On Saturday, April 7th, the New England News Forum held its first conference in Lowell Massachusetts. After registration, coffee and initial networking, the participants headed off to several different breakout sessions. The first session I attended was “Letting the Public into the newsroom: Joining, shaping the conversation.”

The panel was made up of Steve Fox, who is working with newassignment.net, Rory O’Connor and Mike LaBonte who are hosts on NewsTrust and Jon Greenberg of New Hampshire Public Radio.

I’ve been a volunteer host on NewsTrust for quite a while and have been doing some paid freelance programming for them, so I’m well acquainted with NewsTrust. I had a wonderful discussion with Jon about what NHPR is setting up for covering the New Hampshire primary during the networking prior to the session, and while I hadn’t met Steve Fox before, I’ve been following newassignment.net very closely. I’ve written about it on my blog, in particular about their planned collaboration with Huffington Post.

The session started off by going around the room and everyone introducing themselves. There were editors, producers, professors, and wonderfully wise group in the audience, the sort of audience that is a good reminder of why it is so important to invite the public into the newsroom.

During the introductions, Arnie Arnesen, of Political Chowder framed the discussion very nicely with the question, “How to raise the level of curiosity in our public discourse?” Jon Greenberg spoke to this a little in terms of touching on how news is relevant to the lives of the readers.

With the introductions and initial framing out of the way, we launched into learning more about newassignment.net, NewsTrust and NHPR’s Public Insight Network.

Steve started off by talking about newassignment.net and posing the question, “Are bloggers journalists? Are journalists journalists? Are crowds journalists?” He spoke finding that a lot of people don’t understand how complicated it is to be a journalist. It seems to be a recurring theme, from my experiences blogging the Libby trial, the experiences of many of us as we become involved in NewsTrust, and the experiences of the folks at newassignment.net. There is a lot that goes into writing, or even appreciating good journalism. Efforts like newassignment.net and NewsTrust are providing an important service in helping people become more media literate, more media savvy, and in understanding all that goes into writing a story.

Steve spoke about this when he commented that people working as editors at newassignment.net are finding themselves taking on more of a mentoring role and less of a line editing role. Perhaps this, as opposed to the crowd sourced journalism, or the reviews of quality journalism will end up being one of the most important benefits of projects like newassignment.net and NewsTrust.

Rory and Mike then spoke about NewsTrust. The discussion centered around how NewsTrust worked, efforts made to protect the system from being gamed, and research showing that regular people were very effective in spotting quality journalism. There was a lot of interest in this and it took up a large amount of the time available.

Jon then spoke about the role of public insight in journalism. He raised the questions, “What is on the news agenda? How do we get more citizen input in shaping the stories?” He spoke about the efforts in Minnesota, and then went on to describe details of what is now being done in New Hampshire.

He spoke about the initial survey they did on how people have seen aging affect what is happening in their workplace and community. He mentioned promoting this extensively on the air, to the point where people started complaining. In the end, they had around 160 people participate in the survey from people in their 30s to people in their 80s.

He spoke about the efforts to reach out to people, to stay in touch with them, and to build a relationship that can be drawn upon for future surveys. He spoke a little about the plans for expanding on the public insight model in coverage of the New Hampshire primaries.

At one point, Mike LaBonte, who is not a media activist, was asked why he became involved with NewsTrust. Why didn’t he simply send letters to the editors all along?

It seems as if a theme from all of the presentations provides the key to what got Mike and others more involved in the journalistic process. They were asked. Newassignement.net, NewsTrust, and all the public insight efforts, such as those illustrated by the New Hampshire Public Radio efforts are driven by these groups going out and asking more people to get more involved.

Perhaps that was the most important part of the discussion. It isn’t about letting people into the Newsroom, it is about inviting them in.

(Cross posted at Media Channel)