Thanks for visiting our site! We’re providing local media with the training and skills to build trust, and create more relevant, inclusive reporting in their communities. We hope you’ll consider making a small donation in support of our mission.
Thanks for visiting our site! We hope you’ll consider making a small donation in support of more inclusive local news.
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Communities across the U.S. are in need of relevant and useful local information that they trust. Many local media outlets have closed, or lack the funding and staff to do the deep reporting once expected of them. As people have turned increasingly to social media as a news source, their trust in journalism and public information has been undermined by the proliferation of click bait and fake news.
The Listening Post Collective offers resources, tools, peer-to-peer support and a shared learning space for journalists, newsroom leaders and community groups looking to revitalize their local news and information ecosystems.
The Listening Post Collective is a community media initiative that supports projects around the US, partnering with media and community groups in New Orleans, New Jersey, Baltimore, Omaha, Georgia, and Minneapolis.
The Collective is inspired and informed by community media development strategies used by the International NGO, Internews, in more than 70 countries around the world. Internews is a proponent of developing and supporting news you can use strategies, where communities are asked first what information they need most, and networks are created to provide them with details on essential topics like housing, jobs, healthcare, safety and security, the environment, and more. The Listening Post Collective is founded on the belief that communities around the United States can also benefit from direct, and creative strategies of information sharing.
The Collective launched its first project in New Orleans, in 2013. The Listening Post New Orleans project started with an assessment of the information needs of neighborhoods left out of the city’s post-Katrina development. Partnering with WWNO, the local public radio affiliate, the project began to give residents in those areas opportunities to get news you can use via cell-phone, and also record reflections on issue-focused questions at stand-alone recording devices set up in libraries, community centers, and local businesses. The community conversations created through the Listening Post project are regularly shared through WWNO.
The New Orleans Listening Post project continues to connect communities to news and provide opportunities for them to be heard. It has created a network of local partners, non-profits, city agencies, and citizens that offer ideas for Listening Post questions, co-host events, and help expand participation.
Subsequent Listening Post projects are based on the tried and tested strategies of the original Listening Post project in New Orleans. Our 7-step community engagement process is meant to reflect these concrete experiences and assist media outlets and community groups interested in creating their own projects. The steps are also designed for flexibility — to allow you to create and sustain a project that fits the unique information ecosystem of your community. Our hope is that you will then share your experiences with us on this site.
Jesse Hardman, Listening Post Founder
Jesse develops community engagement tactics, leads trainings, directs project design and mentors Listening Post partners across the country. In addition to his media development work, Jesse is a public radio reporter, writer, videographer, and journalism educator based in Los Angeles. Jesse has trained local journalists in Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Guatemala, Peru, South Africa and other places. He's fluent in Spanish, has a master’s degree from the Harvard University Graduate School of Education, and has a bachelor’s degree from Kenyon College. He's originally from St. Paul, Minnesota.
Carolyn Powers, Program Officer
Carolyn is the program officer coordinating US programs at Internews and helped launch the Listening Post Collective with Jesse in 2013. Carolyn supports operations and strategic development for the Listening Post Collective. Outside of Internews, Carolyn has led an intensive storytelling course with college students in Kigali, Rwanda, and served as a community organizer in the Boston area.
Angilee Shah, Coach
Angilee is an entrepreneur, editor, reporter and teacher who builds great teams and great content. She spent six years as a founding editor for Global Nation, PRI’s The World coverage of immigration in the US. For The World, she spearheaded a successful campaign to bring 50 new contributors into public media — in a year.
Angilee is coaching two ambitious and mission-driven organizations: the South Side Syracuse's community newspaper, The Stand, and The War Horse, which focuses its reporting on war from the perspective of military and veteran communities. Her goal is to help them take their passion for the communities they serve to new heights.
Olivia Henry, Coach
Olivia Henry is a journalist living in Sacramento. She is a consultant for the Listening Post Collective and a community development graduate student at UC Davis. Olivia was the engagement editor at the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism and engagement manager at KALW Public Radio.
Justin Auciello, Coach
Justin Auciello is a digital journalist, urban planner, and a new media expert who founded Jersey Shore Hurricane News (JSHN). Listening Post Collective partnered with Justin to launch the Jersey Shore Hurricane News on Facebook in 2011 just before Hurricane Irene hit New Jersey. In the years since, it has grown into a vibrant community of nearly 250,000 people known as JSHN “contributors”—across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and now, their Listening Post project. The JSHN team is using Listening Post strategies to dive deeper into the community and connect with their large audience offline as well, get to know them, and understand better how important issues are impacting lives in the region. Auciello says his creation is a two-way news outlet for the people, by the people.
Currently, Justin is partnering with Listening Post Collective serving as a coach.
Marisol Hernandez , Program Associate
Marisol is based in Washington, DC and helps the Listening Post Collective team with internal and external communications, programmatic support, knowledge and learning and business development.
Marisol most recently worked as an immigration paralegal in Washington, DC, where she assisted clients seeking asylum in the United States. She is also a recent graduate from Bates College in Lewiston, Maine where she studied politics and Spanish. Marisol has a wide range of experience with community-based organizations. She has worked with organizations such as Maine Volunteer Lawyers Project, a domestic abuse law project, LULAC, a Hispanic advocacy group in Washington D.C. and Teton Literacy, where she taught English proficiency lessons to youth and adults with immigrant backgrounds.
“The beauty of the Listening Post is its deceptive simplicity — there's a bright green button and a bright red button. Click here to talk into a giant fish. Suddenly, you have hundreds of members of the community having a conversation, and you've got stories for the radio, websites, social media, even text messages. Jesse and his team taught us that if you make the effort to treat community members as people, instead of an 'audience,' you can build a cutting-edge community journalism project with just a few cheap tools.”
Jason Saul, Managing Producer, BirdNote, former digital media manager at WWNO
“You'd be hard-pressed to find a journalistic endeavor as deeply rooted in community and creativity as the Listening Post. Jesse and the Listening Post team have forged an innovative model for how newsrooms can weave stories from the wealth of insights in their backyards, finding new voices to incorporate along the way. From the Listening Post's inventive deployment of sculptures and signs as community engagement portals to the use of text messaging to spark dialogue, this project is a rich source of inspiration for journalists everywhere.”
Cole Goins, Director of Community Engagement, CIR/Reveal
“Listening Post NOLA started sending me questions, and I'd answer questions sometimes, and when they asked me to do an interview, I said 'sure', because I want to participate, I want to be a part of making New Orleans great and I think this is a great way to do it.”
Toni Jack, Schoolteacher, New Orleans East Resident, Listening Post participant
“Jersey Shore Hurricane News (JSHN) has always been by the community and for the community, so launching a New Jersey-based Listening Post project was a natural fit. The Listening Post has helped JSHN facilitate more offline engagement and marry offline communities with our active online communities. As JSHN continues to embrace our contributor culture, the Listening Post has helped us strengthen and expand our connection to our communities and continues to keep us in tune with how people in our communities think and feel about local issues.”
Kelly Schott, Jersey Shore Hurricane News
“If local news is vital to democracy, and I'm pretty sure it is, then newsrooms have got to find better ways to build rapport with the communities they report on. Listening Post is one of the best projects I've seen, they do a remarkable job of bringing a community together with a newsroom and building meaningful, thoughtful conversations.”
Amanda Hickman, BuzzFeed Open Lab for Journalism
