Community News Roles

A Framework for How People Keep Their Communities Informed

Community news roles framework showing 8 roles: Documenting, Enabling, Commenting, Navigating, Inquiring, Amplifying, Facilitating, and Sensemaking

Everyone has a role to play in keeping their local communities informed.

If journalism is viewed as a process as much as a profession, then that means anyone can act journalistically in ways that contribute to the flow of reliable news and information where they live.

Consider the person who connects neighbors around an emergency preparedness plan, someone producing a video on Instagram explaining the impact of a local ordinance, or the organizer who distributes information about affordable housing resources.

Across every community, people are doing the work of journalism, but often in informal ways through grassroots networks.

We need to reimagine what it means to do journalism and who participates.

With the decline in traditional news organizations and the rise of media rooted in the attention economy, it’s critical that those working to inform and connect their communities account for, and work in concert with, the everyday ways that people get and share information.

In this resource, our team at the Journalism + Design Lab has outlined a set of community news roles that any individual can undertake on their own, or in partnership with newsrooms and other community-based organizations, to keep their communities informed.

Our goal with this framework is to broaden the definition of who contributes to local news ecosystems, and ask: how might local newsrooms, community colleges, and other civic institutions better enable more people to responsibly and ethically perform these journalistic functions?

Greater participation will make entire news ecosystems more resilient.

At the J+D Lab, we believe that taking a systems approach and working more collaboratively with local information leaders will strengthen the flow of trusted, accessible news and increase community well-being.

We hope this framework can serve as a tool for educators, newsrooms, funders, and community-based organizations to build pathways for more people – especially those who have been most harmed and excluded by legacy media – to step into these roles.

A few additional notes about this framework:

The roles we’ve outlined are not necessarily tied to particular types of journalism, like news articles. People perform them in a variety of ways, across different platforms – on and offline.
This list of roles is not comprehensive; they are an attempt at acknowledging and organizing different ways that people contribute to how news and information moves through a community.
They’re also not mutually exclusive. People can play multiple roles at once and move between them any time.
We aim to update this framework in response to input we receive. To help inform how we grow this resource, we’re inviting you to give us feedback and share examples of people playing these roles.

Facilitating

Facilitators cultivate community listening, conversation, and connection.

They foster dialogue on local issues, surface community needs and priorities, and bring people together.

Examples of Facilitating

Cleveland, Ohio

A local network builder (Julian Khan) facilitates an event called “Neighbor Night” in order to foster conversations with community members on how to address local issues

Paterson, New Jersey

Community members host and facilitate dinner conversations with people in their networks to talk about their priorities for the upcoming election, as part of Voting Block NJ.

East Oakland, California

A Black Cultural Zone organizer facilitated an ‘Ideathon’ with fellow Oaklanders to share ideas and visions for a local commercial corridor.

Documenting

Documenters record what’s happening in a community.

They document public meetings, community events and experiences and help preserve community history, information and knowledge.

Examples of Documenting

Camden, New Jersey

Rutgers University professors (Dr. Kendra D. Boyd and Dr. Jesse Bayker) formed The Black Camden Oral History Project to document African American life and activism in their city, with the aim to preserve community history.

Oakland, California

Community members volunteered to receive air monitors from West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project and documented the air pollution levels in their neighborhoods.

Chicago, Illinois

Community members are trained and paid to be “Documenters” where they take notes at public meetings and share them with their local newsrooms and communities (this program is now in many cities across the US).

Commenting

Commenters share their personal expertise or experience.

They share things they know firsthand – lived or learned – to enhance the pool of knowledge people have about what’s happening in their community, or as a means to advocate ideas for community betterment.

Examples of Commenting

Oakland, California

Oaklanders share stories, told in their own words, about how they experience the city and comment on “how their lives are being directly impacted by policies, events, and systems”, as part of The Oaklandside’s Amplify series.

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

A writer and community member with lived experience of homelessness (Dionicia Roberson) commented on how a US Supreme Court decision would impact the rights of unhoused people.

Oakland, California

A local doctor with Roots Community Health Center (Dr. Noha Aboelata) hosts The People’s Heath Briefing, a weekly Youtube report, where she provides comments on public health news and shares her expertise. (She also helps community members make sense of health-related policies and trends.)

Inquiring

Inquirers ask questions and dig deeper.

They seek out multiple perspectives and original sources of information to get more context and understanding on an issue and share what they learn. Sometimes they do this to challenge power and promote accountability.

