Engaging the Philadelphia community in journalism

From our guest speaker, I learned a lot about the details that have to go into crowdsourcing. It’s important to be aware of how you’re reaching your audience. For example, just placing a box in a coffee shop isn’t going to be impactful. Why? It’s not personal or engaging. Comment or suggestion boxes are never big hits because they aren’t interactive, and there’s no person there to talk to.

A lot of it is also about the setting, people aren’t coming to a coffee shop for that interaction. They’re going there to get their caffeine boost and leave. However, if people are going to a library, for example, they’re going there to engage and learn, so they’re in more of a mindset to engage with people to speak about an issue at hand.

The other big thing I learned, or rather was reinforced by this, was the importance of a human to interact with. The idea of setting up a table is a great one because it gives that interactive and personal space to really engage with the community and show that you are engaged and want to learn more about their view and input on whatever you are working on at the moment.

Brianna Cicero

Brianna is a senior journalism major at Temple University with a concentration on Editorial Management. She is currently a Content Strategist Intern and Editor-in-Chief for Odyssey, the Editorial Director of Temple's chapter of Spoon University and the Deputy Director of Parliament Communications for Temple Student Government. This past summer, Brianna worked for her local, hometown paper, LNP and LancasterOnline, covering events and issues important to the people of Lancaster County. She is also a 2016 alumna of The Fund For American Studies' Institute on Political Journalism where she covered the 2016 election in Washington D.C for a political startup, The Stream, as well as attended briefings at publications like The Washington Post. In addition, she has previously served as a contributor for BuzzFeed, was a staff reporter for Eastern University's newspaper, The Waltonian, and was the EditorinChief of Eastern's literary magazine, Inklings. Contact Brianna at [email protected] .