If you don’t answer basic questions about how you operate, your audience will make their own assumptions — and they’re likely to be inaccurate and unflattering.
Copy this simple way to answer the public’s questions about your journalism
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There’s a simple idea that encapsulates many of the basics of what we at Trusting News implore journalists to adopt: Create an FAQ answering the public’s questions about your work. It’s a way to focus on actual audience perceptions and curiosities and tell your own story.
To make it effective:
- Base it on what people *actually* want to know, and use language they use.
- Make it easy to find, and link to it from content on all your channels as a matter of routine.
You might have heard us talk about an FAQ before, and we don’t mean to be repetitive. But not very many of you are doing it. (If you are, please send me an example!) So we’re revisiting the idea today through an updated example from journalists who participated in a daylong workshop with us recently, hosted by the Southwest Michigan Journalism Collaborative.
NowKalamazoo is a nonprofit news outlet that got its start in 2019. The team’s About section includes information about their mission and values, their history, their staff and more. But what I want to draw your attention to today is their Frequently Asked Questions page. Its recent revamp — largely motivated by their Trusting News training — was led by Managing Editor Kristanitie May.
Ben Jones, who manages the team’s tech and newsletters, said this when I asked why they’ve invested in the FAQ:
“It’s important to have a single source where we can address fundamental questions of how we operate. Some folks may stumble on it or even go looking for it, but more importantly, it’s something we can point people to if they want to know what our agenda is.”
We’ve written before about why we love this format: An FAQ can be less formal than policies or history. It’s easy to add or modify sections (sometimes without layers of approval). And it often allows for anchor links to each section. That means if someone asks a specific question, you can link right to that specific answer.
Let’s take a look at NowKalamazoo’s FAQ through the lens of the tips I shared above. Here are the top questions.
These questions feel like something your neighbor would ask when he finds out what you do for a living, or your aunt would ask to better understand why you’re excited about your job. They’re not jargony. They weren’t written by corporate bosses or a marketing department, and they wouldn’t appear in a journalism textbook.
Some of the questions (what are you? who owns you?) are friendlier ways to say things that are often addressed in About sections already.
But some of these questions are ones that should be addressed and usually aren’t:
- How do you make money?
- Are you biased?
- How do you choose which stories to publish?
- How do you decide who to quote?
- Do you publish fake news?
- Do you pay your staff?
We know people are curious about these things? Why do journalists not explain them? (Seriously, why? If there are roadblocks preventing it — besides being busy, which I definitely understand — let me know what they are.)
Make it easy to find, and link to it from content on all your channels as a matter of routine.
The first step is getting this information on the record. The next is driving attention to it and connecting it to day-to-day coverage.
Let’s take one question and talk about where the information could go: How do you decide who to quote? Your FAQ will articulate a general answer to that question. Here’s an excerpt from NowKalamazoo’s answer:
We need to seek out expertise and authority to inform our reporting, so you will see those types of sources in NowKalamazoo’s journalism. We also value lived experience and direct engagement. So instead of just quoting the elected official and assuming they’re tuned in to the sentiments of her constituents, we’ll track down those residents, the ones who are actually living through the story.
We insist on representation. That means that the frequency with which we quote college students versus working grandmothers should match the relative proportion of those groups in Kalamazoo County’s population. The same is true of race and gender — the true make-up of our community should be reflected in the media we publish.
The real magic happens when you take that answer out for a spin in other ways. How about:
WITHIN COVERAGE: How did you decide on your sources for *this* story? What was important to you? How were you especially thoughtful or deliberative? How are you living up to your high standards and goals? In text, describe that in an editor’s note, in a box or in a parenthetical or extra sentence within the story itself. Take the same information on air or in a podcast.
WHEN YOU PLUG THOSE STORIES IN NEWSLETTERS AND ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Include a couple of sentences or an extra phrase when you’re inviting people to click a link to your story. It wraps the invitation in an extra layer of integrity and transparency. Example: “You’ll hear from the public officials, but you’ll also hear from three people directly affected by this in different ways. That’s a key part of how we tell stories.”
IN STAND-ALONE NEWSLETTER BLURBS AND SOCIAL POSTS: Stick an extra bullet point of transparency in newsletter (with a “how we operate” kind of header). Or shoot a vertical video explaining one aspect of your work. It helps people get to know you in an engaging, human way.
Please send us links!
We’d love for a future Trust Tips to share a dozen new examples of journalists’ FAQs. Send me an email share your own or your team’s FAQ.
More examples and resources:
- How to create an FAQ about your reporting
- And here’s a template to copy
- Seattle Times investigative team’s FAQ
- Excerpts from election coverage FAQs from Capital B and WITF are here, and from several other newsrooms here
At Trusting News, we learn how people decide what news to trust and turn that knowledge into actionable strategies for journalists. We train and empower journalists to take responsibility for demonstrating credibility and actively earning trust through transparency and engagement. Learn more about our work, vision and team. Subscribe to our Trust Tips newsletter. Follow us on Twitter, BlueSky and LinkedIn.
Executive Director Joy Mayer (she/her) founded Trusting News in 2016 after a 20-year career in newsrooms and teaching. She lives in Sarasota, Florida, and can be reached at joy@TrustingNews.org.
