🔶 News Alchemists #35: "Walking tours for community engagement"

Hello and welcome back to the News Alchemists newsletter!

And a first welcome to new subscribers from ProPublica, Daily Maverick, NOS, Le Figaro, La Nación, Foreign Affairs, LinkedIn, The New School, and all of you brave souls working for yourselves. You're among friends 🫂

It's a chaotic time of the year for me: just back from ten days working in Cape Town, about to take some time off between visiting family in Italy and lying flat on a beach in Croatia, and transitioning from old projects to new ones. (Do you want to be part of the "new ones"?)

September is also the time when I plan to properly go through the insights that some of you kindly shared through the reader survey – and improve this newsletter accordingly. What did you say? You have not filled in the survey yet? Really?? Not a problem, you're still on time:

To make space for all of the above (the new projects, the data analysis, and yes, mostly the beach) I'm taking some time off from writing the newsletter. I'll be back in your inbox towards the end of the month. Don't miss me too much, ok?

Enjoy the links and see you right here in a few weeks! 👋

1. Colombian media outlet Mutante creates a ‘cycle of conversations’ with readers and calls on them to act 👉 LINK

Last week I mentioned giving a presentation about audience-centric journalism (which I equated to change-centric journalism), and this is one of the examples of 'audience/change-centricity in practice' that I included in my slides.

🧩 Mutante (already featured in #12) is a Colombian media outlet that made it its mission to promote healthy public conversations about difficult topics, such as sexual violence, workplace abuse, and mental health. In order to do so, Mutante doesn't only report on those topics – it invites the public to participate in a conversation that develops in three stages: speaking, understanding and acting.

"Each of these levels is translated into a series of digital actions over several weeks that, together, make up a conversation cycle," explains 🧞Juan Camilo Maldonado Tovar, director and co-founder of Mutante. Here's an example of how a conversation cycle looks in practice:

Topic: sexual violence against women in Colombia.

Stage 1, Speaking: Mutante seeks to instigate people to interact and discuss the theme of the cycle, e.g. by asking the public on social media about their personal experiences.

Stage 2, Understanding: They invite specialists to explain the causes and consequences of the problem.

Stage 3, Acting: They develop communication pieces to encourage decision makers and citizens to act, in some way, to help solve the problem – e.g. a manual to help women file a criminal complaint + a deck of cards to support conversations on gender stereotypes.

Audience-centric = Change-centric 🎯

2. Walking tours for community engagement 👉 LINK

I don't even know how I came across this article but it was love at first sight 😍 Walking tours to gather your community IRL around shared topics of interest? Yes, please!

🧩 Future Tides is a niche publication that covers "how people work, play and live on the [U.S.] Pacific Northwest’s waterways", but the type of coverage is sort of irrelevant here because the concept is what matters, and it's highly transferable:

"Going for a walk with your most loyal supporters could go a really long way. It’s kind of fun when you say 'journalism' and 'tours', and people are like, “What?” I really think people are taking in information in more ways than ever, and there’s no reason that one of those formats cannot be an in-person walk and talk."

3. No ads. No investors. No compromise: How Mediapart makes independence pay 👉 LINK

That jigsaw puzzle emoji you see scattered across this newsletter is there to highlight organisations that show us that it's possible to build sustainable journalism that creates value for people. French media outlet 🧩 Mediapart has been doing just that for 17 years, and this excellent interview with CEO 🧞Cécile Sourd explains how. Some nuggets:

• Over 230,000 subscribers generate 99% of Mediapart's revenue;
• A non-profit ownership structure designed to guarantee long-term financial independence;
• Building connection and participation through online and IRL events, as well as offering to its readers a community platform to discuss the news, exchange ideas, and stimulate reflection;
• The belief that "high-quality journalism gives people power to act. We don’t want to tell them what to do. We just want to tell them what the facts are; how we understand them."

4. The European Correspondent’s quest to build a Europe-wide media outlet 👉 LINK

As someone who feels more European than Italian, I couldn't be happier to celebrate in this newsletter the success story of a pan-European organisation such as 🧩 The European Correspondent. Even better that TEC has interesting insights to share on audience needs – "a European audience is defined not by age or location, but by a shared interest in what is going on around you" – and the wisdom to focus on building a sustainable monetisation model above anything else.

5. It takes more than facts: Understanding the news avoidance gap 👉 LINK

Earlier this year, the Center for News, Technology & Innovation published this article on a recurring topic of this newsletter, framing it in the right way and illuminating why we should stop talking about 'news avoidance', implicitly putting the blame on the audience: "The content and its format no longer align with how consumers actually ingest facts and information today, and so fails to meet users’ needs."

The author also argues that news has two different roles – to document the facts, and to render this information pertinent – and that it's often failing at performing the latter in a satisfactory way. Something we're collectively exploring in depth in JR3 Debate. (Thanks for the link, Jeremy!)

6. Use your face, not your logo 👉 LINK

This is a neat summary by 🧞Lars K Jensen of some key things to understand in the wide conversation about news influencers / creator-led journalism, etc. – especially from the point of view of what type of connection news consumers are looking for. Have a read (and subscribe to 'Products in Publishing', Lars' monthly-ish newsletter on all things audience insights and user needs.)

7. Values, value and impact: “Good journalism, better societies” in practice 👉 LINK

A handbook for journalists and media developers, written by News Alchemists' friend 🧞David Lush on behalf of IMS, that provides practical guidance on how to design and implement bespoke editorial strategies for producing and disseminating public interest journalism that:

• embodies a media outlet’s ethical principles and editorial values;
• has the impact an outlet strives for;
• creates value for those with the resources to sustain an outlet’s public interest journalism.

A lot to take in but absolutely worth browsing. (Thanks for the link, Styli!)

What is this newsletter?

The relationship between journalism and the people it aims to serve is broken. But we can heal it if we learn to put audiences and communities at the centre of everything we do. The News Alchemists newsletter wants to help you to do just that.

Every week I share seven links to give you some hope and to introduce you to the many smart, kind, and courageous people (🧞) who strive every day to use journalism as a force for good in society – and to the organisations (🧩) that show us that a different journalism is possible, and profitable.

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