Complete Story
03/14/2017
Trust us, your news consumers really want to talk to you about trust
From The Reynolds Journalism Institute
Evaluation: Single Copy Survival Strategies webinar
It turns out, plenty of news consumers are eager to talk to journalists about trust.
The 30 official newsroom partners in the Trusting News interview project have begun reaching out to their audiences, and the results have exceeded my expectations.
Some newsrooms are seeing more than 1,000 responses to their introductory questionnaires. (Here’s what the questions look like.) How cool is that? A newsroom invites their audience to talk to them about news credibility, and real people offer their full name, email address and political leanings, along with what news sources they trust and why.
The really exciting part: In some newsrooms, whose responses we’ve looked at so far, more than half the participants have indicated a willingness to be interviewed in person by a journalist about trust. That’s hundreds of news consumers across the country raising their hand to talk to us about perhaps the most important issue facing our industry.
As we’re grappling with factors of trust and credibility, lots of folks in our communities are hand-wringing right alongside us. I find that reassuring. Whether they want to commend us, commiserate with us or yell at us, their interest is a good sign.
And I want us to talk to as many of them as we can. I want us to learn from them and invite them to help us serve them better.
