Sometimes, it’s hard to tell if what you do actually matters. This feels especially true in journalism, as newspapers continue to close, misinformation is normalized, and economic pressures put a financial strain on individuals and the city. Chicago is in a tough spot. So knowing the issues we face, does our work matter?
That’s where my job comes in. As the senior director of audience engagement, I lead a team that keeps a pulse on the community, informs the newsroom of its needs and works with editors and reporters to format, display and share information online in a way that allows people to use it in their lives.
Here’s a peek into how we think about our evolving role in journalism, and two projects I can say, through data, made a difference this year.
Chicago School Board Election Voter Guide
This fall, Chicago voted for its first elected school board. The Sun-Times and WBEZ education team were on top of the latest developments but knew they needed to take a thoughtful approach to educating voters about this historic moment. In April, we began talking about who would use the voter guide, what type of information they needed and how they would use that information to make an informed choice.
We imagined a busy parent trying to get their kids to school, then heading to work, and making dinner in the evening, while trying to accomplish every other life task in between. This person wants to make the best choice for their kid’s future, but they need a simple way to sift through the information and see which candidates match their personal values.
To better understand this voter, we also sent out a survey asking people what issues mattered most to them and what questions they had for the candidates. The education, engagement and interactives team, along with our reporting partner, Chalkbeat, used this information to build our School Board Voter Guide, which our La Voz team also translated into Spanish.
In the end, over 600,000 people in the city either used our voter guide, read our candidates questionnaires and/or followed our Chicago school board coverage.
While this is a notable number, my favorite metric for success is from a Chicago Reddit thread, where one user asked for advice on how to decide on a candidate. The most popular response came from the user nimblesunshine, who shared our guide and said, “I feel like [the voter guide] was a great starting place in understanding their perspectives.”
This is why information and guides from journalists are so important. We’re not in the business of telling you what to think. Ultimately, we want to give you the information you need to make the best choice for yourself.
Connecting young Chicagoans to local news
This year, we participated in a program with the Northwestern Medill School of Journalism called the Local News Accelerator. Our project was to build a stronger relationship with young Chicagoans, ages 18 to 24, by publishing our news on platforms and in a format they would read, watch and share. As a daily print newspaper with finite resources, this is harder than it may sound.
To help guide the newsroom, a Medill student fellow interviewed young people around Chicago and asked them where they get their news and how they use our reporting in their everyday life. Unsurprisingly, many young people are on TikTok. But we also found that when they see a suspicious story on TikTok or in a group text with family and friends, some will go directly to the Sun-Times to verify whether the news is true. While the spread of misinformation is discouraging, young people wanting to seek out the truth themselves was an exciting finding.
As a newsroom we doubled down on our TikTok efforts, launched a Reddit account and even experimented with text messaging during the Democratic National Convention with funding and support from the Alliance for Trust in Media. Through these efforts, we grew our 18-24 audience on social media by 22% and young website visitors by 45%.
Once again though, numbers only tell a small part of the larger story.
While at a media party for the Democratic National Convention, I struck up a conversation with May Joy Sakwa taking selfies on Navy Pier as the Chicago skyline twinkled in the background. This 23-year-old had just finished her volunteer shift, and when I told her I worked for the Sun-Times she squealed. She told me she had just got a text message from us.
Sakwa grew up in Garfield Park and Arlington Heights and is studying political science. The native Chicagoan wanted to be a part of this consequential political moment in our city and found out she could volunteer from a Sun-Times article.
As the news industry continues to face hurdles, and people in power attack our relevance, I think about this moment on Navy Pier. A young Chicagoan turning to her local newspaper to influence her friends, stay informed as part of her studies and participate in her community.
This is how we make a difference.