“Coming soon: a newsroom that empowers its audience.”

When I came across this headline on LinkedIn, I was intrigued. That’s what we’re all trying to do, right? What is this concept, and how is it different?

I reached out to Laura Wenus, a co-founder of News Relay Network, which plans to launch a pilot newsroom in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighbourhood here in the U.S. in October.

News Relay Network was formed in the spring by Daphne Magnawa, whose background is in nonprofit journalism development; Noah Arroyo, a longtime local investigative and accountability journalist; and Wenus, a local multimedia reporter with a history of developing civic engagement podcasts.

“All of us had experience working on community-led solutions journalism initiatives,” Wenus said. “We wanted to take those approaches further. What if we simply asked what an audience wanted and gave it to them?”

Audience-first listening sessions

To prepare for launch, the team has interviewed dozens of locals about their news and information needs, attended community group meetings and events, and next plans to convene larger listening sessions for people who live and work in the neighbourhood.

“We envision this organisation as the originator or connecting hub of many different newsrooms, each serving the interests of a specific, small community that could be defined by geography or identity,” Wenus said. “What’s most important is the way the newsrooms will serve their audiences: by giving them a great degree of direct control over what the newsrooms report and publish, in perpetuity.”

A lot of news organisations say they are audience-first or audience-centric. I asked: How is this different?

“It’s true that we’re not alone in wanting to involve our audience in dialogues about what is considered ‘newsworthy,’” she said. “But for us, that’s not just an aspect of a larger editorial strategy — it is our entire organising principle.

“What topics should we focus on? Our audience will let us know. What specific stories need our attention, including through recurring coverage? For that matter, what isn’t important? They will tell us. What format should we deliver the news in? We’re asking our audience that now.

“This approach is unconventional for a newsroom as it gives up substantial power and editorial control, though we’ll maintain standards of accuracy and fairness for all content.”

Conventional journalism and content creators

News Relay Network points out that conventional journalism doesn’t usually work with sources and audience members. So I asked: Where do you think conventional journalism went wrong in its relationship with its audience or what does it need to learn?

“Many people, especially from marginalised groups, feel news isn’t ‘for’ them,” Wenus said. “One reason for that might be that conventional media are not directly accountable to their audiences.”

We also touched on the rise of the content creator — a subject I’ve focused on recently — and how News Relay Network is or isn’t similar. Wenus said she actually sees more similarities between content creators and traditional media. 

“Content creators are limited in how much direction they can take from followers. That’s probably mostly because the social platforms where they operate impose incentives for how to grow audiences and generate revenue, and users might request content that doesn’t align with those incentives,” she said. “For example, educational content and especially material that fosters civic or political participation is brutally hard to monetise.”

“And here’s a big factor that differentiates us from most online influencers: We can literally walk outside and find our current and potential audience members, which means that we don’t have to rely on any algorithm to reach them. It’s easy for us to meet people face-to-face in the Tenderloin. By comparison, content creators and many traditional newsrooms are at a remove from their audiences (in some cases, for their own safety).”

Finally, I asked: Will the content itself be different or look like more traditional, text-based journalism?

“It certainly won’t look like a traditional newspaper at first — the printing costs would be prohibitive. That said, many people we’ve spoken with have expressed a strong desire for some kind of print product,” Wenus said.

“We’re excited about the possibility of distributing our content in a zine, which is a more flexible storytelling medium and more affordable to produce than a broadsheet or tabloid. But we’re also exploring text message updates, e-mail newsletters, and social media as distribution platforms. The content may look like traditional reporting at first, or it could feature photography, stories, or art produced by audience members. This will depend on our capacity to edit and compensate community contributors relative to our capacity to report stories ourselves.

“Over time, the content may shift to respond to our audience’s needs, as we learn them better. For example, our audience might tell us that they want us to stick with a story even though things aren’t changing — this is often the case, I’ve found, with deep-seated social problems. We’d do stories even without news pegs in that case and might also publish things like first-person vignettes, humour, or poetry.”

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