How a local news lab co-designed editorial meetings with audiences

El Tímpano is a local reporting lab in Oakland, California, that serves Latino immigrants in the community. It launched in 2018 after working with the Listening Post Collective for nine months to meet with non-English-speaking Latino immigrant residents in Oakland, learn what issues are important to them, and map information needs and assets.

Since its launch, El Tímpano has continued to work with community members on participatory reporting projects and to create feedback loops for deep listening. It wanted more.

In 2019, El Tímpano founder Madeleine Bair and design strategist Sophie Lan Hou—with the support of Membership Puzzle Project—formed a community advisory board to more regularly bring in audience insights.

Things did not exactly as planned. As Bair writes:

[A] funny thing happens when you listen deeply to your community: plans change. It turns out co-designing and joining a community advisory board was a bigger ask than our audience members were ready for at this time.

In this post, Bair outlines how El Tímpano created a “space where we could co-design without demanding a larger commitment than our audience members could or wanted to offer at that time.”

Read on for a breakdown of logistics and El Tímpano’s change of course, how they have instead co-designed editorial meetings with community members so that anybody can join in, surface and discuss issues important to them—regardless of how often they’re able to participate.