When news organizations listen to their communities, they build trust, understand community needs and ensure their reporting addresses real challenges. This practice is foundational for building philanthropic support for journalism and for creating community impact.
The LMA Lab for Journalism Funding guides local newsrooms through a strategic approach to community listening. In the lab, newsrooms also share their own best practices as part of our peer-learning approach. On a recent call with the 2026 state and national cohorts of the lab, news leaders and coaches shared ten key ways they effectively engage with their communities.
Using these strategies, news leaders can connect with their audiences to identify ways to better serve them through journalism. From setting up regular coffeeshop meetups to engaging with faith leaders, this collection of insights will give you new ideas on how to listen to your communities.
1. Meet people where they are
Meeting audiences in their neighborhoods ensures outreach goes beyond highly engaged circles and helps facilitate candid conversations. Marty Fischhoff from Detroit PBS said his organization meets people in laundromats, McDonald’s restaurants, church basements, recreation centers and bars.
Joshua Wood, from Blazing Trails Media in Wyoming, recently sat down with a senior women’s coffee group in his town to hear their concerns and feedback.
“It’s not just enough for you to show up to events and be approachable,” he said. “You need to go to these places where people are going to talk — whether it’s the bars, whether it’s the coffee shops, whether it’s, you know, going to the local salon while everyone’s getting their hair done and saying, ‘Okay, hit me with it. What are we not doing?’”
Being in spaces where community members are comfortable also helps facilitate unpretentious, candid conversations about local issues.
2. Establish physical ‘listening tables’ at local public events
Setting up a table at popular community events offers a low-friction, high-visibility way to gather feedback.
Lab for Journalism Funding coach Liz White Notarangelo used this strategy at her former newspaper, the Record-Journal in Connecticut, to inform the newsroom’s Latino Communities Reporting Lab project.
To connect with more community members, Notarangelo’s team set up booths at dozens of events and locations across their community to gather responses for their listening survey. This included Meriden’s annual Puerto Rican Festival, a local back-to-school event, a health and wellness expo, vaccination clinics, a farmer’s market, a Latino winemaker’s event, a summer concert series, local supermarkets and many other locations.
“We knew if we wanted to hear from people we weren’t already reaching, we had to meet them where they were,” Notarangelo said. “Showing up where people were already gathering helped us build trust, engage with a broader cross-section of the community and make sure our journalism was informed by what people actually needed, not what we assumed they needed.”
3. Set up meetings with local faith leaders
Faith organizations are often hubs of civic life, making them effective places to learn about community needs. Khadijah Bland from The Kansas City Defender said her organization connects intentionally with elders through the church. She heard in her listening sessions that people in the community appreciate this approach.
“A common theme was that going through the church was a great direction, since elders are the voice of the church,” she said.
Marty Fischhoff said the Detroit PBS team has been meeting monthly with an advisory panel of Black ministers in Detroit for nearly six years.
“They carry the conversation,” he said. “They tell us what issues matter to them and their communities and their congregations.”
Cindy Fisher from Black Belt News Network was invited to join a meeting with a group of Black pastors.
Having regular meetings with religious leaders can help build a trusted bridge to underserved groups and uncover community needs.
4. Host regular, low-pressure ‘Java with a Journo’ sessions
Weekly office hours at a local bookstore or cafe create a consistent, low-stress bridge between journalists and community members.
“We call ours ‘Java with a Journo,’” said Ashleigh Snoozy from The Sheridan Press in Wyoming. “It’s a win-win: if people show up, we get to chat. If they don’t, coffee for the journos and work time!”
Cali O’Hare, from The Pinedale roundup in Wyoming, said she does a similar event, showing up at a local coffee shop once a week to share the newspaper and make herself more accessible to the public.
Having a regular cadence of low-lift listening opportunities reduces the work involved in planning these events, opening the door for more listening without more labor.
5. Ask the right questions
Sometimes, it can be difficult to cut through general complaints to uncover actionable feedback from community listening conversations. If you find yourself facing this challenge, Lab for Journalism Funding coach Sam Johnston suggests asking a specific question to connect the dots between community needs and information gaps.
“What are three things about living here that are harder than they should be because you don’t have enough information?” Johnston suggested newsrooms ask.
When community members offer polite praise and claim there is nothing to improve, Julianna Robidoux from Ink Link News in New Hampshire suggests a pivot.
“A couple of people in my listening sessions said there was nothing we could do better, so I followed up with the question: ‘What are we doing well that we could do more of/improve on/build off of in some way?’” she said.
