2017 People-Powered Publishing Conference #PPPC17

Conference session descriptions and the session schedule are now available!

There’s no question that the field of journalism faces historic changes and challenges. After the results of the 2016 election took so many news outlets by surprise, it’s no longer possible to ignore the reality that the relationship between the media and the American public needs work. But we’re not starting from square one: civic-minded media innovators across the country are already pursuing projects that put listening, dialogue, and collaboration front and center.

In partnership with Columbia College Chicago, Hearken, City Bureau, Groundsource, and the Crowd-Powered News Network, Illinois Humanities is bringing those people together at the People-Powered Publishing Conference.

This conference is about making connections, working through ideas and sharing resources. It’s also a space for practitioners across sectors to start doing new things together.

We want you to join us if you’re a seasoned engagement reporter ready to share what you’ve learned. We want you to join us if you’re a journalist trying to make a case for engagement to your bosses, or if you’ve got a knotty engagement challenge you need help cracking. If you’re a member of a community organization that’s collaborated with your local media – or if you have a collaboration idea and you’re trying to make it real – this conference is for you too.

#PPPC17

Information for Attendees

Venue and Lodging

All conference events will take place in one of two buildings on the Columbia College Chicago campus. 1104 S. Wabash Ave is home base for registration, meals and most sessions; some sessions will also take place at 600 S. Michigan, about a 10-minute walk north. Check the session list for specific session locations.

Lodging is available at a variety of price points within walking distance of the conference. A few of the closest options are listed below. Please note that Illinois Humanities cannot guarantee rates or availability.

Closer:

Best Western Grant Park
1100 S. Michigan Ave (<0.1 mi from venue)

Essex Inn
800 S. Michigan Ave (0.2 mi from venue)

Hilton Chicago
720 S. Michigan Ave. (0.3 mi from venue)

Lower rates:

Travelodge Hotel Downtown Chicago
65 E. Harrison St. (0.4 mi from venue)

Congress Plaza Hotel
520 S. Michigan Ave. (0.5 mi from venue)

Clinics

Clinics are open to all attendees, but advance sign-up is required. Click here to sign up.

It’s a time of self-reflection in the journalism industry, and in part, we’re bringing engagement practitioners together to think about the big ideas that guide their work. We’ll talk about what effective, equitable community collaboration looks like, and how it might shape the future of journalism and our shared civic life.

At the same time, we aim to provide a space where attendees can develop practical knowledge, support one another’s work, and start building things together: We want you to leave with actionable ideas you didn’t have when you came in and concrete steps you can take once you return to your organization.

That’s why, in addition to traditional conference sessions, we’re holding a series of interactive “clinics.” Facilitated by experienced leaders in engagement journalism, these sessions will give you a chance to dig more deeply into a question or challenge you’re working on. Drawing on the collective expertise of the group, facilitators will help you and the other attendees collaboratively refine your strategies, discover new resources, and identify opportunities to work together.

Although the schedule corresponds loosely with different stages of development an engagement project might go through, the clinic track isn’t meant to be an all-or-nothing commitment. We’ve designed them so you can participate in as many or few of them as you like, and still benefit – think of them as zeroing in on some of the “building blocks” of a successful engagement project.

These clinics are open to everyone who’s registered for the conference, but advance sign-up is required and space is limited. We’re capping attendance to keep things conversational, and we also want facilitators to have a sense of who’s in the room so they can hit the ground running.

If you’d like to attend a clinic, we simply ask that you sign up and tell us a little bit about something you’re working on (or have worked on recently) that you’d like to talk about with the group. Click here to sign up for a clinic.

Clinic Schedule

1. Researching and planning your engagement-driven project: who, how, why?

Wednesday, 9:45 AM-11:45 AM

Facilitators:
Terry Parris, Jr.
Deputy Editor, Engagement, ProPublica

Adriana Gallardo
Engagement Reporter, ProPublica

Ariana Tobin
Engagement Reporter, ProPublica

Logan Jaffe
Engagement Reporter, ProPublica Illinois

The “right” audience isn’t always the biggest, and finding that right audience starts with research. Drawing on ProPublica’s experiences with crowd-powered investigative reporting, we’ll explore tools and strategies for figuring out who’s most important to reach and how to reach them.

2. Engaging and collaborating with your audience before you hit publish

Wednesday, 12:30 PM-2:30 PM

Facilitators:
Jennifer Brandel
CEO and Co-Founder, Hearken

Ellen Mayer
Engagement Consultant, Hearken

In this session we’ll reimagine the editorial process (from pitch to publish) to include the public as much as possible. We’ll discuss strategies for soliciting audience input, reporting and producing with the public, and incorporating community voices in the final product.

