How Journalists Engage: A Theory of Trust Building, Identities, and Care

"How Journalists Engage: A theory of trustbuilding, identity, and care explores the ways journalists of different identities enact trusting relationships with their audiences according to divergent sets of principles. Drawing from case studies, communitywork, surveys, interviews and focus groups, this book documents the now-established "built environment" powered with engagement journalism that represents the first major paradigm shift of the press' core values in more than a century. A proliferation ofmedia-trust programs, grants, foundations, companies, collaborations, networks, and money demands that journalists take on four new roles-Relationship Builder, Content Collaborator, Community Conversation Facilitator, and Professional Network Builder-andbe fluent in eight skillsets: radical transparency, power dynamic accounting, mediation, reciprocity, media literacies, community offline work, needs/assets/solution analyses, and collaborative production. These are in addition to the normative skills related to being a watchdog and storyteller. The author posits that this trust-building theory manifesting demands journalism be enacted with an "identity-aware care" through "listening and learning." This identity-aware ethic of care-a theory that comes from developmental psychology and nurtured in gender and women's studies-prioritizes communities over the propping up of problematic institutions that news media have traditionally protected in the name of objectivity. Instead, this theory asks journalists to acknowledge and incorporate their own identities-especially the privileges, biases, and marginalization attached to them-and those of their communities, resulting in a more intentional moral voice focused on justice and equity so that all news participants can feel cared for within information-exchange about public affairs"--
A unique theory of trust building in engagement journalism that proposes journalists move to an ethic of care as they prioritize listening and learning within communities instead of propping up problematic institutions.In How Journalists Engage, Sue Robinson explores how journalists of different identities, especially racial, enact trusting relationships with their audiences. Drawing from case studies, community-work, interviews, and focus groups, she documents a growing built environment around trust building and engagement journalism that represents the first major paradigm shift of the press's core values in more than a century. As Robinson shows, journalists are being trained to take on new roles and skillsets around listening and learning, in addition to normative routines related to being a watchdog and storyteller. She demonstrates how this movement mobilizes the nurturing of personal, organizational, and institutional relationships that people have with information, sources, news brands, journalists, and each other. Developing a new theory of trust building, Robinson calls for journalists to grapple actively with their own identities--especially the privileges, biases, and marginalizationattached to them--and those of their communities, resulting in a more intentional and effective moral voice focused on justice and equity through the news practice of an ethic of care.