Blog about constructive and engaging journalism

By: Gerd Maria May, Room of Solutions

To a start, we asked the people in the local community, what they thought about Fyens Stiftstidende.

We focused on four key elements: Do you think Fyens Stiftstidende is relevant? Do you think Fyens Stiftstidende is trustworthy? Do you think Fyens Stiftstidende is reachable? Do you think Fyens Stiftstidende is helping your community evolve?

We had a researcher investigate the answers and invite to focus group meetings among the readers. Furthermore, we asked some of the enthusiasts in the community to tell us what they want from their local media.

Based on all that information we decided that the goal for our journalism should be to “help the people in this community get the best possible life in their community.”

To do that we focused on especially two things, we saw in the answers: They wanted constructive journalism, and they wanted to be involved in the process. Together with the editor in chief, Poul Kjærgaard and the editor i Middelfart I made the strategy for the journalism based on the four journalistic values, STEP.

Step is a way of working with journalism, where you focus on:

S- Solutions — How can the journalism also focus on the possible solutions on the problems in the community.

T- Trust — How can the journalism be trusted and how can the media help create trust in the community.

E- Engagement — How can the journalists engage the audience in the journalism. Before the story is picked, during the research and after the story is published.

P- Perspective — How can the journalists give a broader perspective on the story and on the society as a whole.

And then the real work started. Together with the five journalists in this local newsroom, we began to develop new journalistic formats. We, of course, still wanted to inform our community. But that was no longer enough.

We also wanted to help the community succeed in general. We wanted to involve and engage our audience at a new level. We wanted the audience to feel inspired when they have read/seen or listened to our stories.

They should have not only the black and the white side of a case but also all the greys — all the nuances and the broader perspectives.

And then we wanted to build trust. Trust in our journalism, but also general trust in their community.

You can read more about the journalistic values STEP here: https://roomofsolutions.com/om-fint.html

One of the first things we did was to focus on how to be relevant for the young people in the community. To do that we connected with the local high school and developed a seven weeks curriculum for the students. 106 students took the course, and during that time, they learned about constructive journalism, and they decided what topics they wanted to work with — and we decided, that the local newsroom would work with the topics, the young people had chosen. The local journalists came to the school and taught journalism, gave feedback on the students’ articles and helped them improve. Some of the articles were published in the paper, and the course ended with a big debate-meeting in a format we call Room of Solutions. Here the students met with the mayor, the director of a local business, experts and other people who had the knowledge and power to help solve the problems the students had worked with. That was, of course, also published in the paper. You can read more about that project here: https://www.lenfestinstitute.org/solution-set/how-a-local-danish-publisher-is-empowering-high-school-journalists/

Then we started to change the way the journalists are working. We wanted the story to begin in the community instead of in the newsroom. So, we moved out. We left the newsroom and operated from different local facilities. We named the format 10:10 — because the journalists worked from a new destination every day for ten days in a row. That led to a lot of new sources, new stories, and the journalists created a lot of new relations in their community.

The journalists worked in a lot of different locations. This is from the local grocery store, where the newsroom sat their workstations up for a day.

Another way to start the story in the community was to invite the readers into the editors-meetings, where the decisions are being made on which stories to work with. The journalists and the editor made them digitally using Facebook live, often special guests were invited to be part of the meeting — and the readers could ask questions.

The editor and the head of development in the community talks to the readers about how to solve a local issue. We often used faceboom live as a platform to reach the most people.

You can see an example here: https://www.facebook.com/VoresMiddelfart/videos/2489904984390862

We also invited people to come and talk to us about what topics they wanted us to focus out journalism on. At some of the meetings, we also invited an expert to let everybody know about the facts before we decided how to work with the topic.

At one of the readers editorial meetings, we invited the financial director from the municipality. She explained how the tax money is spent, and we discussed how to cover the budget negotiations with the readers.

You can see an example of that here: https://fyens.dk/artikel/hvad-synes-i-l%C3%A6sere-kl%C3%A6dt-p%C3%A5-til-budgetsnak-med-b%C3%A5thorn-og-basisviden

After that, the journalists went back and started to do the research and the journalism on the stories the readers had asked for.

We developed a format for those kind of stories, that we named: “A reader gets an answer: …”

You can see an example of that here: https://fyens.dk/artikel/en-l%C3%A6ser-f%C3%A5r-svar-ny-bro-kr%C3%A6ver-flere-vejbaner-hvor-skal-de-v%C3%A6re-borgmester

After a year with a lot of different new formats, we asked the readers once again what they felt about their local media. Luckily, the readers had discovered that their journalists were working in a new way and doing a new kind of journalism.

Overall, the readers’ satisfaction went up by 23%. And the answers to the other questions we had asked in the beginning all went up as well. Relevance was up by 16%, value for money by 13% and credibility by 4%.

The subscriptions to the digital newspaper went the same way. It increased as well — a key element in the strategy for the media house — in a market, where the competitors were shrinking.

When we asked the journalists at the news desk how they felt about working in this way and having to learn a lot of new skills, they all preferred this to the old ways.

Today this way of working is being integrated in the rest of the media house Fyens Stiftstidende, and the journalists are learning a lot of new skills and the people on Funen, Denmark is getting a lot of engaging and constructive journalism to help them live better lives. You can watch a video describing the project here:

See how Room of Solutions helped the regional Danish newspaper Fyens Stiftstidende change their journalistic approach and get higher readers satisfaction and better subscription-numbers.