A local newsletter workflow to improve information equity in your community
A local newsletter workflow to improve information equity in your community
SIMON GALPERIN · SEPTEMBER 30, 2020
The Bloomfield Information Project is the Community Info Coop’s public service journalism lab in Bloomfield, New Jersey. It’s a town of 50,000 people that some may call a “news desert”, or place where there isn’t enough local news for and about the community.
And if you count local news articles, that’s mostly true. There are few stories with multiple sources being written by journalists reporting what’s happening in and around Bloomfield. But people and organizations are still sharing useful news and information.
The trouble is it doesn’t reach people consistently. Between Facebook groups, Instagram stories, press releases, Facebook pages, Nextdoor groups, posts that are just images, video updates, English-only text, and the few local news articles that may be relevant – there’s no way for people to effectively stay up-to-date on what’s happening where they live.
But that’s a service local news and community organizations can provide.
In Bloomfield, our local news website, daily newsletter, and social media channels are powered by a process we call a “news harvest.”
Modeled after food pantries, the news harvest collects and redistributes news and information from dozens of sources to people across the community.
We developed this technology-assisted workflow based on feedback we received at our first listening session in 2019. Attendees told us that news and information in town is “pieces here, pieces there,” with no single reliable source of information. So we started our local news service with a product to meet that need.
We source news and information from CrowdTangle, RSS, email (like newsletters or press releases), and a handful of websites (government, community, and news). We produce headline-length summaries in Google Sheets for redistribution. Zapier picks up these news items and publishes them on our WordPress site, prepares a draft of our newsletter in MailChimp, and pushes relevant news items to social channels like Twitter and Instagram.
Through this process we are…
Enabling information equity in the community by providing convenient and effective access to relevant news and information
Creating a functional alternative to social media for news consumers who want to stay up-to-date but want to avoid the negative effects of social media use
Making community news and information more discoverable on search
Serving as a clearinghouse for information, facilitating the exchange of local news and information in the public interest
Centering listening in our daily workflows
Building a foundation for revenue and program development
It’s as easy as adding text to a spreadsheet. All in two hours a day – after some initial setup.
And it could take even less time depending on the amount of content you’re reviewing and sharing.
We review close to 80 pieces of content daily and share anywhere from 15-18 curated links. Other things that take time include digging for higher quality content on a slow day, rewriting headlines to maximize news value, responding to threads on social media, and relaying relevant news items to particular people or organizations.
Upcoming additions to the news harvest include translation to enable minimally viable service to Spanish speakers and SMS integration to increase our reach and utility.
Our goal is to pair our SMS and email channels into weekly community calls for news and questions. From there, we will train and pay community members to report on issues people raise and questions they ask.
We hope this kickstarts cycles of community news production that will begin restoring our news desert.
Want to try this workflow where you live? We're happy to help you get set up. Reach us at connect@infodistricts.org.