of where responses are coming in from, and where you might need to focus outreach efforts more aggressively in order to hear their needs. Examples:

Wisconsin Public Radio asks for ZIP code to see where in the state questions are coming in from:

The City of Chicago asks for phone number, ZIP code and organization affiliation:

3) Adjust the tone of your thank you message

The cheery default message about "If we're able to investigate it further, we'll email you. Feel free to encourage your friends to ask questions, too!" may not match the tone you're using elsewhere in your coverage. You can adjust the message to sound more grateful or empathetic, as well as using this opportunity for expectation-setting. For example, you could add a sentence like "Our team is reading every response. Thank you." or "We're receiving so many questions about coronavirus right now, we don't expect to be able to email a response to each personal individually (although we wish we could!). To see the latest questions we've answered, go to [link]."  Examples:

KQED links to a continually updating article page: 

The City of Chicago acknowledges the "challenging time" and sets clear expectations for next steps:

Try making those three small changes today! 

Refining the types of questions you get

"Help, people keep sending us their personal health questions!"

We've heard from several newsrooms who are finding that audience members are using Hearken embeds to send questions related to their personal health.
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  • Adjust the wording of the prompt to specify the types of questions you're looking for, such as:"What questions do you have about how state and local government in Illinois is responding to the coronavirus outbreak?" "What do you want to know about the shelter in place order issued for Dallas County?" "What do you need to know about living in Hampton Roads during the COVID-19 outbreak?"

  • If you are open to having people send personal health-related questions, make it clear up front who you'll be asking to answer them: "What coronavirus-related questions do you have for Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan, UW public health school dean Hilary Godwin or epidemiologist Seth Cohen?"

  • State clearly near or within your embed (such as in the footer space) that people should not share personal health information except with their health care providers."Please do not send us questions related to your personal health." 

  • There will still be some people who don't get the hint. Two options for dealing with those responses: Delete them. Put those personal health questions on a list, and once a day (or every couple days) send an email to everyone new letting them know that you saw they asked a question related to their personal health, and that your organization isn't qualified to make recommendations or give advice related to health, so you'd encourage them to reach out to their doctor or local health agencies. If your community has a hotline that people can call with coronavirus health questions, include that phone number, as well. 

You've received a lot of questions. Your team has reported out answers to many of those questions. Now what? How can you make it easy for an audience member to find the answer they're looking for, and see what new questions you've answered? 

Other ideas to consider:

  • Could you make a zine or other quick-to-print-on-home-printers handout that people could share with family or neighbors as part of care packages? 

  • Can you continue to build on a thread on social media with answers or links to longer answers? For example, a Twitter thread, a Facebook comment thread, or a saved Instagram story. 

Outreach during shelter-at-home:

Someone in your organization may ask "Why should we spend time on outreach when our traffic numbers are breaking records?" 

Benefits now:

  • Surface new content ideas/sources

  • Provide critical information for entire community

  • Validate relevance, see impact of where you’re spending time and resources

Benefits later:

  • Deepen audience relationships

  • New opportunities for conversions

  • Build trust among community members

Identifying where to go to reach new people

Start by answering "Who are we currently reaching? How do we know we are reaching them?" and "Who are we not currently reaching? How do we know we are not reaching them?" 

Your goal is to meet people where they are. That requires a little more creativity than it used to. 

See if one or two of the ideas below might be doable for your organization in the coming weeks, that can be completed within the course of your normal day-to-day activities (Read: do not make extra trips out of the house to new places just to do outreach. Stay safe. Follow local orders.). Here's the list we brainstormed together:

Reaching people who are like your current audience

  • Asking audience to share / forward / invite friends and family

  • Clear CTA across all channels to central hub (landing page, etc.)

  • Niche media

  • Regional subreddits

Reaching people who are facing new challenges due to news

  • Signage / presence outside testing centers or food distribution centers

  • Exploring partnerships with service agencies, mutual aid networks

  • Asking essential services workers to distribute invitation (restaurants, grocery stores, home health nurses, repairmen) or share verbally with those they think could use the connection

Reaching people whose trust you haven't earned

  • Identifying their trusted networks 

  • Clear, transparent messaging about your coverage approach

  • Prioritizing their input when they choose to respond or participate

Reaching people who lack reliable internet access / tech skills

  • Direct mail (an example postcard we mocked up)

  • Voicemail

  • Text messaging

  • Information spaces (bulletin boards, billboards, sandwich boards)

  • Chalk on sidewalks, signs on lampposts (to reach dog-walkers)

  • Utilizing existing phone trees

  • Spray paint

  • Signs/window writing on reporter cars

  • Window writing on closed businesses

  • Signs in windows/lawn signs

Ideas are nice. Now here's how to make it happen:

Start by answering 5 questions and setting two goals:

Five questions:

  • Who is managing outreach?

