Fort Worth Star-Telegram has resumed its Listening Tour. What’s that all about?
Our goal at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram is to represent all of our diverse communities fairly in our news coverage.
Unfortunately, we know we have often come up short of that goal, particularly when it comes to coverage of Black and Hispanic communities.
An audit we did of sources used in our news and sports stories in 2020 also showed that the people we quoted in our stories, when broken down by ethnicity, did not reflect the percentages of Black and Hispanic people in our population.
We’re working on a number of fronts to get better — through our hiring, our beat structures, our sourcing and our community engagement efforts.
Today, I’d like to focus on one of those engagement efforts, the Star-Telegram Listening Tour.
We began our Listening Tour in the fall of 2019 and were intentional about connecting with segments of the Black, Hispanic and LGBTQ communities.
The concept is simple: We partner with a neighborhood association, business group or other organization that represents a defined constituency, and representatives of the Star-Telegram attend one of their meetings.
We answer questions about the Star-Telegram and the news industry, but mostly we ask some open-ended questions and just listen. What are you most concerned about in your community? What good things are happening that you think people should know about? What are your hopes and dreams for the future of your neighborhood and your city as a whole?
Ideally, we have about 45 minutes to an hour for that discussion, but we have also met for shorter periods, with opportunities to chat one-on-one when the meetings conclude.
At each stop of the Listening Tour, we have come away with story ideas that we never would have come up with on our own. Stories about traffic, speeding, redevelopment, gentrification, school rezoning and more.
We made six stops with our Listening Tour in late 2019 and early 2020. And then COVID-19 happened. We tried a virtual Listening Tour meeting, but it just didn’t work well in that format, and the Tour went on hiatus.
I’m happy to announce that our Listening Tour has resumed. We met with the Lake Como Neighborhood Advisory Council on April 6 at the Como Community Center.
About a dozen Star-Telegram newsroom employees — including news reporters, a sports reporter, news editors, audience growth editors, a columnist and a video producer — attended.
The meeting has already resulted in coverage, including a story and photos about the Como Community Easter Egg Hunt, a story regarding concerns about a proposal to rezone a property for use as a short-term rental and a story about the subsequent zoning commission vote to deny the change.
I am grateful to members of the Advisory Council for their willingness to include us on their meeting agenda. And I am thankful for all who participate in such groups around our city. Your commitment to making our city a better place is inspiring.
The Star-Telegram would welcome the opportunity to partner with your group for a stop on our Listening Tour. Email me at scoffman@star-telegram.com or call me at (817) 390-7704, and we can work on logistics.
Thank you for supporting local journalism with your readership and subscription to the Star-Telegram.
This story was originally published April 19, 2023 at 5:00 AM.
