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.
Burgess Brown, Community Manager
Burgess is the coordinator of the growing Listening Post Collective community and provides direct support, learning and collaborative opportunities for Listening Post partners. Prior to working on the Listening Post Collective team, Burgess was the Project Lead for the Listening Post Macon project. In addition to working for the Listening Post Collective, Burgess is studying for his master’s degree in Theories of Urban Practice at The New School. He’s a graduate of Mercer University in Macon, Georgia.
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.
Deborah Ensor, Senior Director of US Programs/Internews
Deborah Ensor is currently Internews’ Senior Director of US Programs. She has more than 15 years of experience as a working journalist and 14 years working in non-profits and development. Deborah joined Internews as Country Director in Sudan in 2008, where she helped build a network of community radio stations across the country, and trained local journalists to run them. She's also been Internews’ Regional Director for Africa, and Vice President for Africa, Health and Humanitarian Information Programs. She served as editor in chief for The Taos News, one of the largest community newspapers in the United States and was a reporter at several major metropolitan dailies, including the San Diego Union Tribune. She holds a Master’s degree in Journalism and Human Rights from Columbia University.
Jason Alcorn
Jason is a strategic consultant who works with nonprofit news organizations and philanthropic foundations. He is the project manager for NewsMatch, an annual matching gifts and capacity building program that in 2017 raised $4.8 million for nonprofit news organizations in partnership with Democracy Fund, Knight Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation, and facilitates the Institute for Nonprofit News Emerging Leaders Council. Jason is also an award-winning journalist. He served as associate director of Seattle-based nonprofit news organization InvestigateWest from 2011 to 2016. He is currently an advisor to Migratory Notes and the Listening Post Collective and serves on the program committee for the 2018 Online News Association conference.
Adriana Gallardo
Adriana is an engagement reporter at ProPublica. This means she works on investigative series to fuel the reporting process with communities. Last year, she led engagement and reported for the Lost Mothers series which illuminated a national disgrace: the U.S. has the worst rate of maternal deaths in the developed world, and up to 60 percent of those deaths are preventable.
Courtney Hurtt
Courtney is the Associate Director of Product Development and Business Operations at Detroit’s public radio station, 101.9 WDET. In this role she streamlines both digital and in-person engagement initiatives that reach new and diverse audiences in innovative ways. This work involves the improvement of the station’s internal processes and technologies to foster collaboration, community responsiveness and creativity. Currently, she serves as project manager for cross-departmental initiatives– including the development of WDET’s engagement pipeline to revenue and sustainability and “Framed by WDET,” a audio-visual project that showcases the diversity of the Detroit region through photojournalism and storytelling.
Simon Nyi
Simon is a project director for media & journalism programs at Illinois Humanities. He co-organizes the People-Powered Publishing Conference, an annual engagement-journalism convening in Chicago. Currently based in Toledo, OH, Simon also works with neighborhood associations and community organizers on local engagement initiatives, including a Listening Post information needs assessment in Toledo's Old West End neighborhood.
Joseph Orozco
Joseph is the co-founder and station manager for KIDEFM, the Hoopa Tribal Radio Station. His media experience includes serving as a founding board member of the Hoopa Valley Telecommunications Corporation from 1979 to 1985; co-founding KIDE-FM as the fi rst Native Americanowned and operated non-commercial educational FM radio station in California; serving on the board of the National Federation of Community Broadcasters (NFCB) from 1990- 1994 (chair for three years); and co-founding the Corporation of Public Broadcasting-funded Indigenous Communications Association, a network of 15 Native radio stations in the United States. Under his leadership, KIDE-FM became the first solar-powered radio station in California and the first Native Radio Station to own and operate an Emergency Broadcast Unit. A converted 18 foot Toy Hauler made into a self-contained radio station with a 40 watt transmitter, telescoping 40 ft tower, with CB and shortwave radios.
Susan Smith Richardson
Susan is a longtime journalist whose work focuses on the intersection of race, voice and public policy. She is the former editor and publisher of The Chicago Reporter, a nonprofit investigative news organization that examines race and poverty. Richardson has been an editor at news organizations across the country, including the Chicago Tribune and The Texas Observer. She was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard, where she studied housing, community development and the evolution of anti-poverty policies in the U.S. She continued her studies at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, where she earned a Master in Public Administration.
“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
