One of the exciting things about my new job is that we’re going to try some things that haven’t been done before. We’re going to try some things that haven’t been done before on the scale we’re doing them. We’re going to try different ways of doing things journalists have been doing for years.
So when I hire people to work on my community engagement team, I am as interested in the possibilities they see as the experience they bring. To the extent that I care about experience, I want to know how a job candidate has blazed new trails more than hearing about traditional newsroom experience.
I’m not looking for someone who can cover sports, though Editor Erik Wemple will be hiring a few people to do that. I am looking for someone who can recruit fans to liveblog high school games.
I am not looking for someone who can cover entertainment (though again, Erik will be hiring people to do that). I’ll be looking for someone who can promote use of a Twitter hashtag by people attending a concert and pull together a crowd review from tweets.
I have some ideas and I will be looking for people who can help me execute those. But mostly I’m looking for people who have better ideas than I do about how to engage our community.
Some organizations trying to engage communities using digital tools have called hired “community managers” to work with bloggers and other community contributors. We were initially planning to have some community managers on my team. But when John Temple hired reporters who were also “hosts” for his Peer News operation in Honolulu, I liked that title better. The relationship we want with our community is not the manager relationship. You can manage your staff and your time, but the community doesn’t want or need a manager. We’re confident, though, that the community will be pleased to spend some time with a gracious host. As Bruno Boutot said in a post about my job listings (yeah, he scooped me on my own ads):
“Host” sends the clear message that community is first about welcoming and hospitality.
In the coming weeks, we will be hiring the community hosts as well as a social media producer and a mobile producer. As I screen and interview candidates, I will care, of course, about their experience and their demonstrated abilities. But we will be talking much more about the future than the past. I have given a general description of the jobs in the listings linked above. But a key factor as I consider candidates will be the job descriptions they give me. I want to know what the candidate will do to flesh out the outline I have provided. I want to hear their vision and their plan to execute it.
My success as Director of Community Engagement will depend in large part on the work of these people. We need to provide opportunities for people in the Washington area to tell their stories of the news, events and issues in the community. I need people who are thinking and experimenting in the use of social media, mobile platforms, blogs, live coverage and other tools and techniques of social engagement.
We have a great opportunity to find a new direction for local journalism. I need to find people who can see that opportunity and seize it.
Great stuff, Steve. You’re on the right track. Public Trust through Public Engagement, as we discussed at RJI in Columbia. Here’s another tool you might consider to help earn public trust and credibility: http://www.taoofjournalism.org. It’s still in beta phase, but ready to launch soon. See Craig Silverman’s excellent piece in CJR.org last week, in case you missed it:
http://www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/the_tao_of_journalism.php
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[…] Wanted: Vision for community engagement Pursuing the Complete Community Connection Steve is Albritton's new community engagement director. (tags: Media&Journalism community engagement local Albritton) […]
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I agree that that the community doesn’t want or need a manager. People want to come together though and they don’t always know how. A community host might not be a manager but they should be a leader or at least able to foster connections. Just like a host at a party organizes an event and introduces guests to each other to faciliate conversation, a community host should play a similar role.
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[…] Producer at Allbritton Communications – the parent company of Politico that is about to launch a new news organization, one that will serve the Washington, D.C. metro area and work to shape the “future of local […]
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[…] community engagement is also my job and my staff’s job (as I blogged earlier, we’ll have six people helping me with the specific challenges of community and […]
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Great strategy to let others already active, engaged and successful in particular areas of local outreach, marketing and community engagement to help build their own job descriptions – this is happening very frequently within large corporations (i.e. in the Enterprise 2.0/Government 2.0 space), as well now with “new media” enterprises…
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This is really good information, especially for someone like myself looking to advance my ideas and skills. I recently posted a piece on convergence on my blog. Check it out: https://brownvintage.wordpress.com/
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[…] I reached agreements with Jeff Sonderman and Lisa Rowan to take the first two positions on our community engagement team. As they were giving notice to current employers, I was notifying other candidates for the jobs. I […]
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[…] host, joining hosts Jeff Sonderman and Lisa Rowan and social media producer Mandy Jenkins on our community engagement team. We should be hiring another host and a mobile producer […]
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[…] hosts,” I changed the titles for the community managers we were planning and called them community hosts […]
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Can you give your opinions on how you might try to engage your team with under-represented communities.
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I think because they are under-represented (and too often overlooked by traditional media), these communities will respond eagerly to the opportunity to tell their stories through an effective community-engagement platform. Some under-represented communities are less able to engage in digital communication because of less broadband penetration or lower smart-phone penetration. But increasingly, all segments of the community have some level of digital communication. You will need a concerted effort to reach these communities, who may at first be suspicious of your interest. But once you reach them and show that you really want to give them an opportunity to tell their stories, I believe they will appreciate and value their connection with you.
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[…] year’s leaders dealt with my job change as well: Pursuing a new opportunity in Washington, Wanted: vision for community engagement and Our community engagement team is taking shape. Another post relating to the job change took a […]
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[…] description of the job and invite candidates to provide their details. I did this when I was hiring a community engagement team for TBD. The vision that a candidate provided (or failed to provide) told me a lot about his or her […]
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[…] the interview in writing. When I was hiring community engagement staff for TBD and when we were hiring curators for Digital First Media, I asked candidates to tell me in […]
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