Sep 7, 2018
Jennifer Brandel began her career in journalism in the early 2000s, reporting for numerous outlets including The New York Times and Vice, picking up awards along the way. In 2011 she founded the groundbreaking audience first series, Curious City at WBEZ in Chicago. Her company, Hearken, was awarded a spot in Matter.vc's accelerator and took home the prize for "Best Bootstrap Company" at SXSW 2016. Jennifer was awarded the 2016 Media Changemaker Prize from the Center for Collaborative Journalism and named one of 30 world-changing women in conscious business.
Andrew Haeg is a veteran journalist and entrepreneur, correspondent for The Economist, founder of the mobile engagement platform GroundSource and co-founder of the Public Insight Network at American Public Media. He has focussed his career on using technology to help newsrooms better listen to their audiences and communities. As a result of this, he aims to make their journalism more reflective of and responsive to the people they serve.
Andrew and Jennifer share their individual experiences as journalists who have come to learn the importance of deep listening. Andrew describes it as the difference between transactional listening and building connections. Rather than listening to take stories from sources, establishing real connections with people allows you to tell the stories of those who would otherwise be uninclined or unable to.
Jennifer speaks to her training which preferenced efficiency and distribution over actual journalism. She was instructed to write stories before going out into the field, then finding quotes to back it up - confirming what she already knew, not discovering new things. This provides minimal ability to tell stories accurately, in fact, Jennifer attributes this way of working to a broken state of journalism globally. Are the stories essentially false, if they're confirming biases? Jennifer chose instead to take longer writing her stories, so she could listen deeper, even if it meant taking on other work to make ends meet.
It's a harder way of working, Andrew describes, to listen properly. However, doing so creates richer stories, and connects communities of people to themselves and others, in a way that journalism based on transactional listening does not.
Tune in to Learn
- How hungry people are to talk with journalists when they listen deeply
- How to collect feedback beyond a simple survey
- How to listen to the full person
- How listening ensures relevancy
- How to cultivate a deeply engaged audience
- How listening can be healing
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