Illustration by Rich Hauck.
At TheBurg, we’ve been having conversations. Allow me to explain.
For the past few months, we’ve been on a community listening tour, holding brief, one-on-one interviews with Harrisburg-area residents, asking them about the community and about TheBurg.
Full disclosure: These conversations are part of our “homework.”
We’ve been taking an intensive course on how to support local news through greater fundraising/philanthropy. Our listening tour is part of that course and is based upon four major questions, listed below.
I’ve found these conversations to be fascinating, so I thought I’d share some of the results with you. These talks are off the record, but I believe that I can reveal general responses without betraying any confidences.
Question 1: What are some issues affecting the community? What’s not being covered enough?
For this first question, people answered based upon how they defined “community.” Some defined it as the greater Harrisburg area, some as the city itself. Others talked about a particular neighborhood or interest group or profession.
But one thing was common. However folks defined “community,” they wanted us to cover it more. In many cases, they told us honestly of their community’s challenges and hoped we could address those with greater frequency and depth. They also wanted more coverage of people, issues, trends and triumphs.
They talked of the need to revive downtown, boost tourism, put empty storefronts back into use. They spoke of improving Harrisburg’s schools, addressing parking concerns and strengthening the city’s cultural assets.
During these conversations, we appreciated that people seemed to understand our constraints—how small we are in terms of staff and budget. And that opened up the conversation as to why we were taking this rigorous class, so that, ultimately, we could raise money to add staff and cover more of these important community stories.
Question 2: Where do people in these communities get information now?
I found responses to this question to be both affirming—and dispiriting.
On the upside, most people cited TheBurg as an important source of community news—and I don’t think they were just trying to make us feel good. On the downside, nearly everyone interviewed said that their community, however defined, relied, to some extent, on social media for news.
I say “downside” because, whatever social media is, it certainly is not a news platform. It’s a place for gossip, opinions, pictures, cat videos and, as it was originally built, a way to keep up with family and friends. It does these things reasonably well. But it was never designed for news and, therefore, is profoundly unreliable as a news service.
Some of our interview subjects said as much, expressing worry that social media had too great of an influence on people. A few complimented TheBurg for trying to foster community but added that social media often had the opposite effect, spreading disinformation and division.
“I would like to see more information on how to achieve better-functioning neighborhoods that are more peaceful and livable,” said one respondent, who was especially critical of the impact of social media on the health of our community.
Like many news outlets, TheBurg uses social media to spread the word that we’ve published a story, but it’s a total crapshoot whether you’ll ever see that story in your social media feed. Therefore, I urge all our readers to bookmark our website or sign up for our daily emails—or both—so you can read all our reporting, not dependent upon social media as an unreliable, uncaring intermediary.
Question 3: What would be a meaningful outcome for this community?
One word: more.
Our interviewees wanted more breaking news, more coverage of disadvantaged communities, more arts coverage, more local economic coverage. They’d like to see more stories on health care, housing, small business, gun violence. They want local media to focus more on solutions than problems.
Interestingly, at least to me, not a single person mentioned wanting more stories on local politics or government. I guess we have that covered?
Question 4: What are we doing well? What can we improve on?
We were complimented for our overall product—our reporting, our reach, our aesthetic—but also for our presence in and concern for the Harrisburg community.
If there’s one overarching complaint, it’s this: people seem to want more of us—more frequency, more pages, more coverage. Sure, I know that sounds like one of those problems that really isn’t a problem—like when someone in a job interview says that their greatest weakness is that they work too hard.
Nonetheless, we are happy to oblige. We realize that there’s more demand for TheBurg than supply, whether that’s reporting resources, magazine copies, distribution locations, whatever. We’re short on all these things.
That’s why we’re taking this course on how to support local news through fundraising. With the support of the generous Harrisburg community, we hope to raise enough money to increase our coverage, publish more stories, print more copies, extend our reach, all to better serve this worthy community.
Lawrance Binda is the publisher and editor of TheBurg. Tell him about the issues affecting your community by emailing him at [email protected]. If we get enough responses, we’ll share them online.
If you like what we do, please support our work. Become a Friend of TheBurg!
