Program

Audience Community: Engaging non-English speakers

April 24, 2024

The Audience Community of Practice met on May 16 for a discussion on audience-building among non-English speakers, including moving beyond translation, implications for SEO, social media strategy, staffing, and more. The conversation was led by Nicolás Ríos, audience and community director at Documented, a New York-based digital news site covering immigrants and the policies impacting their lives.

Their approach, which Nico refers to as a “virtuous cycle,” highlights the potent influence of community-driven journalism. Here, the insights gained from audience research and engagement inform content creation, fostering greater impact and trust.

They achieve this by hiring community correspondents who are members of the communities they are targeting to not only report but also manage communication channels such as WhatsApp, WeChat, and Nextdoor to build direct relationships and gather insights. 

From these community interactions, Documented is able to identify needs and create resource guides. Examples of these in the past have included guides on accessing COVID-19 testing or navigating government services. These guides are continuously updated based on ongoing conversations with community members. 

By embracing audience research and community involvement, the Documented team tailors their content and services effectively for maximum relevance and impact, addressing the shortcomings of traditional news coverage in meeting the needs of the communities they serve, thus filling a crucial gap in news coverage and establishing their newsrooms as a trusted source of information for immigrant communities in New York City.

Nico recognizes the challenges of adopting this approach in newsrooms where traditional editorial structures can sometimes clash with community-driven approaches. He recommended fostering collaborations with partner organizations.  Documented itself has collaborated with organizations like Sembra Media and Meta to expand their reach and gain access to platform APIs and to leverage social media advertising.

To get internal buy-in, Nico and his team have strategically engaged in regular communication and training sessions to transparently disclose all aspects of their community-driven process to reporters and editorial staff, including the questions they ask, how answers are analyzed, and the recommendations derived. They provide concrete data and metrics in regular analytics reports to the editorial team, highlighting the performance and success of community-driven articles, such as increased engagement and outcomes on specific communities. Additionally, they actively share impact which they track via anecdotal instances of community feedback and appreciation.

Recently, Nico has been championing the integration of community representation at the newsroom leadership level by advocating for the creation of a dedicated role to represent community interests in editorial decision-making. This initiative requires some organizational restructuring to ensure that audience and community teams are seamlessly integrated into the editorial structure, rather than being treated as separate entities.

You can read more on the work Documented is doing here.