I spent last year at RJI studying audience engagement — reading, talking, interviewing, writing, more reading — and ended that year motivated to put what I'd learned into practice.
Luckily, the job I came back to was in a newsroom built on experimentation, with colleagues willing to go along on the engagement ride.
In August, we kicked off the Missourian's community outreach team, made up of students in a class I teach called Participatory Journalism. (The class has existed for years and was developed by Clyde Bentley, also a Reynolds fellow.) This year, the focus of the class broadened to include more ways the relationship between journalists and their communities are changing.
