One: Libraries Are Where People and Journalism Meet

Libraries are where the people are. Journalists want to reach the people. The people need better civic information in order to fully participate in their communities.

Journalism has a community engagement problem. Media literacy has not kept up with the proliferation of information sources and this has led to distrust. Libraries are trusted by their communities, and they’re also where the people are.

• Because public libraries attract such a wide spectrum of people and because those people so often show up with open minds, community journalists see partnership with libraries first and foremost as means to convene with those they most want to reach.
• In speaking about this dynamic, some journalists characterized public libraries as spaces “with a great capacity for community organizing.”
• Some journalists and librarians recognize that the community engagement problem actually starts way upstream from journalism, and is related to declining community connection in general (see Bowling Alone). Partnerships between journalists and libraries should therefore prioritize building genuine connection between local community members, rather than simply asking them what stories they have to share or pointing them to their local council meeting.

Journalists and local media outfits can reach far more community members when public libraries conduct outreach along with them.

• The Albany Public Library + Times Union project and New York Focus Community Listening Tour are clear examples.

People struggle to find basic information about how to participate in local and state government.

• Journalists and librarians could co-lead public workshops on navigating online government systems, much like academic librarians do with library databases.
• Involving library patrons in the process of creating local news and civic information can ensure they have the relevant local information they need to fully participate in their communities.
• Librarians and journalists should look to public access television/community media centers for inspiration on this front. Programs like YOUmedia at the Chicago Public Library point to what’s possible when you put the means of media production in the hands of the public and support them in building a local community of practice (see the work of media scholar Antoine Haywood).

Partnership between libraries and local news is not one size fits all. There are going to be many models which are all hyper-locally mediated. The big picture, however, is that these projects should seek to plug members of the public into active coalitions working to build the information they need. Libraries can be the scaffolding.

• LF and NF should seek to identify and promote as many of these experimental partnerships as possible in order to encourage their replication.

One reason that so many newsroom + library partnerships are one-off projects is that journalists often come to find stories and leave with a product. We need to design projects with ongoing commitments to continue working with the community—the benefit to community members has to be the primary goal.

• Terry Parris Jr.’s Library Newsroom Project  at BPL is one such model.

Libraries and librarians are already overstretched and underfunded. Not all of them will want to take on the role required of them for these partnerships and programs. One way to build their capacity long term would be to partner with library schools (MLIS programs), so library students could help sustain news + library pilot programs and better prepare themselves to lead similar programs when they get into the field.

“[When we think] libraries we’re like buildings, tables, computers, markers, heat, local, streets—this is what journalism is thinking of, finally we can convene people and have dialogue, and share information in that way.”

– Sierra Sangetti Daniels

“The kind of authentic diversity that you see in libraries is really fertile ground for the kind of work that nonprofit and civic media outlets intend to do, which is place-based, in-person, more about connection than consumption. That idea of: How do we equip more people to work alongside us? Libraries, I think, are right at that Venn diagram of the perfect kind of space where the right people, the right environment, the right assets are all in the same place for that kind of community of practice.”

– Darryl Holliday

“The news problem of community and audience is actually not a journalism problem, it’s a society problem. And it’s way upstream. It’s so far upstream that we have to think about how people come into a room, know each other, see each other, and talk about their stories, their information, before we say, ‘Do you want to sign up for a newsletter and read our investigations?’ So the mission of the Library Newsroom is to think more deeply about conversation and connection than it is about creating a news product.”

– Terry Parris Jr.