Here is the session I ran at the Behind Local News conference in Leicester, 31 January 2019. I spoke about the Engaged Journalism Accelerator, what we've learnt to date from our grantees and other engaged journalism organisations in Europe, and what representatives from established regional press in the UK can learn, take onboard and take back to their teams.

1. Accelerating engagement with local
communities
Kathryn Geels
Director, Engaged Journalism Accelerator
@girlondon

2. Purpose, mission and vision of Accelerator
Purpose: Delivering grant funding, coaching, mentoring, resources and events to
support engaged journalism in European news organisations.
Mission: To accelerate the skills, people, ideas and knowledge transfer of news
organisations in order to help create positive, more resilient and more impactful
relationships between them and the communities they serve.
Vision: To inspire and enable all news organisations across
Europe to empower communities and their conversations,
and create long-term solutions that can positively impact
journalism and society.

3. When we say ‘engaged journalism’ we mean...
...journalism that empowers communities and their conversations .
How?
By putting community engagement (geographical or topical) at the centre of a news organisation’s
ownership, reporting, distribution, impact and revenue. Viewing journalism as a conversation.
Why does it matter?
Engaged journalism restores trust in news media, provides citizens with the information they need,
develops new resilient revenue models, and enhances plurality and diversity in a crucial part of society’s
information ecosystem.

4. Organisations that we’re supporting
Belgium: Médor
Est: 2015. Accelerator lead: Laurence Jenard
Denmark: Koncentrat
Est: 2018. Accelerator lead: Sune Gudmundsson
Germany: Krautreporter
Est: 2014. Accelerator leads: Rico Grimm and Julia Seeliger
Greece: Solomon
Est: 2015. Accelerator lead: Fanis Kollias
Hungary: Kettős Mérce Blog Egyesület (Mérce)
Est: 2017. Accelerator leads: Szelim Simándi and Károly Füzessi
Romania: Decât o Revistă (DoR)
Est: Accelerator lead: Cătălina Albeanu and Cristian Lupșa
Spain: Maldita.es
Est: 2014. Accelerator lead: Clara Jiménez Cruz
Spain: Fundación Civio (Civio)
Est: 2011. Accelerator lead: Javier de Vega
Ukraine: Tvoe Misto (‘Your City’ Lviv)
Est: 2014. Accelerator lead: Taras Yatsenko
UK: The Bureau of Investigative Journalism: the
Bureau Local
Est: 2017. Accelerator lead: Megan Lucero
UK (Scotland): Clydesider
Est: 2016. Accelerator lead: Amanda Eleftheriades-Sherry
UK: On Our Radar
Est: 2012. Accelerator lead: Paul Myles

5. What we’ve learnt so far
Internal culture: Focus on values and to bring your community with you
“All journalism is marketing. We don’t have public money, or a loan, and won’t create content for free. We ran 300 meetings in
three cultural circles across Belgium and asked people will you agree to these core values? We got 2k subscriptions of 60 euros
within a year. Now we have 1000 shareholders.”
Think of your community not merely as choosers of products and services, but how you can catalyse them to shaping those
products and services, and using them as active citizens. Have a desire to shift from community as “subject” (obey/ receive), to
consumer (demand/ choose), to citizen (participate/ create)
Transparency and accountability go hand in hand – focus on ‘show’ don’t ‘tell’
Enable everyone in your organisation to be accountable for community engagement – it’s not only one person’s role
“We need to better explain what an investigation is, that you start with a hypothesis. This year we will identify 3 big topics that
we will investigate. We want to show people “we will work on this, and we might not find anything but we’ll be transparent about
what we’re working on and that it might fail.”
Learn from other industries. E.g. one local council developed a new ‘social contract’ to overcome financial struggles. They held
public events and asked, ‘what do you need us to do and what are you as citizens willing to do to get there?’ ‘We will do x
(provide these
services) if you do y (recycle properly e.g.) .’

