Civic education in schools, collaborations with libraries, supporting immigrant communities, and public funding for civic media—these were some of the “messy questions” this year’s Engaged Journalism Exchange explored on August 5th in New Orleans at a workshop coinciding with the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) annual conference. 

The Engaged Journalism Exchange is a project that since 2019 has been organizing in-person and virtual gatherings to connect researchers with people working in journalism, civic media, journalism support, and civil society. This year’s theme explored civic media and information efforts that go beyond traditional journalism to support community-building. Events were organized in collaboration with the News Futures network, a community of practice focused on reimagining and expanding civic media. The project organized two Zoom discussions leading up to our in-person event. The first session in May looked at community news roles and efforts to develop civic media out of libraries, including via the Library Newsroom Project. In June, a panel explored how community-led networks and civic media in Chicago have supported immigrant communities. 

 At our meet-up event in August, around 30 participants gathered at the colorful Vaughan’s Lounge in New Orleans’ Bywater neighborhood. Participants came from numerous universities and civic media organizations—from local outlets WWNO, The Lens, and Explosion Latina NOLA, to further afield organizations such as City Bureau, the Listening Post Collective, and Sahan Journal. The event kicked off with a ‘speed networking’ session where practitioners and researchers were asked to find a person they had not met and have a series of short conversations to better understand who was in the room and areas for possible collaboration. 

Participants were then invited to share a “messy question” they wished to explore—like ‘how can civic media support informal networks sharing critical information with communities?’ Several participants shared their questions before they each led breakout conversations to explore them. 

Representatives of each group then shared back some takeaways, while acknowledging they had raised as many questions as answers. Conversations explored the complexity of trying to introduce civics and civic media education early in school curriculum, and challenges and strategies for navigating collaborative research between researchers and practitioners. One group discussing public funding for civic media noted some interesting ideas such as amending the tax code to create a new category groups could opt into to be categorized as ‘public information organizations’—something that would come with rights and responsibilities, and could be used for legislation. 

Participants also shared with each other relevant resources such as the Local News Research Hub, the Civic Information Index, references to how different people have defined civic media over time, and how they could get more information and join News Futures working groups. The meet-up concluded with a powerful testimonial about information and organizing work being done in New Orleans to assist immigrant communities impacted by deportations—and raised more questions about how participants could continue to explore ways to support each other. 

The Engaged Journalism Exchange was made possible by the sponsorship of the Center for Community-Engaged Media, with support also from the Agora Journalism Center at the University of Oregon, City Bureau, the Media Inequality and Change Center at University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School, and the Participatory Journalism Interest Group of AEJMC. The project is collaboratively run by faculty at Temple University (Andrea Wenzel), Montclair State University (Carrie Brown), and the University of Utah (Jacob Nelson).