  • Who is assisting with outreach?

  • How are you trying to reach people?

  • How are you tracking your efforts?

  • When are you attempting new forms of outreach?

Two goals:

  • Accountability goals - ensuring you do the work (Example: "I’ll spend Tuesdays from 8:30-9 a.m. sending partnership offers.")

  • Evaluation goals - understanding what’s working (Example: "At least five stories this month will feature voices we haven’t previously heard from during the pandemic.")

When and why to reach out to question-askers

"Do we need to email every single person who submits a question?? We're getting hundreds of questions and there's only two of us." 

No, you shouldn't feel obligated to respond to every person, especially if you set expectations well in your embed's "thank you message." But you should respond to some people. There's lots of room between "respond to everyone" and "respond to no one." Here are some steps you can take to find the right mid-point for your team. 

Identify when you could reach out to a question-asker:

  • When question is assigned

  • When reporting is wrapping up

  • When answer is published

  • When a similar question is answered

  • When answer is already available

  • All of the above

Decide who is responsible for sending that email / making that phone call:

  • Person reporting the answer

  • Person reviewing the responses

  • Person assigning the work

  • Person editing/producing the answer

Determine why spending the precious minutes to make that contact is valuable to the person responsible:

  • Earn trust of audience member

  • Build source relationship

  • Move people toward supporting the organization ($)

  • Fulfill organizational mission

  • Have a positive interaction / moment of happiness and appreciation

Examples of asking for financial support:

Several partners have used smart strategies recently to bring in revenue to support their COVID-19 reporting and engagement efforts:

Asking for audience support:

Examples galore:

Examples, March 2, 2020: 

Check out these two approaches newsrooms are taking to gather questions about coronavirus:

The Seattle Times has been inviting questions and experiences by placing an embed within related stories:

  • The Seattle Times began inviting questions in late January through an embed they placed on stories related to the coronavirus.

  • A month later, the newsroom has received more than 100 questions.

  • Above the embed collecting questions, there is now a link directing people to an FAQ page that rounds up the questions they've answered so far.

  • As the first U.S. death from coronavirus was announced in Washington State this weekend, 150 more questions poured in.

  • The newsroom created a second embed to also place within related stories, focused on collecting people's experiences, with this intro: "Are you changing your routine or going about your business as usual? Have you canceled or postponed any plans? What kinds of discussions are you having with family members and friends? Are you a healthcare worker who's on the front lines of the response? Whoever you are, we want to hear from you so our news coverage is as complete, accurate and useful as possible."

The Dallas Morning News has a special article page and social posts calling for questions:

  • The article page has a clear headline with a call to action (see image above) and repeats the prompt (with slightly varied wording) two more times - once in the article, and once within the prompt field of the embed. 

  • The brand account also shared the call for questions on Twitter and Facebook.

Other newsrooms collecting questions about coronavirus: Star Tribune, AL.com, KPCC/LAist and The Providence Journal. MPRNews included a link out to an embed from within related stories:

Examples, March 17:

Examples, March 20:

Inviting questions:

Answering questions:

Examples, April 1:

Partner spotlight, April 1:
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In mid-March, local TV news station KSAT in San Antonio began doing something really smart. The post from an anchor:

"Till the crisis is over, KSAT News is stepping in to try and separate the facts from the fiction surrounding the new coronavirus.
​
​Every weekday night during the 6 p.m. broadcast news and during the streaming KSAT News at Nine, we will have experts on to answer your questions and give the latest information about COVID-19.
​
​At around 6:30 every weeknight, our anchors will question experts live, and then, on the KSAT News at Nine, they’ll answer viewer questions submitted through the KSAT.com SAQ article. (You can also ask your question in the prompt below.)

Facts can fight fear, and in times like this KSAT wants to do more, because you should expect it."

You can see the videos from each night on the SAQ page. On the web, the team breaks out answers to certain questions as their own posts, as well as the nightly clips. And when the journalists post answers, they're honest and open about how things are going. Here's an example from this past Friday:

We have been getting so many of your questions lately and we are trying our best to answer them all. Here are the answers to five of the latest questions you have sent in.

The newsroom is exhibiting engagement best practices by:

Examples, April 23:

Hearing from the public about COVID-19's economic impact

  

 

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