For more engagement and trust, try this one weird trick – Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard

Nieman Lab.
Predictions for
Journalism, 2024.
 
I recently joined the board of Honolulu Civil Beat, and one of the things I’ve always loved is reading their (heavily moderated) comments. The comments can be just as engaging as the pieces themselves. They demonstrate varied perspectives, deep knowledge, and vigorous but respectful debate from readers.
This is in large part because a team of humans takes time to vet those comments. Over on the social platforms, shows of intelligence and respect are lacking. We’ve seen many real-life damages to compassion, trust, and democracy thanks to the murky and ever-changing algorithms created by people who let bullies and bad actors use their space.
Everyone should be able to name mistakes they’ve made in their career. Here’s one of mine: In the early 2010s at CNN Digital, moderating comments at a brand of that size and scale became an impossible nightmare. The team was struggling to hold back the tide of lies and hate, right there on our own platform, and the trolls always found a way around the filters. Meanwhile, social media was ascendant. The platforms had invested in technology and developers to create engaging (“addictive” was a word used positively at the time) experiences in ways CNN and every other news organization hadn’t done.
So we made the decision to kill those hateful, uncool, and outdated comments on CNN’s platforms, and “go where the audiences are.” This effectively ceded the direct relationship we had with our audiences to the social platforms. In a few more years those platforms, a.k.a. our “partners,” would repeatedly demonstrate a lack of interest in standing up for health, safety, and truth.
News organizations can be very good at output — publishing a story, sending a newsletter, broadcasting a show or audio, and pushing out posts. But how good are we at the intake? How are we at listening, engaging, and facilitating connections with and among our audiences about the journalism we are supposedly doing for them?
So many news organizations are grappling with how to stop the decline in trust and engagement. So many news executives want their brands to become truly “essential.” The act of listening, reflecting, and sharing what audiences are saying is a powerful and under-utilized tool.
That isn’t just about making comments great again. It’s about all the ways newsrooms can better own true interaction on their own turf. That includes:
Most news organizations have done some version of those things and more. But very few do it frequently and regularly. This is work that can be done using everyday tech and tools, like email, eyes, and ears.
Are there ways to use AI in the process? Probably. But I’d place the job of connecting humans with the humans.
As someone who started out helping put The New York Times on the internet — my first regular paycheck in the mid ’90s was from wonderfully named “New York Times Electronic Media Company” — I am still an early web person at heart who believes in the power of the internet to bridge divides, not to widen them until the seams of democracy are straining.
The best use of the internet is not to be a place to push out content, walk away, and leave interaction to the ethics-free giants of social media, but to enable true interaction with the people the work of journalism is for.
The social platforms broke the trust and hope that was, in painful hindsight, naively placed in them. 2024 is the year for news organizations to prioritize and own consistent and true engagement. The ability, and the mandate to do so, exists right now.

Meredith Artley, former editor-in-chief of CNN Digital, is the current executive-in-residence at the Doris Duke Foundation.
I recently joined the board of Honolulu Civil Beat, and one of the things I’ve always loved is reading their (heavily moderated) comments. The comments can be just as engaging as the pieces themselves. They demonstrate varied perspectives, deep knowledge, and vigorous but respectful debate from readers.
This is in large part because a team of humans takes time to vet those comments. Over on the social platforms, shows of intelligence and respect are lacking. We’ve seen many real-life damages to compassion, trust, and democracy thanks to the murky and ever-changing algorithms created by people who let bullies and bad actors use their space.
Everyone should be able to name mistakes they’ve made in their career. Here’s one of mine: In the early 2010s at CNN Digital, moderating comments at a brand of that size and scale became an impossible nightmare. The team was struggling to hold back the tide of lies and hate, right there on our own platform, and the trolls always found a way around the filters. Meanwhile, social media was ascendant. The platforms had invested in technology and developers to create engaging (“addictive” was a word used positively at the time) experiences in ways CNN and every other news organization hadn’t done.
So we made the decision to kill those hateful, uncool, and outdated comments on CNN’s platforms, and “go where the audiences are.” This effectively ceded the direct relationship we had with our audiences to the social platforms. In a few more years those platforms, a.k.a. our “partners,” would repeatedly demonstrate a lack of interest in standing up for health, safety, and truth.
News organizations can be very good at output — publishing a story, sending a newsletter, broadcasting a show or audio, and pushing out posts. But how good are we at the intake? How are we at listening, engaging, and facilitating connections with and among our audiences about the journalism we are supposedly doing for them?
So many news organizations are grappling with how to stop the decline in trust and engagement. So many news executives want their brands to become truly “essential.” The act of listening, reflecting, and sharing what audiences are saying is a powerful and under-utilized tool.
That isn’t just about making comments great again. It’s about all the ways newsrooms can better own true interaction on their own turf. That includes:
Most news organizations have done some version of those things and more. But very few do it frequently and regularly. This is work that can be done using everyday tech and tools, like email, eyes, and ears.
Are there ways to use AI in the process? Probably. But I’d place the job of connecting humans with the humans.
As someone who started out helping put The New York Times on the internet — my first regular paycheck in the mid ’90s was from wonderfully named “New York Times Electronic Media Company” — I am still an early web person at heart who believes in the power of the internet to bridge divides, not to widen them until the seams of democracy are straining.
The best use of the internet is not to be a place to push out content, walk away, and leave interaction to the ethics-free giants of social media, but to enable true interaction with the people the work of journalism is for.
The social platforms broke the trust and hope that was, in painful hindsight, naively placed in them. 2024 is the year for news organizations to prioritize and own consistent and true engagement. The ability, and the mandate to do so, exists right now.

Meredith Artley, former editor-in-chief of CNN Digital, is the current executive-in-residence at the Doris Duke Foundation.
 
To promote and elevate the standards of journalism
Covering thought leadership in journalism
Pushing to the future of journalism
Exploring the art and craft of story
The Nieman Journalism Lab is a collaborative attempt to figure out how quality journalism can survive and thrive in the Internet age.
It’s a project of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.

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