5 things we learned from gathering 15 partners from across the country
By Sonam Vashi and Max Resnik
Heather Buckner (Canopy Atlanta), India Daniels (City Bureau), Julie Christie (Resolve Philly), Val Osier (Range Media) and Erick Johnson (Capital B Gary). (Photo: Gonzalo Guzman/City Bureau)
In early September 2023, City Bureau’s Documenters Network convened staff from organizations across the country—all united in paying and training residents to report on local government through Documenters programs—at our second Documenters Network Summit in Chicago.
As we’ve added eight new communities to the Documenters Network in 2023—bringing the total number of sites to 15—the Summit became an opportunity to reflect on our growth and learn together. We wanted to:
celebrate shared successes, including that we’ve collectively trained 2,000 people as Documenters, reported on 5,000 public meetings, and paid out more than $500,000 to Documenters
surface innovations, opportunities and shared challenges with running a Documenters program, including around training, capacity building, and changing technological landscapes
build relationships to strengthen our network, and center joy, care, and fun
So, we brought together 40+ staff members from all 11 Documenters partner organizations, plus four launching this month in Akron, Ohio; Gary, Indiana; San Diego, California; and Spokane, Washington. Together, we planned, dreamed, ate Chicago dogs, and sang karaoke.
Network Site Staff proposed open space sessions organized into breakout rooms named after Chicago Hot Dog ingredients. (Photo: Gonzalo Guzman/City Bureau)
Here are five of our biggest highlights, with resources to to implement some of these learnings in your own communities:
We want our events to emulate the people-powered, inclusive nature of Documenters programs. That means having our participants set the agenda of the Summits. For this, we relied on an adapted version of Open Space Technology (OST), a method of running simultaneous small groups in which participants both generate the topics themselves at the event and facilitate the group discussions. The sessions proposed and hosted by attendees ranged from fact-checking to working with Documenters with disabilities to whether “journalism” is the right word for our work. This method relies on the creativity and wisdom in the room, and attendees appreciated the mix of structure and flexibility that OST provided. “The Summit was easily my favorite conference experience I've been to,” said one attendee. “The structure … meant that I could dig deep into areas of interest while also connecting with folks from other cities.”
While Documenters typically report on public meetings, many organizations are experimenting with assigning Documenters to report on a variety of different issues. We discussed many of the special projects that Documenters are working on at the Summit, and how many of them respond to a demonstrated need in their communities. For example, Detroit Documenters at Outlier Media asked Documenters to ride all of the local buses to get a snapshot of how well the Detroit transit system was working. Last year, Cleveland Documenters partnered with the Marshall Project to ask their neighbors what they wanted to know about local judges. And Chicago Documenters at City Bureau worked with the City of Chicago to document its first city-wide planning process in 50 years.
We explored what successful networks, organizations, and communities could look like together, and what types of values we want to be driving our collective work. We discussed how to prioritize accessibility and inclusion, and shared how to use community mapping to engage more partners and neighbors. We examined how to make our organizations more sustainable and more accountable to our communities, such as creating an advisory board made up Documenters to help co-create a local program. And we considered how to center relationship building, transparency, and trust in our work.
At the Summit, we were joined by Public Data Works, a design and development studio who leads our work on updating and maintaining the central technology behind Documenters.org. Our product roadmap and priorities are co-created with network staff and Documenters. The Summit provided an opportunity to dig into updates we’re making to Documenters.org and plan for major updates next year: we reviewed the increased accessibility of Documenters.org and assignments, the challenges and opportunities for generative AI to support our Documenters and site staff in their daily workflows, and creative ways for site staff to generate news products built around the work of Documenters.
Finally, we reflected on our collective impact so far, and dreamed up how we could grow the impact in our communities. For example, this is the first year where the network has multiple partners within the same state. In Ohio, the Ohio Local News Initiative is supporting new newsrooms in Cleveland and Akron, both launched in 2023. In Michigan, our first community media center host site in Grand Rapids joined our colleagues in Detroit for local events and relationship building. In 2024, we’re setting ourselves up to learn as much as we can from Documenters and our partners in all these communities about how to make more systemic changes that make local government more responsive, participatory, and accessible.
As we plan ahead for 2024 and beyond, the Summit was a crucial opportunity for living our values as a Network. We have a lot to learn over these upcoming years as the Network evolves. Making space for our community of practice gatherings both highlights challenges and opportunities, and guides our work from the hyperlocal to the national. Next year, we’re excited to dig into new models of democratic decision-making to steer the Network. With Documenters, site staff, partners, and research colleagues informing our team’s priorities, we’re laying the groundwork for an evolving and even more participatory civic media network.
Want to check out more civic reporting from our Documenters Network sites? Take a look at Documenters.org. Plus, learn more here about bringing the Documenters to your community.