Broaden your Engagement Skills
Join us for a day of educational inspiration with international examples of Engaged Journalism that take user engagement to the next level. The examples on this day of continuing education often show new ways to create constructive dialogue, new sources of revenue, higher willingness to pay, enhanced loyalty as well as building trust and enthusiasm among audiences and journalists.
User engagement has many meanings: for some, it simply covers consumption of journalism, for others, it means activity on social media, attendance at live events, letters from readers, crowdsourcing, or something completely different. On this educational day, we dive into examples of journalistic projects where the role of users is absolutely central.
Over the past decade, frontrunners who see engagement as the foundation of a new type of journalism have come together around terms such as ‘Engaged Journalism’, dialogue-based, and citizen-driven journalism. The movements test approaches where the medium and the journalist take on the role of involving the users in the production itself and facilitating communities and dialogue between them.
The examples will come both from projects that we find inspiring and from newsrooms that Hearken collaborates with. We look at examples across media platforms and events – and discuss along the way what value the different approaches provide for journalism, for the relationship with users, and for the business. We will revolve around how users are invited in and which grips deviate from the norm so that you have the opportunity to tie the inspiration up to your own reality as a journalist.
Teaching method
The teaching is organized as a presentation interspersed with exercises, and participants are encouraged to share their own experiences and thoughts on the subjects at hand.
Provider background
Hearken is a journalistic tech and consulting house that since 2015 has helped hundreds of newsrooms in the United States, Europe, and Australia – including The New York Times, BBC, ABC, and The Boston Globe – develop user engagement strategies. Our method is called Public-Powered Journalism and is about developing strategies to engage users into the editorial process to provide value for journalism, users, and benefits the business. Our main message is that the true value of deep user engagement is not found in algorithms, but in how to plan, articulate and realize its invitation to users and build relationships.
Consultant
Christian Hougaard is Chief Commercial Officer (CCO) at Hearken Northern Europe. He is former CMO at Benjamin Media (Denmark) and has 9 years of experience as a consultant in the media industry. Christian’s core competencies are media strategy, revenue streams and marketing/sales.