Following “Fault Lines” to improve accuracy and build trust was a training session at Illinois NewsTrain taught by Felecia D. Henderson or Jean Marie Brown. The U.S. population is expected to become older and more racially and ethnically diverse in coming years. How can journalists be better prepared to build trust and connect with those growing communities? The Maynard Institute for Journalism Education offers a way of viewing society along five “Fault Lines” that can be a useful tool to ensure more representative and accurate coverage. The slides from the presentation are not available, but this is the accompanying handout. Felecia D. Henderson is the director for cultural competency at the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education and leads its Fault Lines training program. Jean Marie Brown is an assistant professor at Texas Christian University and a senior Fault Lines trainer for the Maynard Institute. For more information on the News Leaders Association's NewsTrain, see https://www.newsleaders.org/newstrain.

1. Playbook for building diverse audiences - version 1.2
Playbook for building diverse audiences
(and transforming into a race-open news organization, internally and externally)
Version 1.2
Source: Maynard Institute | Media Transformation Program |Table Stakes programs
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2. Playbook for building diverse audiences - version 1.2
Summary of strategies and tactics of the playbook
1. Recognize and address the
blinders, biases and blockers
within yourself and your
organization for serving
more diverse audiences
a. Recognize and clear audience barriers created by systemic biases and
presumptions in your news coverage and revenue models.
b. Diversify the perspectives and life experiences of your staff.
c. Look for and act on inclusion opportunities at every organizational
opening.
d. Assess and revise current management processes, systems and policies
for biases and impediments affecting your ability to close your diversity
gaps.
Source: Maynard Institute | Media Transformation Program |Table Stakes programs 2

3. Playbook for building diverse audiences - version 1.2
1. Recognize and address the blinders, biases and blockers within
yourself and your organization for serving more diverse audiences
(Develop your own and your organization's capabilities and capacity to understand,
reach, engage and serve more diverse audiences.)
a. Recognize and clear audience barriers created by your and your
organization’s systemic biases and presumptions in its news coverage and
revenue models.
1) Study your organization’s own history of coverage, treatment and biases
across the Fault Lines of class, gender, generation, geography, race and
sexual orientation; recognize its legacy from the perspective of the
audience(s) you may be targeting.
2) Conduct a content and reader experience analysis covering
stories/coverage, sources, images and opinion/editorials.
TOOL: Maynard Institute’s Content Audit process and analysis
● Identify unconscious organizational and individual biases in overall
coverage and individual storytelling based on the audit findings.
● Identify particular conscious and unconscious editorial
microaggressions against audiences based on the audit findings.
● Develop and work an immediate “stop doing” list of editorial
microaggressions as a first step in taking and demonstrating action.
3) Examine your current products and revenue models from a Fault Lines
perspective and identify the audience/customer assumptions that they
make about access, usability, pricing, payment forms, payment options,
etc. that may pose barriers to diverse audiences.
b. Diversify the perspectives and life experiences of your staff
1) Consider and include all forms of “staff” -- full-timers, part-timers,
freelancers, contributors, interns, etc. And include staff from all areas of
the organization (not just the newsroom), especially any area affecting
any aspect of the experiences of new audiences with your organization
(events, marketing, sales, product development, customer services, etc.)
Source: Maynard Institute | Media Transformation Program |Table Stakes programs
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4. Playbook for building diverse audiences - version 1.2
2) Identify your “diversity gaps” along the Fault Lines based on comparison
between your current staff profile and the profile of your market’s
population (see TS#2).
Tool: Staff to community comparison template
3) Develop and prioritize your list of “diversity gaps” to start closing; wire
them into formal organizational goals and priorities and lock-in
top-management commitment; work the list as staffing opportunities
arise across all types of “staff” (as defined above).
4) Build your local pipeline of diverse staffing prospects by developing
relationships with potential feeder organizations both within your
market (e.g., community groups, foundations focused on youth
opportunity development, schools and colleges) and at the
regional/national levels of diversity-focused organizations such as the
NABJ, AAJA, NAHJ, NAJA, NLGJA and JAWS).
5) Develop and offer a range of “early engagement” experiences to form
early relationships with diverse prospective hires, provide existing staff
with interactions with more diverse individuals, and better understand
their perceptions, needs and interests as potential staff members (e.g.
career days, shadowing, internships of varying depth/duration)
6) Form the cross-organizational team with the needed leadership that will
focus on closing the diversity gaps on an ongoing basis; create
roles/positions with sufficient allocated time to do the real work
required (e.g. pipeline development, career path development and
tracking).
c. Look for and act on inclusion opportunities at every organizational opening.
