Resident Journalists

Chicago, United States

The Action

The Documenters Network is a multi-city initiative that trains and pays hundreds of people to attend and, in collaboration with local reporters and community organizations, provide online coverage of underreported public meetings. Launched in Chicago in 2018 by City Bureau, a member-supported journalism lab and 501(c)(3) nonprofit, the program is active in Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Minneapolis, Atlanta, Omaha, and Fresno.

Democracy Challenge

Every month, American cities host thousands of public meetings involving dozens of agencies that make important policy decisions. Budget constraints and declining readership, however, have forced local news outlets for decades to cut staff. Many public meetings consequently receive no media coverage. Official agendas and meeting notes, when published, often lack context and detail. Journalists working with City Bureau established The Documenters Network to foster increased transparency of local meetings and greater community engagement, especially from marginalized groups.

How It Works and How They Did It

Each city’s Documenters program trains members of the public to attend meetings and create records of proceedings. Any resident can become a Documenter, but members of marginalized communities are preferred candidates.

Documenters take notes based on a standardized template, tweet during meetings, take photos, and record audio and video. Coverage of meetings on timely and relevant issues is prioritized. Professional journalists review and edit Documenters’ work before it is published online. In addition to bolstering government transparency, the aim is to bring attention to issues that merit further investigation.

When expanding to a new city, program staff members consult with stakeholders, including local reporters, civic organizers, and residents, to decide which agencies, boards, and commissions to cover.

The Documenters Network began with creating a spreadsheet to organize volunteers in Chicago to cover public meetings. It has since evolved into a partnership among government offices, news outlets, and community members. Each city chapter fundraises independently but with the help of community foundations. Documenters in all participating cities upload the information they collect to a central database (Documenters.org), which City Bureau staff manage.

How’s It Going?

Since its inception, The Documenters Network has trained more than 1,700 people, covered more than 2,300 public meetings in seven cities, and paid $300,000 to participants.

The program benefits news outlets whose staff can identify important local events and story opportunities. Cities also benefit from The Documenters Network by acquiring a better understanding of residents and increasing civic engagement. The Documenters’ presence also spurs officials to make meeting content more digestible and transparent. Feedback from the Documenters during the coronavirus pandemic has led some cities to livestream public meetings with closed captions and more regularly append meeting minutes and official notes to local government websites. Thanks to Documenters’ testimony, Minneapolis officials designated funding for remote-accessible public meetings.

Some cities have used the Documenters’ networks to shape public debate. Documenters in Cleveland, for example, were invited to interview their neighbors to identify topics that the public wanted political candidates to discuss. A Documenter also served as co-moderator of a candidates’ debate.

To measure Documenters’ impact, City Bureau collects qualitative and quantitative data to identify learning goals for each Documenter and measure their participation in civic life. You can read more about these methods here. Some Documenters have gone on to take more active roles in government, joining boards and commissions, and even running for office. Others have listed their reporting experience when applying for jobs, and some have turned their notes into published articles in local news outlets.

Considerations

• Consult local news outlets early on. The Documenters Network has been successful because it responded directly to the needs of local journalists. Today, the program partners with media outlets, such as Outlier Media (Detroit), Detroit Free Press, WDET radio (Detroit), The Cleveland Observer, South Side Weekly (Chicago), and national outlets, such as the Marshall Project.
• Pay Documenters. The program is marketed as a “civic side hustle”. People who do not have the means to volunteer their time can participate because the positions are paid. The wages allow Documenters to pay for childcare so that they may attend public meetings. Most attendees have time and resources, and are typically older, whiter, and wealthier than the general population. Paying people for their time makes attendance possible for those who may otherwise be excluded.
• Put a diversity, equity, and inclusion action plan into practice and measure progress. The Documenters Network tracks where applicants live to ensure that residents of wealthier neighborhoods are not overrepresented. To ensure that members of marginalized communities participate, the program holds recruitment drives at well-attended events, such as job-training sessions. Local chapters also use radio ads (often through their media partners), text messages, and postcards to get the word out. Diversity is not left to chance but is intentionally embedded into the recruitment process.
• Provide a strong foundation of civic knowledge. The program has created several simple training modules that give Documenters the knowledge they need to understand the discussions at public meetings. The modules fill gaps left by civic education that often fails to get into the nitty-gritty of local government operations, local agency responsibilities, and meeting etiquette.

Point of Contact

Max Resnik
Documenters Network Manager
[email protected]

Who Else Is Trying This?

• Brazil: The Brazilian organization, Énois, is cultivating a network of local journalists and supporting communicators to foster diversity, representation, and inclusion in journalism.
• Philadelphia, US: Resolve Philly bolsters cooperation among local journalists to better reach and serve their communities. By reconsidering how to find, frame, and report stories, Resolve Philly aims to correct ways in which the media inaccurately covers communities.