ONA Weekly #345: How Journalists Can Ensure Information Equity

By on February 3, 2021

   

How journalists can ensure information equity

New from ONA Community Circles: The #ONAinfoequity database is a one-stop shop of guides for journalists to engage communities that are underrepresented in media and ensure equitable access to information. Free Press’ Vanessa Maria Graber and ONA Board member Anita Li led over a dozen journalists to collaborate on this project. We’re excited to share this new database, along with a step-by-step suggested process for defining your engagement strategy for underrepresented communities so you can make the most of the resources collected here. Explore the database, share with your colleagues and tell us how you’re using it.

ONA Board elects new officers

Join us in congratulating Rodney Gibbs, Executive Director, RevLab at The Texas Tribune, and Charo Henríquez, Editor, Newsroom Development and Support at The New York Times, on their new roles as ONA Board Treasurer and Secretary, respectively. As Treasurer and Secretary, they will hold office for one year. ONA Board President Shazna Nessa and Vice President David Smydra are serving the second of their two-year terms.

Board leadership is key to achieving ONA’s mission to inspire and support innovation and excellence in digital journalism. Thank you for your service!

Align cross-functional teams to build effective digital products

Every news product leader is looking for that sweet spot between desirability, feasibility and viability. Getting there requires understanding who needs to be involved and how. It could include editorial, design, marketing, analytics and more. Investing time upfront to define roles and responsibilities across the relevant functions is crucial. To take it further, here’s an idea: have each person on the team do the exercise of defining their job and everyone else’s job on a particular product. When you regroup, you will see quickly where the team is not aligned and can adjust before you get too far into the product development process.

Dig deeper: A Balanced Diet for Digital Products: Cross-Functional Teams and Stakeholder “Food Groups” (2019) — audio recording and slides

  • Featured experts: Kellen Henry, Becky Pallack
  • Try this, too: Help your team communicate product value with this mad lib: With (product name), you can reach (number) (audience type, customer type) with (type of ad position) and get (how you will measure success) for only (price per time period).

Career opportunities

ONA’s Career Center is an excellent resource for jobs, fellowships and internships in digital journalism. Recent postings include:

On our radar

The radar is now open for suggestions. Have you written or read a piece lately that would benefit others in journalism? We’re interested in sharing insights on trends, how-to guides, lessons from a project and other inspiration for innovation in digital journalism.

P.S. from the ONA team

“There will never be a time where you’ll say, ‘Ooh, good thing we’re done. We achieved diversity. Let’s move on to the next thing.’ We’re really looking at this as a spectrum. There are areas where you continually want to move toward, but there really is no finish line.”