6. What we’ve learnt so far
Language and accessibility: Explain the craft of journalism - what journalists can and can’t do
(compared with public) i.e. going to courts, what the risks are
Measure your success or progress based on how your community talks about you – what language they use to
describe you and how they feel about you
Use language that is reflective of your commitment to a different approach to working
Face value: Asks and offers, and ‘commitment promises’ will have increased effectiveness
Community members more likely to subsequently connect online
People get to meet journalists and see how their work is created, when this opportunity rarely exists
Tools to add value to this:
• Online engagement: loomio.org/, info.stickyworld.com/, https://www.citizenlab.co
• Face-to-face engagement: http://www.d4sc.io/, and www.sparkcollaboration.com/ (which is great for encouraging
internal organisational engagement), www.newcitizenship.org.uk/, http://dhyaandesign.com/

7. How we’re talking about engaged journalism
We have compiled a glossary of terms that we are using in all of our communications and programme strands. We
use….
● ‘News organisation’, ‘publisher’ and ‘publication’, instead of ‘newsroom’ → ‘Newsroom’ is too narrow a term and
doesn’t reflect the different functions and teams that need to work together in engaged journalism organisations. We
refer to publisher and publication to represent an organisation producing news content / news content published in any
medium - written, audio, or broadcast
● ‘Engagement’ → We’re referring to an ongoing conversation, online or offline, in different forms, between a news
organisation and its communities, which is creating a positive impact for both. What we don’t mean is audience
engagement measured through traditional metrics such as page views, likes, shares and visitors
● ‘Resilience’ instead of ‘sustainability’ → We’re supporting emerging news organisations to become resilient, meaning
they not only can sustain content production but they can make profit and/or grow and scale over time, and adapt
quickly to change1
● ‘Communities’ and ‘users’ rather than ‘audiences’ and ‘readers’ → At the core of engaged journalism is the two-way
dialogue and participation from people within geographical or topical communities. We also refer to users as we see
that engaged news organisations provide a service that goes beyond simply providing content. Whereas the terms
audiences and readers imply that people are simply receivers or observers of content

8. Questions and dilemmas of engaged journalism
Questions: How do you communicate quality
without being elitist?
Have you ever thought to ask how a particular piece of
journalism impacts a reader’s life? What actively
changes for them?
People used to buy the services that surrounded the
news - weather, library opening times. If people now
don’t buy the news, what are we selling to them? And
how much are people willing to pay for it? Could we be
selling participation or empowerment?
“How do we monetise our values?”
How do we build revenue streams based on strengths
of the organisation? What value can we put on
processes and skills?
How do we safeguard communities and individuals who
are involved in the work we do?
Dilemmas: Avoid parachuting into communities when you
initially go to them to ask ‘what are you frustrated by / what can we
do to help you?’ We need to keep linking each local story to other
communities with the same story or with national stories. And make
the effort to build bridges between those communities
“We’re not building new communities, we’re tapping into existing
ones and seeing how people mobilise. We’re building different skill
sets and knowledge, making our work work for us through enabling
communities.”
Journalists often feel queasy about activism and the crossover with
third sector and charities. Creating a public value statement helps
get around that
Deriving benchmarks from your mission, value or impact statement
is useful. But how do we measure progress – what is the KPI - for
things like participation, empowerment, education and cohesion?
People want to help but it’s hard to manage everyone. Setting
expectations, managing a narrower window and approach is helpful

9. Activity
On your own or with the person next to you:
1. Choose one of the following themes in relation to your own organisation’s community
engagement
1. Changing internal culture (values-led, transparency and accountability, or learning from other
industries)
2. Increasing effectiveness of face-to-face activities
3. Evolving language and accessibility
4. ‘Selling’ and ‘marketing’ values, processes, skills and strengths of our organisation
5. Safeguarding those who are involved in the work we do
6. Avoiding parachuting into communities
7. Establishing relevant benchmarks to measure progress towards our mission
2. Think about where your organisation is currently and what you think it can be doing better or
more of
3. Write down one thing you can start doing, one thing you can stop and one thing you can

10. Contact the team
Ben Whitelaw,
engagement lead
@benwhitelaw
whitelaw@ejc.net
Contact for: resources
(toolkits, case studies),
communications and
grants
Kathryn Geels,
programme director
@girlondon
geels@ejc.net
Madalina Ciobanu,
project manager
@madalinacrc
ciobanu@ejc.net
Contact for: coaching,
mentorship, peer-to-peer
learning, engaged
journalism events
Contact for: programme
strategy, grants,
stakeholder & research
partnerships, and impact
Website:
engagedjournalism.com
Twitter: @ejcnet
Newsletter:
https://engagedjournalism.co
m/newsletter
Medium:
https://medium.com/we-are-
the-european-journalism-
centre
How you can get involved
with, and benefit from, the
Accelerator in 2019: “New
Year goals for accelerating
engaged journalism”