Alright, stop! Collaborate and listen: How to rally journalists around a mission
Musings and learnings from my experiences as an organizer and change agent in media.
Hey y’all! Anita here. I’m currently in the Grey Gardens phase of the pandemic after being swaddled in sweats pretty much 24/7 since lockdown began. Despite my seemingly permanent indoor and chafe-free existence, however, I’ve been interacting with more people now than pre-COVID because of the many collaborations I’ve worked on 🤝
My insider’s approach
Over the past few months, I’ve had to find consensus or get buy-in for several Canadian journalism-related projects without formal institutional power. Two in particular come to mind because of the lessons I took away. First is this Globe and Mail op-ed co-written by the executive teams of the Canadian Journalists of Colour and the Canadian Association of Black Journalists, and spearheaded by myself and CABJ executive director Nadia Stewart. The op-ed marks the one-year anniversary of our organizations’ joint Calls to Action to strengthen newsroom equity and anti-racism efforts across Canada.
My big takeaway from this experience is to place full trust in your collaborators — but only after vetting them to ensure they share your ethics and desire to work towards a mission, and more importantly, that they’re consistent in character and behaviour. This is true even if your teammates take different approaches or have divergent opinions from you. In my experience, the most impactful groups are made up of confident people who are direct about their views, are happy to engage in respectful debate and can come to consensus based on the merit of an idea.
After two years of working closely with Nadia Stewart, I consider her a friend and trusted colleague. We’ve had our share of disagreements, and challenged each other on this journey, but through it all, I’ve known that Nadia is a person of integrity who’s committed to the cause. That’s why she and I always manage to constructively work past our differences because we’re both prioritizing something bigger than ourselves.
The second journalism-related project I want to mention is this #DiversifyYourSources campaign that I organized on behalf of Informed Opinions, a non-profit that works to amplify diverse voices in Canadian media. My goal was to get as many newsrooms and individual journalists as possible to pledge to track the gender ratio of their sources. To get buy-in, I appealed to people’s sense of belonging — in this case to the Canadian journalism community. Sharing testimonials from industry leaders who pledged, quickly inspired others to do the same. Nobody wants to fall behind the curve.
My outsider’s approach
As you know, I also regularly collaborate with stakeholders in the U.S. media ecosystem. From November 2020 to January 2021, Free Press’ Vanessa Maria Graber and I co-led a volunteer-driven project that’s part of the Online News Association’s Community Circles, virtual discussion and project groups that mobilize ONA members to tackle a journalism topic of shared interest. Our circle’s focus was on serving underrepresented communities, so a team of more than a dozen engagement journalists met regularly to create the #ONAinfoequity database.
For three months, we crowdsourced, vetted, compiled and organized relevant resources for the database, an accessible hub that helps journalists to identify gaps in information access and to make the case for community engagement to management. It’s a one-stop shop featuring articles, videos and audio that are tagged with labels for ease of searching and sorting. To accompany the database, we also created an infographic, which outlines a suggested process for how to engage underrepresented communities respectfully and thoughtfully.
It was one of the most fun and productive collaboration experiences I’ve ever had, and after reflecting on the experience, I think these were the reasons why:
We had a clear timeframe for the project from the outset, so volunteers knew how much time they had to invest and that it wouldn’t drag on forever.
Our meetings were tight at 30 minutes each, which incentivized team members to be productive from the get-go, rather than waste time.
Early on, we collectively decided on a clear deliverable, which was the database.
There was a leadership team — Vanessa and I — that was responsible for project management and communications, so volunteers knew exactly who to go to if they had questions or concerns.
Although there was a leadership team, we had a flat hierarchy and collaborative framework that enabled everyone’s voices to be heard and contributions to be recognized.
Most importantly, the volunteers were all knowledgeable, collaborative, good-humoured and mission-focused engagement journalists who were committed to seeing the project through to the end.
Tell me: What are your best practices and tips for productive collaboration?
You’re invited
I’m excited to announce that I just launched an online community for journalism innovators and entrepreneurs in Canada and beyond. My goal is to convene like-minded media-makers to pool their knowledge and resources, so we can build better news products and ultimately, a better future for journalism around the world.
Join The Other Wave Facebook group here. The sky's the limit, so please share your media innovations in editorial, business, tech and more!
Shout-outs
Many thanks to Journalists for Human Rights executive director Rachel Pulfer for becoming one of The Other Wave’s newest monthly paying supporters.
In my community
Carleton University journalism professor Matthew Pearson interviewed me about emerging business models and other media innovations on his podcast, Delivering Journalism. I had a blast during our wide-ranging conversation, which also touches on the infamous pottery wheel scene from Ghost.
Video of a USC Annenberg panel on which I spoke, “Global conversation on how the U.S. election is being explained to the world,” just came out.
I loved this American Press Institute essay about how one small-town paper is applying conflict mediation skills to its opinion content to model constructive dialogue between disparate groups. Tactics include: offering newsroom training in “looping,” dedicating your opinion section to local issues and reducing national political content.
As Ryerson University’s newest journalism instructors, Jacky Habib, Ivan Semeniuk, Rudy Lee and I were featured in the School of Journalism’s latest newsletter.
Cool stuff I like
One silver lining of the pandemic for me was meeting Masuma Ahuja, a trailblazing journalist whose new book, Girlhood: Teens around the World in Their Own Voices, comes out on Feb. 9. In the book, 30 teens from 27 countries share their coming-of-age stories using diary entries and photos.
Since coming across his channel in early 2020, D’Angelo Wallace has become my favourite YouTuber to watch because of his easy confidence, quick wit and incisive takedowns that hint at new ways of delivering investigative journalism.
File this one under “Cool stuff I like that was almost ruined by a corporation.” Mike Myers, why did you let Uber sully the good name of Wayne’s World (my all-time favourite comedy movie)? What’s next — promoting Noah’s Arcade?!
Olivia Wilde and Emerald Fennell directed Booksmart and Promising Young Woman, respectively, two of the most memorable films I’ve recently watched because they focus on female friendships as a core love story. The directors discuss learning to trust their instincts and banning “assholes” from their sets in this delightful Variety video.
Last thought
Rest is also resistance.
- Cierra Hinton, my fellow coach in the Facebook Journalism Project’s Sustainability Accelerator and Scalawag Magazine’s executive director and publisher, shared this essential reminder at a recent accelerator session.
How you can support The Other Wave
My professional mission has always been to support the global movement towards more thoughtful, impactful news coverage, and all the ways that manifests. If The Other Wave gets you to think even a little differently about journalism, especially in Canada, then I will have accomplished what I set out to do. And if TOW gets you to take action and support Canadian media outlets — especially ones that strive to be innovative and inclusive — I will have exceeded my expectations.
If my values and goals resonate with you, please consider supporting fiercely independent media analysis that fills in gaps in coverage of the Canadian journalism landscape. How? Feel free to provide feedback, pass along resources, donate money or simply share this newsletter with your friends.
See ya in 2 weeks,
Anita