In search of a larger audience

By Rhiannon Walker

I just got up, close and personal with the world of audience engagement. 

Actually, more importantly, something I learned outside of my journalism classes in school came in handy. Who knew the stuff I learned outside of those classes would be applicable to anything else I did?

Joy Mayer was our speaker for the top of the evening, and she dove right into how newspapers and other news media were gaining more readers, hits, followers, etc. 

She asked about how open journalism can be a good thing, and I answered that it creates a reciprocal form of communication between media sources and their viewers, which creates a level of trust between the two. 

In all of my journalism classes I have been taught to talk conversationally and to stay away from using big words or jargon that your average, run of the mill audience member wouldn’t understand. When Mayer pointed out that in a lot of ways we were being talked at, but not to by the media, it made me pause. 

On the one hand, I thought about how, well, that’s obvious because viewers aren’t the ones being trained to disseminate information in a creative and artistic way. And while they’re screaming at us for transparency, other occupations are allowed to operate in privacy without really answering to anyone.  

On the other hand, I know what it feels like to sit through a broadcast or read an article that I felt was missing something substantial or didn’t have the information in it that I wanted to know. I have also found myself wishing that media outlets had more interactive ways for their fans to get involved with the program or reporters.

If our job as journalists is to produce everything we do in a conversational tone, then audience engagement, and open journalism, where we share ideas, is the way of the future. 

It makes sense for a couple of reasons. There is a bad reputation about journalists being isolated, territorial and sensationalists, and by opening the floor to people and allowing them to be a part of the creative process, we can better serve the community at large. 

Think of it like our government. If we want to attend Senate meetings, we have the legal right to do so. 

And why does the government allow that? Because there was a period in our nation’s history where people didn’t trust the government, and to alleviate that mistrust the government opened itself up to the people. 

And the reason I think it works so well is because the pressure is on the people to step up and say something if they’re not pleased. If you give people the option that places the ball in their court. In all truth, people more than likely won’t use it, but the option to participate is still available to them.