1) Create development opportunities for diverse staff within day-to-day
management actions such as making assignments that are new or stretch for
the individual, giving leadership roles in standing meetings, and appointing to
important project teams and giving leadership roles within such teams.
2) Think especially in terms of “high value” inclusion opportunities, those that
allow the individual to:
a) Gain wider exposure across the organization and develop a broader range
of relationships by working with people across various parts and functions
of the organization, people they wouldn’t meet in their regular job;
Source: Maynard Institute | Media Transformation Program |Table Stakes programs
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5. Playbook for building diverse audiences - version 1.2
b) Skip levels by working with people at various levels of the organization,
especially those in more senior positions;
c) Take on stretch roles usually assigned to those with more tenure or higher
rank in order to test, discover and develop their abilities earlier in their
career.
3) Take advantage of reorganizations, both planned and required, to reconfigure
roles, redesign positions, change position staffing and make promotions that
result in greater inclusion of diverse staff in the organization’s leadership and
decision-making.
d. Assess and revise current management processes, systems and policies for
biases and impediments affecting your ability to close your diversity gaps,
including:
1) HR policies, processes and practices from an individual’s perspective of their
end-to-end employment experience from early recruitment to promotion.
Tool: End-to-end view of employment experience
2) Incentive systems structures and policies for unintended biases and
consequences
3) Budgeting and financial management processes for prioritizing needed
investments and DEI considerations when both setting budgets and later
making adjustments, whether upward or downward.
4) Guild contracts, work rules and relationships for opportunities to
collaboratively prioritize and address greater diversity, inclusion and equity.
2. Understand and prioritize the diverse audience opportunities
within your local market
a. Build a thorough understanding of the diverse dimensions of your market,
including the Fault Lines of race, class, generation, geography, gender and sexual
orientation and the Fissures of religion and politics.
1) Use available demographic data to develop an overall profile of your market
and to serve as a reference in assessing your current “match to market” both
externally (i.e. content mix) and internally (i.e. staff composition).
2) Interview individuals who make it their business to understand the profile and
dynamics of your market across the Fault Lines (marketers, political
operatives, academics, policy researchers, community organizers, etc.).
Source: Maynard Institute | Media Transformation Program |Table Stakes programs
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6. Playbook for building diverse audiences - version 1.2
b. Outline the various audience segment opportunities within your market for
diversifying the audiences you serve.
1) Identify an initial list of audience segments you currently don’t serve or
underserve.
2) Develop profiles of each audience segment from its perspective, including:
a) Needs, interest, problems and valued experiences
b) Current news sources, habits and experiences
c) Local media enterprises and individuals currently serving the audience
(e.g. in-language POS publications, music radio stations, bloggers)
d) Awareness of and trust in your current coverage
e) Perceptions of your enterprise’s past coverage and legacy relationship with
the audience
f) An initial assessment of your starting point and the likely road ahead for
serving the audience based on current awareness of and trust in your
current coverage.
3) Assess the reasons the audience has not been served or been underserved in
the past and identify particular internal biases, practices, gaps and barriers
that will need to be addressed if it is to be served (referencing back to insights
from 1.a.)
c. Prioritize your audience opportunities using defined, multi-dimensional criteria
(e.g., size, existing contacts, present capabilities to serve)
Add structured set of sample criteria to consider
d. Decide on the audience segment to initially focus on and others to follow,
depending on learnings and success with the initial segment. (Start with more
than one if the capacity exists.)
3. Tie into the organizations, networks and influencers already
reaching the audience
a. Map the chosen audience segment’s social infrastructure (social organizations,
service agencies, churches, schools, neighborhoods, etc.) and information
ecosystem, building on the initial segment profile work from TS #2.
b. Initiate conversations with identified prominent individuals and organizations
within the audience’s social infrastructure to gain insights into the needs, interest,
Source: Maynard Institute | Media Transformation Program |Table Stakes programs
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7. Playbook for building diverse audiences - version 1.2
problems and valued experiences of the audience and identify early potential
partners to work with in serving the audience.
1) Be sensitive to initial unwillingness to engage and/or misreading of your
intentions based on legacy relationships. Be prepared to discuss directly.
2) Consider and openly explore reciprocity from the start of discussions – “what’s
in it for them” in return for sharing their perspectives and insights.
