10 things that could go into a community engagement editor’s job description
This Nieman Lab post about Voice of San Diego’s search for an “engagement editor” got me thinking about all the things somebody in that kind of position could do — and just how far the potential extends.
OK, sure, they’d hang out on Twitter and Facebook, and probably serve as the primary moderator for story comment threads. But that could easily end up being only a fraction of a community engagement editor’s work week. If I were designing the position of community engagement editor for a newspaper, here are some of the things I’d put on the list:
- Manage the news organization’s social media accounts and serve as an evangelist for social media use among the staff, holding workshops to teach interested staff members how Twitter, Facebook and other social media tools can help them with their work.
- Teach staff members about curation tools they can use to enhance their reports.
- Moderate comment threads — not just by monitoring them for inappropriate comment, but also by getting timely answers for reader questions posed in the threads.
- Work with section editors to identify places where reader-submitted material can be used to enhance the newspaper’s content.
- Reach out to schools and community organizations, holding meetings with their staff members to show them how they can get their content into print and onto the news organization’s Web site.
- Organize free community workshops on topics like photography, with the goal of increasing community awareness of the newspaper’s interest in reader-submitted content and improving the overall quality of what’s submitted.
- Identify and recruit people who would be willing to serve as occasional correspondents. The parent who’s bringing a camera to the game anyway and can send us pictures, allowing us to get art for games we aren’t able to staff; the running store owner who might be able to take charge of sending in results from 5Ks and other races.
- Serve as a point of contact for reader-submitted content, giving regular contributors a familiar face to interact with and piloting the flow of information.
- Hold regular “office hours” at places like coffee shops and restaurants to increase interaction between the newspaper staff and the community. When possible, invite another editor to come along.
- Take charge of staffing booths at county fairs, chamber expos and other events that provide an opportunity for interaction with large numbers of people.
That’s my list so far. What would you add?
“Raise your hand if you’ve ever been in the paper”
My boss from 2002 to 2005 — Jeff Wilson, publisher of The Fairfield Ledger — had a question he would always ask when groups of children toured the newspaper offices.
It was this: “How many of you have ever had your name or picture in the paper?”
Usually, about half of the kids in the group raised their hands.
This stuck with me because it seems like such a simple, elegant way of gauging just how close a community news organization is to the community it serves.
Now, I do think that when a person’s name or photo is in the paper, it should have some sort of significance or context — it should be connected to recognition of an achievement, for instance, or coverage of a community event. (Otherwise, we could just publish the phone book.) And, of course, if getting local names in the paper is all we’re focused on, we’ll be missing the boat in other ways.
But in general, I think the closer a news organization is to its community, the more people will be able to raise their hands and say that the coverage reflects not just life in the community, but also their lives on a personal level.
So if you run a community news organization, the next time an elementary school class or Scout troop comes to your office for a tour, why not give this question a try?
How do you think you’ll do?