I thought Andrea Wenzel’s presentation on community engagement was really enlightening. I’ve always come across people who view journalists as people who parachute into a community and use it to get a story, but then leave without dealing with any of the aftermath. I also know journalists who have done exactly that, without realizing it. But I’ve also spoken to journalists who know that parachuting into communities is problematic and that it needs to be fixed, but few can actually think of ways to change that.

I think one of the biggest challenges for journalists when it comes to creating community engagement is the idea that newsrooms are supposed to be impartial, objective entities whose sole purpose is to inform the public. That’s why I can understand how journalists can fear that community engagement events can be interpreted as advocacy or even interfering with the story.

However, Andrea made a lot of important points about how people are losing trust in the media because they aren’t a part of it. If newsrooms become more open to public interaction, it makes the public more open to the information that newsrooms are trying to provide, and to make the news outlet a more reliable place to go with information. I also really liked the examples Andrea gave of how community engagement can be as simple as giving people a platform to tell their stories. It goes back to the traditional idea that journalists should give a voice to the voiceless, and one of the ways we can do that is simply providing a space to talk and to step back.