Examples of Inquiring

Asheville, North Carolina

A local resident (Michaela Carmein) inquired about water safety after the 2024 floods and crowdsourced information and expertise to produce a shareable resource with guidance for residents.

Oakland, California

Students who were part of the “My Oakland Agenda” project interviewed community members, facilitated dialogue and amplified local priorities around the November election.

Princeton, New Jersey

A librarian (Kim Dorman) inquired on behalf of community members who came into the library for information and support with their housing challenges. (They also help enable community sensemaking by hosting Princeton Library Community Newsroom events.)

Sensemaking

Sensemakers help people understand and contextualize issues and events.

They might do this by telling stories or making art – anything that helps other people make sense of what’s happening in their community and why. They can also help translate information to make it more accessible and relevant.

Examples of Sensemaking

Fresno, California

A community member and former city employee (Ariana Martinez Lott) helped local street vendors make sense of the technicalities of a proposed ordinance on street vending and how it would affect them. (She also amplified their experiences by connecting the vendors directly with local policy makers.)

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

A social media influencer who creates explainers (“Pop Pop Bruce Johnson”), collaborated with tech platform Technical.ly to create a video to help people better understand what LLMs are and how Chatbots work.

London, UK

Comedian and storyteller (Cash Carraway) created, and toured, a one woman show which helped audiences understand the experience of living in domestic violence shelters.

Amplifying

Amplifiers curate, share and distribute news and information.

They may also help elevate underrepresented community issues or needs. They do this through a variety of means, from word of mouth to print materials to sharing on social media.

Examples of Amplifying

Oakland, California

Community members took up paid opportunities to become Neighborhood Messengers and amplify timely information with their neighbors about the COVID-19 pandemic.

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Teenagers who attended ‘Youth Design Day’ created a map for “Civic Thriving in Pittsburgh” to help identify and amplify civic opportunities for young people in the city.

Altadena, California

A climate activist, meteorologist, and creator of the Facebook page “Altadena Weather and Climate,” (Edgar McGregor) amplified reliable and timely news and information about fire conditions during the recent wildfires in SoCal.

Navigating

Navigators assist others in accessing the information and services they need.

They help people navigate challenges by connecting them with resources and information to take action, find solutions and problem-solve.

Examples of Navigating

Detroit, Michigan

Reporters at Outlier Media provided Detroiters with the information they needed to claim funds from a tax foreclosure. By working with community members to navigate the filing process, they helped get millions in tax auction profits back from Wayne County.

Portland, Oregon

“Peer Resource Navigators” at Portland Community College meet with students to learn about their needs and help them navigate relevant resources.

Cleveland, Ohio

Community health workers help community members navigate ways to meet their health needs by providing interpretation and translation services, culturally appropriate health information, and informal counseling and guidance.

Enabling

Enablers share their time and resources to support local news ecosystems.

They indirectly inform their community by ensuring that others are able to produce and share reliable news and information. They may do this by subscribing, donating, hosting, training, etc.

Examples of Enabling

Mercer County, New Jersey

A professor of Communication and Journalism at Mercer County Community College (Holly Johnson) enables community members to become reporters by creating and hosting a noncredit certificate training program and supporting participants to publish their stories with local media outlets.

Oakland, California

Artist and professor at the California College of the Arts (Chris Treggiari) enables community members to create visual art for sharing information and news by hosting workshops and curating public installations at the Oakland Lowdown.

Detroit, Michigan

Neighbors enable community reporting by becoming “members” and making financial donations and contributions of “talent, time and experience” to community newsroom Outlier Media.

Help inform this framework

Follow the link below to help us shape and grow this resource.

Share feedback or examples

Credits

This framework was created by the team at Journalism + Design Lab. It was developed by Megan Lucero, edited by Cole Goins and iterated in collaboration with Andrew Rodriguez Calderón, Valerie Popp, Irwin Chen and Heather Chaplin.

The design and visuals were produced by Kiss Me I'm Polish.

The framework was deeply informed by Journalism + Design Lab’s work with community colleges, newsrooms and community organizations, and inspired by the people and organizations we’ve listed in the examples above.

The framework also reflects interviews and feedback from Kim Dorman (Princeton Public Library), Matt Schuster (Public Media Network), Anika Anand and Darryl Holliday (Commoner Co.), Jesse Hardman and Grace Northern (Listening Post Collective), Patrick Boehler (Gazzetta), Rasheed Ajamu (Resolve Philly), Sam Ragland and Kevin Loker (American Press Institute), Jennifer Brandel (Hearken), Nina Weingrill, Jihii Jolly and the News Futures community.