Fault Lines Workshop Modules

The Maynard Institute for Journalism Education was founded almost four decades ago to promote diversity in the news media through improved coverage, hiring and business practices. The Institute’s programs have trained hundreds of America’s journalists and media managers of color.

The Institute has successfully adapted with the continuously changing industry and expanded its programs to equip journalists with multimedia skills for online publications that include dynamic and interactive content. 

The tumultuous change resulting from technological innovation has reshaped and resized news operations across the country.

At the same time, a new generation of journalists, digitally savvy but lacking the seasoning that comes with experience, has entered this country’s newsrooms. While these younger journalists have a surface comfort with diversity, they may not have the skills to engage effectively and respectfully in difficult conversations.

These changes are a challenge to the editors who lead these newsrooms. They must unite and lead staffs that comprise several generations, keep their news operations at the digital forefront, and serve increasingly diverse communities. If not, these operations will not thrive as business enterprises.

These challenges apply to both legacy print and legacy broadcast operations as well as to their digital enterprises. 

perceived using the various fault lines. This portion of the session gives journalists hands- on examples of how to use the framework to expand their coverage.

In addition, looking at a story through the fault lines framework helps participants understand how and why a limited view turns off some potential audience members, prompting them to tune out.

Who wants to be called a racist?

Sure diversity is important. But most of us did not grow up in diverse homes or live in diverse neighborhoods. Talking across the fault lines sometimes feels like we’re about to set off across terrain loaded with hidden land mines.

We get it. It’s hard to talk to people who are different. There is the fear of offending, or being offended. There are so many stumbling blocks, so many opportunities for mistakes. This session demystifies the techniques of talking across the fault lines. Participants will be given the tools to have productive discussions and become comfortable engaging with different views.

Sourcing our coverage

Because we don’t know what we don’t know, it will be impossible to include a multiplicity of views if we rely on the usual sources.

Fault Lines provides organizing principles for evaluating source lists.

Because this is a tool that we hope will bring more nuance to our coverage, we ask journalists to look at their source lists not just to be certain that they have women, for example, but to make sure those women reflect diversity generationally, racially, socio economically and geographically.

By doing this on a regular basis, journalists can be certain they have the requisite sources in their files when news breaks.

Strategies with communities

Recognizing the news organizations are strapped and that the old days of letting one reporter spend a week developing new sources and exploring new areas of our community are over, we will give participants new and creative ways of connecting with their communities.

For example, Maynard's Community Voices program, used in Oakland and Jackson, Mississippi, provides a vehicle for community members to contribute their voices to the news organization. Participants receive an overview of the program as well as some examples of how to harness those voices to meet your coverage needs.

We will also bring examples from the work the institute is doing in Philadelphia, and with the Oakland Tribune's open newsroom.

Institutional and sustainable  

To make sure this knowledge becomes embedded in the fabric of the company, and not just one more effort that will be forgotten in a few months, we recommend that these workshops serve a core group of journalists, either in one newsroom or across a company, who can help reinforce each other and remind each other of the tools learned.

Because each session can accommodate up to 50 people, we recommend that regionally we try to serve the majority of the members of a newsroom. We have found that this means everyone has the same tools and is equipped with the same language that allows them to have constructive conversations about charged issues.

PRICING

$2,500 per workshop