How Might We Serve Unreached Audiences With News They Can Use?
A Recap Of Our Workshop At The Society For News Design (SND) 2018 Conference
To gain trust with an audience, we must first reach them. Some folks only encounter news by chance or have little to no access to sources of quality journalism. How might we use design to engage people who don’t really pay attention to the news or remain underserved in their communities?
This is the question we asked a group of news practitioners who attended a half-day workshop at the Society for News Design’s conference in New York City on March 22, 2018. The attendees who participated in the workshop were news designers, product managers, journalists and even some currently employed outside of journalism from various locations and organizations in both the U.S. and abroad.
We started the day with a presentation about how NPR follows a mission-driven approach to product design; we first consider which outcomes support NPR’s mission of creating a more informed public — and the missions of stations throughout the country — before we prioritize products or features.
We then considered who is underserved and why. For the purposes of this exercise, we asked participants to respond to three specific reasons why quality journalism may not reach the public:
Systemic
- When your age, race, income, years and type of education, disability, location, or access to the internet predict the likelihood you’ll find news.
- When your trust is affected by whether or not you recognize voices, faces, bodies or experiences like yours among the reporters and the subjects of their reporting.
Habitual
- When your daily routine, job schedule, ability to focus, social circles, commuting methods, or family needs affect the amount, timing and likelihood you’ll get news.
Situational
- When temporary events like natural disasters, emergencies, power outages, medical situations or travel change your usual likelihood to get news.
- During some of these situations, more news could prove important or even life-saving to you or your family; during other periods of time, you may choose to intentionally avoid the news.
We also presented studies from Pew Research Center on:
- How 11% of Americans never go online.
- How internet search queries may provide early hints about what news people need.
- How mobile news consumption is growing among older adults.
- The general state of news media consumption.
Next, Clarisa Diaz and Rhyne Piggott from WNYC’s Data and Interactive Journalism team presented case studies of experiments where they’ve engaged the public via direct and inventive methods. One of the key goals for each of their projects is finding new ways to get the visual journalism they do off the screen (and the air) and into the streets — ideally where the story is set. In the Midland Beach neighborhood of Staten Island, WNYC and IDEO created a public art project and community workshop to strengthen preparedness and response to future natural disasters like Hurricane Sandy. Another experiment empowered individuals to examine changes in how snowflakes form. This project encouraged each audience member to consider the story of climate change as a participating investigator.
Katie Briggs, Product Designer for NPR, led the main workshop session. She believes good solutions can start as rough sketches. It’s important to first understand the problem we are trying to address, then brainstorm assumptions about how to solve it.
Participants formed small teams, and each team generated their own problem statement based from a broad definition of under-reached or underserved audiences. They used sticky notes to document and sort assumptions about the problem from each team member. They later spent about 15 minutes sketching rough ideas about how to solve their chosen problem and presented their results to the entire group.
Here are the results from each team:
Team #1: How do you reach folks who live where data or broadcast signals are spotty or blocked?
We know that potential news consumers can be wary of media, so utilizing points of trust (the gas station attendant you talk to every morning) to distribute the news is a great way to share information.
Team #2: How do you make news relevant to those who feel overlooked?
For folks who feel powerless or are suffering from news fatigue, serve a combination of stories curated for an individual user and opportunities to take action. Also, don’t waste readers’ time and energy — let them know how likely a story is to affect them (e.g., 60%) so they don’t fall down a rabbit hole of anxiety-inducing pieces that won’t greatly impact their lives.
Team #3: How do you encourage people to care about news early in their lives?
How can we prevent future audiences from being underserved by news organizations? Teach kids the value of news by having them capture news and report it to others. Use the act of journalism to help them develop an appreciation for news, particularly hyper-local news, early in life. In the future, those kids will be savvier news consumers (and a few of them will go on to build newsrooms motivated by audience-first thinking and inclusivity).
We were astonished by the creativity and empathy generated by the teams who participated in our workshop. These creative ideas inspired and energized us to continue moving forward with our mission to create a more informed public. Openly discussing the definition of underserved audiences compelled us to think about all of the folks we aren’t reaching, and the circumstances that led to them being left out.
This is just the start of the conversation. What other scenarios might cause people to “check out” of news consumption, either voluntarily or involuntarily? How else might we reach the public in new and innovative ways? We invite your thoughts, comments, and ideas as we keep the conversation moving forward.
Special thanks to Daniel Newman (NPR Design’s Deputy Creative Director), Liz Danzico (NPR Creative Director) and Tyson Evans (NY Times Senior Editor for Strategy & Product and President of SND) for envisioning and championing this workshop.
