Community-listening shaped the Record-Journal’s Latino Communities Reporting Lab from the beginning. As the Lab marks its two-year anniversary, the Record-Journal recently released both a listening playbook documenting the listening process and the results of a year-long community survey.
The Latino Communities Reporting Lab Listening Playbook for Actionable News Strategies serves as a blueprint for other media companies nationwide looking to better understand their own audiences. The community survey results will continue to guide the Lab’s own local news strategies and may also help other community organizations.
In 2021, the Latino Lab was selected among 18 media organizations in the U.S. to receive funding for projects as part of Google News Initiative’s 2021 Innovation Challenge. With the funding, the Lab launched a yearlong, in-depth listening, engagement and data gathering project.
The grant “was very important because I think that part of the mission and part of the goal is to really listen to the community, listen to what they want, to see what they feel, but also how we could improve,” said Adriana Rodriguez, executive director at the Spanish Community of Wallingford. Rodriguez, who is also on the Lab’s Community Advisory Board, has been a key advisor to the Lab since it was launched in March 2021. SCOW also translates several Latino Lab stories into Spanish.
For the project, the company collaborated with DataHaven, a nonprofit organization in New Haven, to conduct a survey in the local community. The purpose of the survey was to understand what type of news coverage the local Latino community felt was being excluded or underrepresented.
With DataHaven, the Latino Lab organized a survey that asked the community what type of news they needed, where they get their news from, how much trust they have in local news, and what the organization could do better as their local news provider.
The mission statement of the Latino Lab includes amplifying the voices of the local Latino community. Thirty-six percent of the total population in Meriden and 13% of the population in Wallingford identify as Latino or Hispanic. In the school systems, about 59% of students in Meriden and 19.4% of students in Wallingford are Latino.
Throughout the past year, the Latino Lab has been out in the community gathering survey data at local businesses and at events such as the Meriden Puerto Rican Festival, Meriden Daffodil Festival, Wallingford’s 350th + 2 Jubilee, and more. Collecting surveys was a team effort of the Latino Lab, its Community Advisory Board members, and the local Latino community.
“I see the Lab team out and about in the community and a number of different events. I think that they do a great job at making sure that they’re represented at a variety of different types of events,” said Marisol Rodriguez, diversity & inclusion officer at Liberty Bank.
Between April 4, 2022 and Jan. 3, 2023, the process garnered more than 2,000 survey responses – 867 in English and 1,176 in Spanish.
After concluding the survey gathering process, DataHaven compiled a report analyzing all those responses.
Of the people who responded to the survey, 17% were under age 30, 48% were between 30-49, and 355 were 50 or older; 56% were women; 46% said local news covers issues important to them, 45% trusted sources of news about their community, and 32% said local news reflects their beliefs and values.
Overall, respondents had high levels of trust in local and national news sources, and slightly lower trust in social media news. Despite this, Facebook is commonly listed as a preferred news source, though it is unclear whether respondents are following specific news companies or relying on news from friends, family, or news aggregators/social media algorithms.
The top-ranking topics for respondents were health, education, music/arts/culture, local events, and sports. Men had a strong preference for politics while women preferred news about community resources.
About 40% of respondents overall preferred bilingual news content. A small percentage of students preferred news in Spanish only.
About 46% of respondents said local news covers issues that are important to them, 45% trusted sources of news about their community, and 32% said local news reflects their beliefs and values.
Survey respondents could also provide written feedback. Based on those community responses, the Latino Lab has already started reporting on some of the topics suggested by the community and will continue to integrate the suggestions into its regular news coverage.
“There is nothing more effective than truly understanding the community that you’re looking to serve. It helps break down the stereotypes. It helps to understand who we are, and it just gives a beautiful perspective about the tapestry of our community that is growing so much in our area and that, in a few years, it will be probably a majority in the demographics, ” said Maria Campos-Harlow, United Way of Meriden and Wallingford executive director.
In addition to the survey, the Latino Lab also released the Listening Playbook for Actionable News Strategies, which detailed the initial process of listening to the community that led to forming the Latino Communities Reporting Lab.
“The Latino Communities Reporting Lab has been successful because it is grounded in community listening. We are fortunate to have so many community members who provided feedback, helped us build the vision, and continue to provide ongoing feedback so we can provide trusted local news and information that our community wants and needs,” said Record-Journal Publisher & Executive Vice President Liz White Notarangelo. “The Record-Journal is thrilled to do this important work with and for our community.”
Carlos Virgen Cruz, part-time lecturer for the Journalism Department at the University of Connecticut and Assistant Managing Editor for Audience Development at The Day newspaper of New London, said it’s important for newsrooms to represent their audiences.
“There is a big opportunity to grow a relationship with the Latino communities and there’s an opportunity for newsrooms to have those communities generate a habit of seeing themselves in the newspaper,” he said. “If you don’t see yourself in the newspaper on a daily basis, or regularly, then why would you pay to read the newspaper?”
“It’s important to respond to the needs of those communities that for a long time have been ignored,” he added.
As an instructor, Virgen says that it is important for young journalists to come out of college with knowledge on diverse reporting. “They should come out with that seed planted in their mind that they need to make an effort to seek diverse voices,” he said.
