There have always been people who felt like news was not made for them, Joy Mayer told me in a recent call. It’s true for communities of color, often ignored by local news until there’s a tragedy, and it’s true for people on both ends of the political spectrum. Mayer is the director of Trusting News, a project from the American Press Institute and Reynolds Journalism Institute that has spent the last five years studying trust and training journalists on concrete ways to build it.
Last month, Trusting News introduced a new project with the goal of recognizing that there’s more than one way to see the world. Here’s how Mayer describes A Road to Pluralism in an introduction on Medium:
“The initiative we’re launching is designed to help local journalists take stock of their role in a polarized society and how they can reach and be trusted by a more diverse audience with fact-based, responsible journalism.”
“This is a project about the kind of society we want to live in,” Mayer said.
I asked Mayer a few questions about the project and how local journalists can get involved.
Why start with local journalists?
“Local communities rely on each other and are connected to each other in different ways," Mayer said. “It’s harder to write each other off entirely.”
And there’s enough in local news that isn’t strictly politics — traffic, sports, homelessness, public health.
When people have something in common, “it’s just easier to have richer, more nuanced conversations around local issues.”
What role must we still play as filters?
“Pluralism is about the belief there is more than one correct or acceptable way of looking at things — and that people with different views can co-exist and even collaborate respectfully and productively,” Mayer wrote for Trusting News.
It’s not about the idea that all views deserve to be heard. But journalists do need to know where their blind spots are when the perspectives in their communities are different from their own. And they can learn to better reflect different points of view without patronizing or pandering to them.
How can people get involved?
“What we are looking to do is find newsrooms that are motivated to find solutions and group them with other newsrooms motivated on the same topics.”
Those topics might include bias in the newsroom, how journalists contribute to polarization and how to tell more complex stories.
People who become part of the project will join Trusting News’ Slack workspace and work together with coaches. One experiment might be for a group of newsrooms to stop putting national news on their Facebook pages and conduct surveys before and after to understand what impression people have of them as a brand.
Mayer also plans to collect stories and experiences about what’s working from the Pluralism Network cohorts, including data and evidence Trusting News plans to share with the industry.
In interviewing conservatives for another project, the No. 1 thing Mayer heard was that journalists paint with broad strokes.
“Other groups can say the same thing — people of color, millennials,” she said. “Our understanding isn’t sophisticated, we’re just in a hurry and rely on lazy narratives.”
The project’s series of online events is also open to anyone who wants to follow along. Here’s the form to apply to join the Pluralism Network.
Check out the project’s next three events: Perceptions of stories’ fairness on Sept. 9; bias in the newsroom on Sept. 16; and outreach and listening on Sept. 23. You can also watch the replay of the project’s first conversation on the challenges of national stories in local news.
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