I love living in Roswell, GA. While we are in one of the most extensive metro communities in the United States, Roswell has a slight-town feel. We have events like the Alive After five during the summer months where the community comes together to experience each other, music, arts, and food.

Here is Seth Gamba, orchestra teacher at Elkins Pointe Middle school, playing the drums with the orchestra. The group plays on electric string instruments and even plays some rock tunes during the Alive After five event. My daughter plays in the group on viola. Proud dad, as you can see.

The community loves to do positive things together. Today people are seeking out experiences. Walt Disney understood this when he built Disney Land and Disney World.

Here is my wife with the Paranoia Haunted House crash at Alive After 5 to promote their business.

My wife loves to post photos like this to her Facebook account, and from the number of likes and comments, I know the rest of her friends also love this.

Role of the Journalist

Webster’s Dictionary states, “Journalism is the activity or job of collecting, writing, and editing news stories.” In addition, Wikipedia says journalism “serves the purpose of playing the role of a public service machinery in the dissemination and analysis of news and information.”

In the broader sense, the media’s role is to help communities connect. So I see journalists as assisting people in plugging into their community network, and the connection is being made through the media.

The pie has many slices when you look at all the content a local media outlet should cover in their community. One of the slices journalism serves in a democracy is to inform the community to better play a role in their government.

Wikipedia says, “In a democratic society, however, access to free information plays a central role in creating a system of checks and balance, and in distributing power equally between governments, businesses, individuals, and other social entities. Moreover, access to verifiable information gathered by independent media sources, which adhere to journalistic standards, can also serve ordinary citizens by empowering them with the tools they need to participate in the political process.”

I fear too many journalists only serve their audience a slice of the pie. They want more than just the things in their community going wrong. If you were to graph out the story coverage of many media outlets, I think you would find that there is a lopsided coverage on the squeaky wheel.

Could you take media coverage of their community, and would it reflect the exact percentages of categories of stories taking place daily, or would it be slanted?

What about work communities?

Most communication offices within corporations serve as the media for their community. I find my role within a nonprofit was very similar to my position at the newspaper. My part working for a large corporation is also very similar.

The breaking news story in the nonprofit and business world are the stories that management needs to tell. While we do not have investigative journalists looking into leadership and reporting this to the community, we have companies realizing that transparency is the best way to build customer affinity. As a result, you are finding more PR professionals communicating where their company has made a mistake and how they are acting to correct it.

Mistakes Storytellers Make

All you need to do is look at those four words above: 1) Audience, 2) Medium, 3) Storyteller, and 4) Subject. If anyone diminishes these in importance, then the connections are not made. The result of this, over time, is a community that lacks cohesiveness.

I believe many professional communicators misdirect their thoughts to either the medium or the subject. They buy the latest gear and try fantastic shots and forget the story. Sometimes they get so attached emotionally to the topic that they lose their objectivity to know the story.

I believe the audience is the most overlooked part of the puzzle, more often than the medium or subject.

I believe Steve Jobs was one of the best business people who understood the audience. When he rolled out new products, they were not what people wanted or needed. No one talked about a computer with a graphical interface before he helped to introduce the Mac. No one knew what a tablet device was before he introduced the iPad.

What Steve Jobs did know was how to help improve the lives of his audience. He saw how they lived and how he could improve their lives. Great storytellers need to know their audience just as well. This way, when we tell them stories of subjects in their community, they will line up just like people do when Apple releases a new product. They know it will be a great story because yesterday they gave me a great experience.

The secret about your audience

When you immerse yourself into the community you are covering; you find your subjects for the story.

Even businesses like Starbucks and Chick-fi-A train their employees to learn about their customers and to connect with them. For example, watch this video done by Chick-fil-A.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2v0RhvZ3lvY]
I encourage storytellers to discover their communities. Find where they congregate and those who want and need to communicate with those groups. Then become an expert on the subjects that they cover for those audiences.

Deb Pang Davis, Assistant Professor, Syracuse University

In Deb Pang Davis’ comments to the National Press Photographers Association Business Blitz at the Grady School of Journalism, she encouraged photographers to be involved in social media. Social media is one of the best ways to join a community. People get to know you, and you get to know them and share content.

Marketing is connecting you to your audience.