Crowdsourcing and audience engagement is important in today’s journalism. So, what is crowdsourcing? According to The Columbia Journalism School, “crowdsourcing is the act of specifically inviting a group of people to participate in a reporting task—such as newsgathering, data collection, or analysis—through a targeted, open call for input; personal experiences; documents; or other contributions.” Crowdsourcing lets the audience be a part of the news reporting process by providing the “what”, while the reporters add the “why”.
With that, audience participation has welcomed a new type of journalist, the engagement journalist. Engagement journalists combine community engagement and traditional news reporting in hopes of accurately serving the community by using their wants and needs. Getting the reader’s involved in the process increases audience engagement, which is huge in because content creators are competing for those clicks.
By reaching out to your audience, they are likely to use social media to share your posts to their followers, thus spreading your content onto the social media feeds of others.
A lot of news publications utilize crowdsourcing, like The Guardian, to let the readers vote on whether or not they liked the article. In letting readers vote and provide feedback, it gauges the type of content publishers should put out.
Crowdsourcing and audience participation also has its drawbacks due to the likelihood of spreading misinformation, since you are getting it from the audience. To avoid that, it’s crucial to ALWAYS verify the information before publishing it.
With the rise of social media in journalism, it’s important to connect with the audience since they are the ones reading your work. You should cater to their interests and if possible, get them involved in the news gathering process. In doing so, they will likely follow and support you and your content.
Angelina's Angle 