If you’re committed to improving your coverage by including diverse voices in your journalism, here are some strategies outlets are using to find those voices and change their newsroom culture
To serve your audience, your stories should reflect your audience. Yet the hard truth is that much journalism does not include diverse voices. Stories quote the same experts, often white and male, over and over, excluding others, who, if quoted in a popular news story or press release, could receive more visibility and opportunities. Diverse sourcing – gender, racial, ethnic, and geographic – can improve your coverage, giving it a competitive advantage and boosting its impact. In this session, we’ll share strategies that newsrooms big and small are using to increase the diversity of the sources they’re including in their journalism. These strategies – constructing diverse source lists, cultivating source relationships, even providing media training to women and underrepresented minorities – require legwork. But they can pay huge dividends in audience loyalty. As envisioned, the session would start with short talks by the invited speakers, followed by a moderated discussion that allows both the speakers and the audience to share their tips and experience. At the session’s end, we’ll place notes from the talks and tips shared by all participants into a document that can be distributed to all attendees for taking back to their newsrooms.
Suggested Speaker(s)
- Roula Khalaf
Deputy editor, Financial Times - Laura Zelenko
Senior executive editor, Bloomberg