3) Be aware of possible selection bias in those who do choose to engage in terms
of how they may or may not fully reflect the wider target audience.
c. Identify and start monitoring influential social media gathering points within the
audience’s information ecosystem (particular Facebook groups, Twitter threads,
etc.) for insights into issues, topics, people, organizations, events and other points
of ongoing interest.
d. Identify and become familiar with places of physical gathering by the audience
segment (neighborhoods, shopping areas, entertainment venues, etc.) to gain
further understanding of the audience’s community.
4. Develop a coverage and distribution plan that's of value to the
targeted audience
a. Form the cross-functional team that will develop and own the plan
1) Lead with editorial but include marketing, events, product and other
contributing functions from the start.
2) “Charter” the team in terms of overall objectives, expectations, roles and
empowerment.
b. Develop an initial content plan based on the identified needs, interests,
problems and valued experiences of the audience segment.
1) Revisit and go broader and deeper on the initial segment profile developed as
part of TS #2.
2) Outline what to cover, how to cover and how not to cover (referencing
learnings from TS #1). Ensure coverage is for the audience, or for and about
the audience, not just about the audience.
3) Translate the coverage plan into reportable issues, topics, events, people, etc.
to provide initial direction and guidance for individual story idea generation,
selection and development.
Source: Maynard Institute | Media Transformation Program |Table Stakes programs
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8. Playbook for building diverse audiences - version 1.2
4) Identify areas of uncertainty and untested assumptions in regard to content
where quick experiments are needed to gain experience and insights to better
inform and refine the coverage plan.
c. Develop an initial distribution plan based on the audience segment’s existing
platform and product preferences and usage habits.
1) Revisit and go deeper on the initial segment profile (re: TS #2) and the social
infrastructure and information ecosystem mapping (re: TS #3).
2) Determine where to focus initially in regard to platforms and products you
control and can develop (print, main website, mobile site/apps, newsletters,
push alerts, podcasts, etc.)
3) Determine where to focus initially in regard to social media and messaging
platforms and particular gathering points (Facebook groups, Twitter threads,
etc.)
4) Determine where and when to focus initially in regard to physical presence at
gathering points for the audience (neighborhoods, shopping areas, events,
etc.)
5) Identify areas of uncertainty and untested assumptions in regard to platforms
and platforms where quick experiments are needed to gain experience and
insights to better inform and refine the distribution plan.
d. Identify potential partnerships. Recognize that you are unlikely to have the
capacity, capabilities or experience needed to execute the content and
distribution plan envisioned. Recognize too that your initial plan should be tested
with those who know and now serve the audience. Draw on the initial
relationships developed earlier (see 3.b.) to test the plan and explore potential
partnerships. From the start, consider the quid pro quo (gives and gets) of such
potential partnerships.
e. Create an overall playbook for how, where and when to serve the target
audience. Start by incorporating the work and plans above. Then keep and use
the playbook as a “live” document with additions and refinements made along
the way.
5. Tie inclusion and engagement of the audience into your daily,
end-to-end editorial workflow
a. Diverse sourcing. Develop a new, wide base of story sources for the
audience segment, including individuals, organizations and social media
pages, tags and influencers identified in TS# 2 and #3 (from conventional
Source: Maynard Institute | Media Transformation Program |Table Stakes programs
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9. Playbook for building diverse audiences - version 1.2
sources about the audience to new sources from the audiences). Also
consider who are viewed as credible sources by the segment and expand
criteria for who can be considered credible from a journalistic perspective.
b. Cross-beat involvement. Use the initial content plan from TS#4 to engage
editors and reporters around story opportunities for the audience segment
within the newsroom’s existing desk/beat structure. Make reaching the
audience part of their own story planning and audience development work.
Share identified new sources for serving the audience across the entire
newsroom for their use in all their coverage. Keep from segregating and
siloing coverage of the audience to just a few in the newsroom.
c. Inclusive story development. Employ the principles of bias awareness,
diverse perspectives, inclusive voices, appropriate framing and engaging
story forms for the audience segment across all steps of the editorial
workflow, including idea development, story pitching, story selection and
assignment, reporting, cross-media content production, and cross-media
editing and design. (re: Amanda’s AP work on inclusive storytelling))
d. Cross-platform and cross-time budgeting. Use the distribution plan from
TS#4 to guide the budgeting of stories for and about the audience segment.
