Learning to Listen, Building Communities

Our newsroom is guided by the quest to listen and to build a loyal community. Graphic by The Citizen Bulletin

BY DIVINE DUBE, Editorial Director | @Village_Scribe | This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. | FEB 5, 2021

Community listening isn't something that we are doing once off. It is embedded in the core of our work; it’s a foundation on which our newsroom is built to keep our communities at the centre of what we do.

BULAWAYO (The Citizen Bulletin) — How do we build a hyperlocal news organisation that listens; is deeply rooted in communities it serves and has a loyal audience that supports quality reporting in various ways—from news tips, and content co-creation to content distribution—not just money?

This question has lingered in our newsroom from day one since we launched five years ago. As part of our efforts to build an audience first newsroom, we have experimented with various open journalism practices—including citizen reporting—to make our storytelling more community-driven and more user-centred.

Our efforts, however, have not always yielded outcomes that we desire, a result of some of the legacy challenges stifling the growth of hyperlocal journalism in Zimbabwe. But, our experiences have provided us with valuable lessons and insights for renewing our commitment to build loyal audiences around our journalism through community listening.

We believe that we are at a turning point of our existence, where community listening has become more urgent than before, an imperative for our survival. For us, community listening is crucial for two intertwined reasons:

●    Firstly, we believe that to produce journalism that empowers our audiences to be agents of good governance and social progress; we need to understand the hyperlocal issues they care about most. We believe journalism powered by the public has more potential for impact than one that is solely driven by newsrooms and their reporters, without the input of communities. In living true to our motto, we want our reporting to be ‘more local, more inclusive and more interactive’.
 
●    Secondly, our news organisation's existence and future fundamentally depends on our ability to foster deep and genuine relationships with communities that we serve. As a nonprofit newsroom, our major funding comes from foundation grants. But, we believe that our core funding will come from individual donations and community support in the future. If we want our audiences to support our journalism, we need to demonstrate our value, keep our communities informed and actively involve them in our reporting processes. We know that building mutually beneficial community relationships and earning trust takes time. That’s why we are renewing our commitment to listen deeply to our communities and create avenues for mutual accountability and exchange. In the long run, we hope to build a broad base of constituents who can help support our work in a variety of ways—not just with money. That is an integral part of our sustainability.

In pursuit of the above, we're rebuilding our newsroom guided by the quest to listen, and to build a loyal community around our journalism. In the coming weeks and months, our team will launch a rigorous listening program; they will talk to our diverse stakeholders, asking about important issues including ideas for what would be most helpful to get our content out more reliably to them—whether that's online, in-person or elsewhere, and what major thematic issues our reporters must focus on in their coverage.

We will use insights from our community listening efforts to inform our work and rejuvenate our newsroom so that it is representative of, and responsive to the growing needs of our communities.

ALSO READ: Local Journalism Needs Community Support to Flourish

In our quest to be more inclusive in our reporting, and as we recast journalism as a conversation rather than just a transaction, we're launching a live journalism initiative dubbed Open Newsroom. We plan to use this platform to amplify local voices on important issues that we cover. Our Open Newsroom initiative will take many forms: listening events, pop-up interviews, telephone calls, WhatsApp chats and Facebook Live, amongst others.

We are hosting our first Open Newsroom on Feb 5. You can seek out more details here, and be part of the session.

Lastly; for us, community listening isn't a one-time effort. It will be part of our editorial culture going forward. We’ll keep our ears open to ideas, feedback, and input on how our newsroom can keep our communities at the centre of what we do. Please hold us accountable for our journalism; call us out when we misstep, and share our work when it resonates with your aspirations.

Our Engagement Team is waiting to hear from you. Consider sending them a chat on our WhatsApp number +263 7 18636460, and tell them what you think about our work, and how you'd love to be involved.

Disclosure: Our community building initiative is supported by a grant from the Media Development Investment Fund via the Membership Puzzle Project. You can read more about them here.