Collaboration
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This article is part of the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications’ “Captivate” project, a series of commentaries from thought leaders across the media spectrum on the business and craft of audience engagement.

Kristie Smith teaches visually impaired students at a large North Texas school district. She also loves a good margarita and live music.

At a new bar and restaurant featuring one of her favorite bands, she asked if they happened to have Braille menus. Her blind friend, you see, wouldn’t be able to hear menu descriptions read to her over the loud music.

The restaurant did not have a Braille menu, but that soon would change. Kristie put the manager in touch with someone who could translate a menu into Braille, and now they are talking about doing a special night of entertainment on a regular basis for the visually impaired.

So how does The Dallas Morning News tell that story in this age of digital engagement? We don’t. Kristie does.

Reader-generated content cannot replace professional journalism. It may just require a different kind of journalist.Michael Landauer
We got to know Kristie when she was a Teacher Voices volunteer columnist for our opinions page. Later, we launched a Special Needs Insiders blog, and she was one of our top recruits.

This story first appeared on that blog, but now Kristie is working on turning it into a larger opinion column that will aim to persuade other restaurants and bars to offer Braille menus, even though it is not required by law.

What’s our role in all this? We haven’t just turned over a quiet new corner of our website to be used by Kristie. We have trained her in writing personal, persuasive essays. We have brainstormed ideas with her. We have edited her work and offered suggestions for “next time.” And we have pointed her to new sources of information that would give her story more context and serve readers more information.
 
When I think about the future of engagement for large news organizations, this is what comes to mind. I have long advocated the democratization of storytelling. Whether we are using thousands of people on our reader-feedback email list to answer a question on a hot topic, or scouring our contact list of former VIP-level contributors to find just the right source for a news story, it all starts with relationship building. 

That is the secret sauce. It is also the missing ingredient in a buffet of failed “reader-generated content” efforts by news organizations around the world – including us.

Readers demand more than an online version of a great journalism storyMichael Landauer
On one hand, we have an opportunity to leverage relationships with talented non-professional writers to supplement our scale in our marketplace. But on the other hand, we can grow that effort so much that we lose the personal connection to the individual writers themselves.

Reader-generated content cannot replace professional journalism. It may just require a different kind of journalist. I like to refer to it as the “player-coach” model.

One of our coordinators for our Insiders blogs writes and edits and creates compelling packages that are tailor made for social sharing. She’s an editing/writing/marketing hybrid, and we need to clone her.

After all, one smart engagement strategy is not enough to transform the digital news business. Expectations have changed, and two distinct challenges demand our attention.

First is the changing nature of engagement expectations. Readers demand more than an online version of a great journalism story. It is not nearly enough to suggest that digital journalism will be OK because there will always be a thirst for good journalism.

Our audience does still enjoy and even devour important and compelling stories, but they want to be heard, too. Not just by the commenters who populate the cesspool of rhetoric at the bottom of a page, but by the editors and writers who crafted the story, exposed the injustice, dug through the muck and reported something new. 

You get the comments you deserve, I say. If you engage, the comments will improveMichael Landauer
We all know by now that a story only begins when it is posted. But what are we doing about it? Hoping it will have a life of its own? Merely letting readers, armchair pundits and commenters descend on it like a pack of hungry dogs? Or are we acting as tour guides for interested tourists, walking them through the darker corners of the story and shedding more light as we go?

Oh, but who has time for those trolls? Have you read the comments? You get the comments you deserve, I say. If you engage, the comments will improve. You can insist on it.

We need to do more to build relationships with readers both before and after publication. To do that, we will need to make decisions with them at the center of the discussion. We will need to use data to learn more about what they want, need and expect. And we will need to develop new tools to elevate the good discussion and spotlight the interesting stories people have to share.

If we build relationships, we will build audiences.


mark landauer Michael Landauer is the Digital Communities Manager for The Dallas Morning News. He has coached more than 500 volunteer opinion writers and oversees reader engagement efforts at The News – including social media strategy, letters to the editor and online comments.

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