Why Journalists Should Use Transparency as a Tool to Deepen Engagement

When we talk about transparency in journalism we tend to discuss it in terms of the people and institutions we cover, or as an alternative to unrealistic notions of objectivity. However, transparency can also be a tool for fostering deeper community engagement with journalism, and a fundamental part of how we make the case for why we should support local news and quality reporting.

Changes in business models, publishing technologies and audience expectations demand we embrace a more open approach. Much of the work of journalism has traditionally happened behind closed doors, and so the public has no idea what it takes to report a story or sustain a newsroom. If journalism wants to make the case that it is valuable, it has to start showing its work. Transparency can’t just be a value journalists hold others to, it must be a virtue we embody as well.

1) Embracing A Radically Transparent Reporting Process

In 2013, the Poynter Institute published The New Ethics of Journalism and replaced “Act Independently” with “Be Transparent.” Kelly McBride, a co-editor of that book, wrote that “News organizations want to be […] trusted advisors. To do that, they need to embrace radical transparency, where they explain every decision they make.” This kind of transparency is still rare, but I’ve seen some good examples of news organizations giving audiences a look behind the curtain to see how editorial decisions are made.”

• ProPublica has led the way by describing their journalistic judgment and process early and often. See for example their note about why they decided to partner with the Guardian to report on the Snowden documents, their response to criticism from the Red Cross, and their description of how and why they built their surgeon risk database.
• Almost a decade ago OnTheMedia did a great segment about how National Public Radio edits its interviews, revealing how significant some of the invisible edits can be and asking good questions about what it means to hide this editing from listeners.
• In her role as the public editor of the New York Times, Margaret Sullivan regularly brings helpful transparency to how the Times shapes its stories.
• Outfits like the Center for Public Integrity are publishing behind the scenes addenda explaining their process and the provenance of their data.

However, as Dan Gillmor notes in his book Mediactive, the relationship between trust and transparency is complex. “Greater transparency will lead your audience to trust you more even while they may believe you less,” he writes. Put another way, our transparency may engender more trust even as it encourages more skepticism.

2) Active Transparency For Deep Engagement

Transparency is also increasingly necessary and valuable as part of emerging practices in community engagement. Newsrooms can’t expect to build meaningful relationships with their communities if they continue to operate at an arms distance (or further) from that community. Last month Anthony De Rosa suggested that publishers should let readers see how a story changed over time, perhaps by toggling a track changes button on the story. “This transparency builds greater trust between the reader and the publisher,” De Rosa writes. “It also reclaims something that is becoming lost when readers are led to many places through social media rather than relying on a single publication: loyalty.” (See also De Rosa’s piece in the LA Times on this topic)

• Curious City, a public radio news experiment at WBEZ in Chicago, and its national counterpart Hearken, is perhaps the best example of mixing transparency and engagement. The platform lets the public assign journalists stories rooted in local curiosity and reporters show their work throughout the process, even inviting community members along to interview sources.
• Serial was a podcast sensation built largely on giving listeners a look inside the process of reporting a really complex story. In the Columbia Journalism Review Joyce Barnatham argues that “What makes Serial so special and so meaningful for journalism is reporter Sarah Koenig’s transparency. She takes her listeners along with her.” And for those fans who wanted to go deeper than the weekly audio reports the team created a website based largely on source documents.
• Elise Hu’s use of Tumblr to complement her reporting and engage her audiences in the US and in Korea is another great example. Nieman Lab has a good overview of how Hu is using the Tumblr and the kind of feedback she has gotten.
• See also, just about every project Melody Kramer works on.

3) Emerging Technology Demands Greater Transparency

Photo by Roger H. Goun on Flickr and used here with Creative Commons license.

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The rapid changes in technology, both in reporting and consuming the news, also demands greater openness from newsrooms and journalists. As an industry we are immersed in new tools that shift our practices. Projects like Source and Storybench are useful repositories of knowledge, documenting how journalists are using emerging technology. At the recent SRCCON, Chris Amico argued that journalists should “Use every part of the pig,” describing how “open notebook reporting and structured journalism” can make use of more of our reporting materials by putting them in the hands of our communities. I have written previously about how transparency around fact checking and verification can be a tool in community engagement too.

At the heart of all of these models of transparency is the goal of building trust. In 2011 longtime editor Melanie Sill wrote, “As the web matures, newspeople and others can make a conceptual leap that puts journalism fully in service to citizens and consumers and returns respect and value to the work and those who do it.” For Sill, the core of that leap was new modes of trust rooted not in authority but in transparency, responsiveness and participation. That same year, Dan Sinker, the director of the Knight Mozilla OpenNews project, said “the philosophy of working in the open,” exemplified by the moto “show your work,” was one of the most important shifts in how newsrooms operated.

4) New Modes of Transparency for New Models of Sustainability

Photo by
jon jablonsky and used here with Creative Commons license.

Recommitting to transparency and redefining journalism as a service to community is also critical today because an increasing number of news organizations are asking the public to support their work through donations, membership programs, apps and more. Revenue models rooted in events and crowdfunding often force newsrooms to make the case as to why people should support their work or why they should show up for an event. For some newsrooms, this can be a painful process but in the end many journalists I talk to are stunned by the support and feedback they get when they open themselves up to their community. In fact, at a recent summit on membership models for news, a representative from Kickstarter noted that one of the most popular rewards for Kickstarter donors is behind the scenes access to journalists and media makers.

In this context, transparency is not only about building trust but also about illustrating to our communities the kind of labor involved in doing meaningful journalism. I recently got to hear Andrea Bernstein and Matt Katz, two WNYC reporters, describe the reporting process behind their Peabody award winning series on NJ Governor Chris Christie. It was a stunning tale that deepened my appreciation for their work; WNYC should share that story with their audience.

When we conceal the work of reporting, then journalism just appears on the screen or the page or the doorstep. Why would people support something they don’t understand, or value something when they don’t see the craft behind it? With most people facing a flood of information every day, transparency is becoming a critical building block fostering stronger, more trustworthy relationships between newsrooms and the audience.

Josh Stearns directs the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation’s journalism sustainability project, designed to develop new structures and strategies to support a robust future of news. Prior to joining the Dodge staff, Josh spent 7 years running national advocacy campaigns in support of freedom of expression and media diversity. Most recently he served as Press Freedom Director at Free Press, a national nonprofit fighting for all people’s rights to connect and communicate. Josh is an award winning journalist and the author of numerous reports on local news, public media and media policy. His articles have appeared online at the Columbia Journalism Review, PBS MediaShift, Orion Magazine and BoingBoing. He is a founding board member of the Freedom of the Press Foundation and served for almost 10 years on the board of the Student Conservation Association. Find him on Twitter at @jcstearns.