3. Leveraging tools for engagement: what’s out there, and how can you make it work for you?

Thursday, 9:00-11:00 AM

Facilitator:
Andrew Haeg
CEO, GroundSource

There are lots of great tech tools for engagement out there, but they’re only useful if you have the right mindset. In this session, we’ll talk about how to approach community-building and engagement so engagement tools will supercharge your work — instead of leaving you floundering and frustrated.

4. Building a sustainable community: how can face-to-face engagement drive more responsive reporting?

Thursday, 12:00 PM-2:00 PM

Facilitators:
Darryl Holliday
Editorial Director, City Bureau

Andrea Hart
Community Director, City Bureau

We’ll explore lessons learned from our “Public Newsroom,” the creation of live events built around journalistic production and building a long-term community on our collaborative reporting model in this session. Bring your questions, challenges and civic journalism successes.

Sessions

Session List

Session Schedule

Tips for proposing a session

In the spirit of this conference’s focus on strategy and practice, we’re seeking session proposals that give attendees something they can make and/or take away and apply to their work. This doesn’t necessarily mean you have to lead a workshop – case studies and theory-focused conversations can have practical value, too. But if you’re proposing one of those, we encourage you to think creatively about how you might incorporate concrete take-aways. For example, Hearken developed this engagement checklist to hand out at the end of conference sessions.
The lessons you’ve learned in your own work are valuable, but we encourage you to think about how you can share those lessons with your audience in a way that helps them address their own challenges directly. Sessions should be conversational and collaborative, and the amount of time dedicated to lecture should be limited.
This is a conference about community engagement. If you’re a media/journalism professional, we strongly encourage you to consider including community partners or collaborators from outside the profession.

A limited amount of travel funding is available for session presenters. While we will make every effort to minimize the financial burden of attending the conference for all presenters, travel funding priority will be given to sessions that include presenters from outside the journalism profession, particularly members of historically marginalized or underrepresented groups.

Engagement Challenge Award

Congratulations to Free Street Theater’s Coya Paz, first-ever winner of ProPublica Illinois and Illinois Humanities’ Engagement Challenge Award! Read more about the project here.

About the Award:

A successful proposal will identify a challenge that relates to one or more of the themes below, and suggest a path to helping ProPublica Illinois address that challenge. Is it an engagement strategy to build trust? A digital or social-media tool to connect people? A series of in-person events? Are you going to suggest we buy a van and travel around the state? A combination of all these things? Well, that’s up to you.

Previous experience in journalism is not strictly required. However, a successful application will address, as specifically as possible, what communities are affected by, and may be involved in, the challenge/solution you propose, and how you personally relate to that community.

Themes include:

Bridging urban, suburban and rural communities; connecting Chicagoland with communities throughout Illinois around shared interests, issues, or information;
Engaging communities that reflect the diversity of Illinois residents. This could be understood broadly: bridging racial, economic, ideological, cultural and generational divides, within and across communities, or by focusing on a specific community;
Building trust with communities as a new investigative media entity in the state and broadening ProPublica Illinois’ audience by including the communities it reports on in the reporting process;

This award is intended to support the development of a prototype project or initiative that could become a key component of the overall engagement strategy being developed by ProPublica Illinois’ engagement reporter and ProPublica’s engagement team. The challenge winner will receive guidance from ProPublica’s engagement editor and the ProPublica Illinois engagement reporter, as well as Illinois Humanities, to develop and execute the project over approximately six months.

Conference Co-presenters

Hearken is an audience-driven model and platform enabling newsrooms to meaningfully engage the public throughout the reporting process, resulting in original, relevant and high-performing content.

GroundSource is a community engagement platform that powers direct, two-way conversations between newsrooms and the communities they serve, to gather on-the-ground perspectives and build lasting relationships.

City Bureau is a newsroom and journalism training lab that seeks to regenerate civic media ecosystems within historically disenfranchised and underreported neighborhoods, and to create a sustainable pipeline of innovative and locally responsive reporting on the city’s South and West sides.

The Crowd-Powered News Network is a group of media professionals and others who are actively engaging communities — both online and offline — in the creation of journalism. It is a place to share practical information about community outreach, experimental storytelling, new technologies, job opportunities, and more.

Challenge Award Partner

ProPublica Illinois is a non-profit newsroom focused on investigative journalism in the public interest. It is the first state-level expansion of ProPublica, headquartered in New York City.

Venue Partner

Columbia College Chicago logo

This conference is made possible in part by our partners and hosts at Columbia College Chicago, an international leader and recognized pioneer in arts and media education.

This event is supported in part by the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.

This event is sponsored in part by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, which works to strengthen American democracy by informing, engaging and activating Americans through deep investments in independent journalism and media.

For more information, please contact Simon Nyi.

IL Humanities

Past Event