Tell me about the Center for Health Journalism’s engagement mentoring and grants.
The Center for Health Journalism has offered community engagement mentoring and grants since 2012. This unique program provides one-on-one mentoring by our community engagement editor over five months along with engagement grants. Only journalists selected for one of our fellowships or impact funds are eligible to participate.
Engagement mentoring is a unique opportunity to reframe your reporting process. Journalists who receive this immersive one-on-one guidance tell us their reporting process has undergone profound change, that engagement allowed them to build original data sets on community challenges where none existed before, and that it can become one of the most rewarding aspects of their work.
Our California engagement mentoring and grants initiative is supported by the Blue Shield of California Foundation and The California Endowment. National engagement mentoring and grants are currently supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
What is engagement?
Engagement is journalism. It is journalism that explicitly provides community members with avenues to participate in, contribute to or shape the reporting prior to publication. Engagement can also involve decision-makers in new and creative ways.
This kind of storytelling can take many shapes, and can help journalists find sources, discover new angles, learn about a topic, build an audience, tell richer stories and — most importantly — spark impact and connection. Here are some examples: soliciting community questions or concerns to shape a story, inviting residents to participate in testing for pollution in their homes and schools, creating a platform for people to tell their own stories, or bringing together diverse constituencies to launch conversations about solutions.
Noting that teenagers’ voices are often sidelined in conversations about sex ed, Fresno Bee reporter Mackenzie Mays used several engaged journalism techniques to anchor her reporting in their experiences. A survey of teens distributed by student government leaders, listening booths at youth organizations, and focus groups with students connected Mays with her community in news ways. Read her essay on how engaged journalism transformed her relationship to reporting.
Arizona Republic reporter Bob Ortega combined deep investigative reporting on the disproportionate rates among Latino children of injury and death from traffic accidents with a community engagement campaign that raised awareness of the importance of using car seats. Ortega built a coalition of community groups to disseminate the findings from his reporting and ran a public education campaign, which included the distribution and installation of free car seats.
How do I apply?
Journalists accepted into the Center’s fellowships or impact funds are eligible to apply to our engagement mentoring and grants through a secondary application that is shared upon acceptance into the respective fellowship or grant fund program. The engagement program is meant to support and strengthen the reporting project you are undertaking with the Center for Health Journalism.
What makes a good application?
We encourage you to:
Keep it simple. You have limited time to complete this project.
Have a good idea of how the impacted community of story will actively shape the journalism.
Have a sense of how you will continue engaging with participants after the reporting is done.
What role does the Center for Health Journalism engagement editor play in my project?
The Center for Health Journalism pairs each engagement grantee with our engagement editor, Teena Apeles, who will provide one-on-one engagement mentoring and hands-on support to help achieve your and your outlet’s engagement goals. This often involves brainstorming sessions, meeting with the reporter in person, and developing strategies to reach the reporter’s target community. As the engagement editor, she can help with story development, in-person and virtual event planning, survey development and much more. She can also provide on-the-ground support for the community of focus.
What kinds of engagement activities and expenditures fit under our rubric?
The Center for Health Journalism supports innovative ways to meaningfully connect with the community you are covering in order to strengthen your reporting and impact. Below are some examples of the types of engagement activities that fit under our rubric.
- Crowdsourcing stories and voices via community call-outs, newsletters, social media, door-to-door mailers.
- Hosting online or in-person events, such as listening sessions and panel discussions. Expenses may include venue rental, food, interpreters, translation, travel reimbursements.
- Learning how people get/share info and sharing back what you learn.
- Developing, printing and distributing questionnaires to affected populations.
- Forming an advisory group made up of community members.
- Collaborating with other newsrooms or community-based organizations.
Here’s what engagement grantees said about their experience.
“I wanted the stories I did to actively involve the community they were about, as well as serve as a catalyst for further change in a community where discussions of mental health issues are often considered taboo.” —Melissa Noel, a freelancer for NBC BLK, developed an event series to bring together people who care about the wellbeing of Caribbean “barrel children.” Read more.
“Reporting typically ends at publication. But when you engage the community, as this fellowship encouraged me to do, that’s not so much the case.” —Molly Peterson worked with California residents to track the urban heat burden in homes and workplaces, first at KCRW and then at KQED. Read more.
“Community engagement and journalism go hand in hand. Why sink tons of time and effort into a topic only to let it fade away after the stories have been published?” —Las Vegas Sun journalist Jackie Valley convened a community conversation on about children and mental health in Nevada. Read more.
“Probably the best thing we did with this project was to build in time and space to listen.” —KBBF’s Edgar Avila and KRCB’s Steve Mencher used stakeholder meetings, dozens of surveys and about 80 street interviews to ground their reporting in community priorities. Read more.
Check out more essays about engagement here.
Here are more resources to explore.
"Public-powered journalism in practice" Bridget Thoreson
"Don’t be an Askhole: Toward an ethical framework for engagement" Jennifer Brandel
Listening Post Collective’s Playbook
"Making the case for engagement" Jackie Hai
"The best ways to build audience and relevance by listening to and engaging your community" Mónica Guzmán
The Engagement Manifesto: Part I: The audience's perspective
The Engagement Manifesto: Part II: Management's perspective
The Engagement Manifesto, Part III: The newsroom's perspective
"The Continuum of Engagement" Andrew DeVigal