Gone are the days of homogenous, hyper-competitive and opaque newsroom environments; for media outlets to survive today, they must modernize and adapt to a new, savvy audience.
My colleagues and I at The Discourse, a 5-year-old journalism startup, have made a concerted effort to build a forward-thinking newsroom for the future. We know our target audience of millennials are thoughtful, critical and empathetic news consumers, so it’s important that we engage them in a way that shows we understand and respect this about them.
At Discourse, we strive to accomplish this goal by providing coverage that accurately reflects the diversity of younger generations, so they feel reflected in the stories they consume; by prioritizing collaboration (which leads to thoughtful innovation) over competition (which can breed sameness) with other media outlets; and by being transparent about our editorial process and funding with our audience.
Our target audience for this workshop is twofold: journalism startups that want to create a newsroom culture that’ll set them up for future success and establishment media organizations that want to engage and maintain the attention of a younger readership, as well as attract and hire innovative journalists.
We’ve been trying to build a collaborative and inclusive newsroom at The Discourse. So, through this workshop, we want to bring together journalists with a range of experiences to co-create the newsroom of the future.
Suggested Speaker(s)
- Anita Li (@neeeda)
Director of Communities, The Discourse - Brielle Morgan (@briellemimi)
Reporter, The Discourse