Community news roles: A framework for how people keep their communities informed
Journalism + Design Lab,The strength of your local news ecosystem isn’t dependent just on the journalists in your community. Anyone can act journalistically to help keep their neighbors informed.
This framework from the Journalism + Design Lab outlines roles anyone can undertake, whether on their own or in partnership with a news organization, to spread information and strengthen their community’s well-being:
- Facilitating
- Documenting
- Commenting
- Inquiring
- Sensemaking
- Amplfying
- Navigating
- Enabling
“Our goal with this framework is to broaden the definition of who contributes to local news ecosystems, and ask: how might local newsrooms, community colleges, and other civic institutions better enable more people to responsibly and ethically perform these journalistic functions?” the J+D Lab team writes.
If you have examples of these roles in your community or thoughts on the framework, you’re encouraged to share them with the J+D Lab team.