This weekly Trust Tips newsletter shares quick, actionable tips for how journalists can earn and sustain trust. Subscribe to get it in your inbox at trustingnews.org/newsletter.
How we worked alongside you to build trust this year
This post was last updated on Jan. 10, 2024.
Today’s a rare newsletter where you’ll hear from us all on the Trusting News team.
Our team gathered in person (another rarity!) in September, and we realized that, like many newsrooms, we are constantly moving forward at a fast pace and don’t do nearly a good enough job of looking back and sharing the impact we’ve had, or sharing the ongoing (evergreen!) resources and opportunities we have for newsrooms.
So, as we come to the end of another year, we wanted to take a beat from our regular programming to reflect on the work we’ve accomplished in 2023 and share more of where we’re headed in 2024.
Thanks for helping us have such a big impact
This has been a significantly different year for our organization. We focused less on running newsroom partnership programs and hosting individualized newsroom trainings and focused more on expanding the overall footprint and reach of Trusting News. That was exciting for us as it meant we grew our trainings and systemized some of our foundational strategies and resources for newsrooms.
Some things we feel especially proud of:
- We more than doubled the number of journalists we trained, through both online trainings and conference sessions. In total, we had attendance of more than 2,000 at our sessions.
- We launched Trust Kits, which are step-by-step guides that help newsrooms work through our most foundational strategies. So far we’ve published 13 Trust Kits aimed at journalists and four specifically for journalism educators.
- We invested more in collaborating with other great journalism support organizations (around 20 in total!). Some of these collaborations included: creating video trainings for IRE; leading the Advancing Democracy fellowship program alongside Hearken and Solutions Journalism; and testing revenue language with News Revenue Hub.
- We took some of the advice we give newsrooms and revamped our entire Trusting News website to better explain our goals, mission and processes and make it easier for journalists and newsrooms to plug into our work.
- We further evolved our teaching around Dimensions of Difference and creating newsroom cultures that value dissent. (That work continues to grow alongside Eve Pearlman of Spaceship Media, the co-creator of Dimensions.) We’re especially grateful for the time we’ve spent working with individual newsrooms on these topics.
- We shared results of what we’re learning alongside research partners: In collaboration with the University of Georgia, we found transparency is most effective when woven into stories; Dr. Sue Robinson examined the impact trainings had on helping newsrooms reimagine political coverage. (Read more about the research we’ve invested in here.)
We’re looking forward to 2024
Joy Mayer, Director: As we head into another election year, it’s especially urgent that we dive into how newsrooms too often become echo chambers that prevent journalists from understanding their complex, diverse communities. Look for more ways to work with us on how newsroom meetings, processes and conversations can reflect a wide range of the public’s experiences and values.
Lynn Walsh, Assistant Director: I am looking forward to continuing to see how technology and news products (including AI) can be helpful tools for building trust. I also am looking forward to working with journalists on building trust by talking publicly about how they use technology.
Mollie Muchna, Project Manager: Community is my favorite part of journalism, so I’m excited to see so many journalists and newsrooms leaning into collaboration ahead of another election year. At Trusting News, we’ve been thinking about how we can help foster this connection and collaboration among journalists — both internally in newsrooms and across the industry. We have plans to continue building our internal network of newsrooms and connect more journalists to one another. Stay tuned!
Join us in our mission to build trust
Whatever your newsroom priorities (growing your subscribers and revenue, reaching younger and more diverse communities, covering the 2024 elections) we can almost guarantee increasing trust with your audience will be a key component in reaching those goals.
We’ve laid out a lot of different ways you can engage with us and our team on our new training and resources webpage. As more specific training opportunities come up this year, we’ll be sure to post them on our website and share in this newsletter.
But, like we often say, we truly LOVE to hear from you – whether about the challenges your newsroom is facing or seeing examples of the cool work you’ve been doing. Don’t hesitate to get in touch, even just to say hi! Reply to this email, or find us on LinkedIn and X/Twitter.
Help us help you
Like many journalism support organizations, most of our annual budget comes through philanthropy. If you have ideas about who is investing in the ability of newsrooms to take ownership over the crisis of trust — in service of healthy communities and democracy — please let us know.
Also, if your newsroom is applying for grant funding to deepen or expand your work, think about whether our customized support could help you understand your community and reach your goals. We love to embed in newsrooms’ work and can help you figure out how to add our team’s support to your grant application.
Happy holidays
Our team is taking a break for the next two weeks, and Trust Tips will be back in your inbox on Jan. 9.
Thank you, as always, for reading. The number of subscribers to this newsletter and the open rate both continually grew this year, which we hope is a sign that you’re finding it useful! But we’re always eager to hear any ideas or thoughts for how we can better support journalists like you — whether in our newsletter or beyond.
Another big thank you to those of you who are committed to demonstrating credibility and earning trust. Your willingness to invest in the work does not go unnoticed, and it gives us a lot to look forward to.
Thanks for reading, and happy holidays!
The Trusting News team (Joy, Lynn, Mollie)
Dec. 19, 2023
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. Subscribe to our Trust Tips newsletter. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook. Read more about our work at TrustingNews.org.
Director Joy Mayer (she/her) founded Trusting News in 2016 after a 20-year career in newsrooms and teaching. She spent 12 years at the Missouri School of Journalism, where she created an audience engagement curriculum and a community outreach team in the newsroom of the Columbia Missourian and also taught web design and print design. She lives in Sarasota, Florida, and can be reached at joy@TrustingNews.org or on Twitter @mayerjoy.
Assistant director Lynn Walsh (she/her) is an Emmy award-winning journalist who has worked in investigative journalism at the national level and locally in California, Ohio, Texas and Florida. She is the former Ethics Chair for the Society of Professional Journalists and a past national president for the organization. Based in San Diego, Lynn is also an adjunct professor and freelance journalist. She can be reached at lynn@TrustingNews.org and on Twitter @lwalsh.
Project manager Mollie Muchna (she/her) has spent the last 10 years working in audience and engagement journalism in local newsrooms across the Southwest. She lives in Tucson, Arizona, where she is also an adjunct professor at the University of Arizona’s School of Journalism. She can be reached at mollie@trustingnews.org and on Twitter @molliemuchna.