Give particular attention and priority to effective budgeting in the early
stages of developing the audience with the segment.
e. Content access. Give special consideration and develop particular
guidelines for restricting access to content for and about the target
audience from a funnel perspective (placement inside/outside walls;
subscriber only designations, counting toward meter limits, etc.)
f. Story tracking and building. Track story performance in real time to
identify opportunities for organic and paid promotion to increase reach
within the audience segment. Build on proven story interest and
engagement with follow-up and follow-on stories to generate return visits
and loyalty within the segment.
g. Audience performance tracking. Develop the tracking mechanisms (e.g.
story tagging), data sources and data cuts, and audience reports) needed to
establish baselines and track audience performance gains within the
audience segment. Where certain types of digital measures and data (e.g.
robust demographic data) are not currently available, find and use “next
best” and directionally correct substitutes to get started.
Source: Maynard Institute | Media Transformation Program |Table Stakes programs
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10. Playbook for building diverse audiences - version 1.2
h. Beat configuration and resource deployment. Overtime, as knowledge is
gained about what is required to serve more diverse audiences segments
and the audience development potential of these segments, adjust the
configuration of beats and deployment of reporting and editing resources
accordingly.
6. Build trust and gain loyalty in every interaction and experience
a. Explain and provide transparency about journalistic practices and ethics
that may be unfamiliar to the audience within the context of reporting work
and the publication of particular stories. Share these perspectives internally
as well to develop better understanding of the dynamics with the audience
in regard to news coverage.
b. Be mindful of common norms and values of the audience in all direct
communications with the audience (general marketing messaging, event
promotions, calls to action, etc.) and cautious of implicit biases and
unintended missteps.
c. Demonstrate the value of your journalism to the lives of the audience by
referencing and promoting stories that have had positive impacts on
individual lives and social issues within the audience community.
d. Involve all those in the organization that may have direct or indirect touch
points with the audience, including customer service (account or payment
issues, access issues, general questions, etc.), marketing and events
coordinators so they can develop their understanding of the audience and
identify particular issues they need to address in serving them.
e. Recognize and thank customers (e.g. subscribers) and other supporters (e.g.
partner organizations) in ways that are meaningful to them.
f. Develop ongoing qualitative feedback sources within the community and
regularly engage them about their assessment of overall coverage and
perspectives on particular issues and questions. Employ both high
engagement, high time involvement approaches (e.g. community panels or
an advisory group) and lower engagement, less time and easier access
approaches (e.g. social media).
g. Develop ongoing quantitative tracking measures of use, trust and
recommendation within the target audience (e.g. modified Net Promoter
Scores).
Source: Maynard Institute | Media Transformation Program |Table Stakes programs
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11. Playbook for building diverse audiences - version 1.2
7. Fashion your revenue strategy to the audience
a. Gain the commitment of all those involved in developing audience revenue
(product, marketing, sales and editorial) to thinking differently about
revenue opportunities with diverse audiences; recognize, address and move
beyond any prevailing mindsets that “there’s no money in it”.
b. Tune the marketing, offer/pricing options and purchasing experience of
your existing subscription and other products/services to the preference of
the audience
1) Adjust your messaging to the values, interests and needs that are of
concern to and persuasive with the audience
2) Add and/or emphasize the payment options that are preferred by the
audience
3) Experiment with offer/pricing options that may better suit the
audience’s norms and preference, e.g.
● focusing on platform preference (mobile, newsletters, social feed,
e-edition, print)
● offering different introductory and trial offers
● offering different pricing tiers to make affordable to more of the
audience
4) Make it easy and clear on how to pay, stop payment and resume
payment to build trust and reduce perceived risk.
c. Search for and identify products/services and experiences offered by others
where there is an established willingness to pay (e.g. certain types of
events, particular “inside” information, commemorative or celebratory
products) and develop new offerings that fit this mold and your capabilities.
d. Look for partners with an established customer base within this audience
with whom to co-market, create product/service bundles and/or create
cross-discount incentives.
e. Generate revenue from those interested in reaching and serving the
audience.
1) Identify a distinct prospect list of businesses, organizations and agencies
with high interests in getting their messages to the audience. Develop
Source: Maynard Institute | Media Transformation Program |Table Stakes programs
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12. Playbook for building diverse audiences - version 1.2
products and services to meet these needs (tailored display,
sponsorships, sponsored content, etc.).
2) Identify the prospect list of philanthropic organizations and individuals
with interest in directly supporting your work in serving these audiences.
Develop the funding opportunities and mechanisms, with editorial
boundaries, or them to provide such support (reporting fellowships,
event support, facilities, etc.)
Source: Maynard Institute | Media Transformation Program |Table Stakes programs
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