Adjusting the questioning approach in this way helps community members reflect on what is working and think of ways to build upon it, creating feedback the newsroom can put into action.
6. Audit for ‘Who isn’t in the room and why?’
A key part of any community listening strategy is to monitor who you are connecting with and who you might be missing. Once you identify absent voices, you can design outreach to bring them in.
“A question I always ask when I think about listening sessions… Who isn’t in the room and why?” said Sam Johnston.
Marty Fischhoff shared an example: During a listening session at a Detroit church, the pastor pointed out that most of his congregation was made up of young Black men under 35, yet none were in the room. The pastor said they tended to avoid such meetings, expecting to be criticized or ignored by elders.
To invite them in, Fischhoff’s team set up dedicated meetings with those young men, building lasting relationships.
7. Listen, don’t defend
Your role is to listen and learn, not justify past reporting choices.
Even though it may be your first instinct, coach Sam Johnston said it’s important to resist the urge to defend yourself when people share criticism.
“When people say, you know, ‘You haven’t written any stories about gas prices,’ and your natural reaction is to say, ‘Well, actually, we’ve written 47 stories about gas prices, the most recent one this morning,’ and it makes clear to them, you’re not actually here to hear them,” Johnston said. “Perception is reality.”
Joshua Wood, from Blazing Trails Media, said several people during his listening sessions asked him to not take their words as criticism, and he reminded them that he was there to listen, not to be defensive.
There are other contexts where it is fitting to showcase your history of work to community members, but when you invite people to share their feedback with you, your role is simply to learn.
8. Form a consistent infrastructure for listening and feedback
Establishing a formal, ongoing infrastructure for listening with consistent members is a great way to build listening into your organization’s consistent efforts. One way newsrooms can do this is by having a reader’s board or community advisory board to ensure that listening is always happening.
Cali O’Hare from The Pinedale Roundup in Wyoming said she developed a readers’ board in Pinedale that meets quarterly.
“They act as liaisons between the paper and the community, offering feedback and ideas,” she said.
Ruby Jones, from Empower Media Exchange (EMX) in Colorado, said her organization also has a community advisory board. This group provides ongoing feedback on community information needs, news coverage and the development of EMX’s Community Information Commons, an initiative that connects residents, journalists and community organizations.
“We established the advisory board to ensure that our work remains responsive, diverse, inclusive and collaborative,” Jones said. “Our goal was to make sure that community members have a consistent role in shaping how EMX serves and shares information with the communities we cover.”
Regular groups like these keep listening consistent and help the organizations ensure listening is part of their regular work, not an afterthought.
9. Utilize recording and transcription tools to focus on active listening
Recording listening sessions frees journalists from notetaking so they can stay fully present. Ryan Dickey, from the Torrington Telegram in Wyoming, said using an AI recorder/transcriber has significantly improved his interviewing experience.
“It has helped me tremendously in actually being able to actively listen when I interview, instead of listening just to take notes,” Dickey said. “It makes a huge difference.”
If you use AI during community listening, it’s important to be transparent up front about why you are recording, how you are recording, how you will protect community members’ privacy and what the data will be used for. When asking permission to record, emphasize that your purpose in recording is to be able to better focus on listening and accurately capture their feedback. Some community members may prefer to speak without recording to protect their privacy, and these requests should be respected.
10. Standardize, track and use your listening data
Document community conversations in a centralized format the whole team can use, turning anecdotes into usable data. With permission, this data can strengthen funding proposals and funder conversations, and can help teams shape their journalism around community needs.
“You’re fundraising, but you’re doing so much more in terms of building relationships, better understanding your community (and) identifying potential partners and collaborators,” said Lab for Journalism Funding coach Judi Terzotis. “Don’t think of it as a transaction. Think of it as part of your DNA. And if you approach it that way, it can really be powerful.”
These insights were shared by newsrooms in the 2026 cohorts of the LMA Lab for Journalism Funding, including our state cohort of newsrooms in New Hampshire, Oklahoma and Wyoming, made possible with support from Google News initiative; and our national cohort of newsrooms, made possible with funding from Knight Foundation. The Lab for Journalism Funding regularly publishes case studies and learnings, which can be found here; and has published two free industry reports to help newsrooms fund essential local journalism in part through philanthropy: Pathways to Philanthropy and Sustaining Journalism with Philanthropy.
Editor’s note: Artificial intelligence was used to help the authors summarize takeaways from the webinar. Any writing generated by AI for this piece was edited and fact-checked by humans. AI was also used to assist with the creation of the image for this story, based on a detailed prompt.