Three Things Datebook for the week of 11/22/2021

The datebook recommends a webinar on how digital marketers have adapted to consumer behavioral shifts during COVID. Plus the Diversity Hiring Project from Trusting News and showing our gratitude.

It’s a short week for many folks, but a few things are still on the datebook for this week.

THING ONE: Why Innovative Marketers Are Focused on Creating Engagement

Adweek regularly offers some engaging webinars, and a good one is coming up on Tuesday, November 23 at 1:00 pm (Eastern).

Acquia is a Boston-based branding company that helps companies create digital experiences that matter. The firm has just completed a global research study of 8,000 consumers and 800 marketers examining how digital marketers have adapted to consumer behavioral shifts during the last 18 months, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The survey results showed that an astonishing 94% of marketers have changed their digital customer experience (CX) strategy to at least some extent in the last 18 months, relying more heavily on digital content distributed across multiple channels to reach consumers in this challenging environment.

The webinar will discuss more results from the research and insights from two brands, Stanley Black & Decker and J.Crew, on how they are setting the standard for the most ambitious digital journeys.

This is one of those opportunities to wander outside of the public media bubble for some fascinating insights.

You can register through this link.

THING TWO: Join the Diversity Hiring Project from Trusting News

In August, I wrote about an initiative from The Trusting News Project encouraging news organizations to enter into conversations and collaborations addressing how journalism can reach and be trusted by a more diverse audience with fact-based, responsible journalism. A Road to Pluralism aims to strengthen trust across the political spectrum by helping journalists bridge divides, foster productive conversations, and fuel open-mindedness.

As part of this initiative, Trusting News has joined with the News Leaders Association (NLA) to help create resources for hiring editors to bring more intellectual diversity into newsrooms. Here’s how this project is described:

We know that journalists tend to have a lot in common with each other and that their lived experiences don’t typically reflect the diversity of the communities they serve.

That's true across the fault lines of race and gender. It's also true for more hidden factors like values, family background, geography, class, education, and political leanings — things that are harder to learn in a hiring process.

Trusting News and the NLA are asking:

• How could our recruiting and hiring processes surface more insights around what job candidates would bring to the newsroom?

• How can we get a more complete picture of how someone might diversify our staff beyond characteristics that are visible or that appear on their resume?

To help answer these questions, Trusting News and NLA are looking for newsrooms to contribute to these resources. The goal is to create an idea bank¹ as part of A Road to Pluralism that can be shared with journalism organizations across the country.

And the reason this is in the datebook for this week is because the deadline to indicate your interest is this Wednesday, November 24, 2021.

There is a short form to fill out to participate in this important project that should only take you a few minutes to complete. Public media can be an essential player in this initiative, so I urge you to become involved.

THING THREE: This is a Great Week for Gratitude

According to the American Psychological Association, gratitude is a sense of thankfulness and happiness in response to receiving a gift, either a tangible benefit given by someone or a fortunate happenstance.

In this week where we give thanks, I believe that there is no better time than to express our gratitude to the people on the frontlines of our organizations.

This is a week that most staff at our stations will be with family or friends enjoying the long weekend. However, many will be called upon to work sometime over the four-day weekend.

Whether it’s an air shift, covering the news, recording a performance or an interview, or fixing a computer system or a transmitter, folks will be showing up to keep our audience informed, engaged, and entertained.

They deserve thanks for their work every day, but they particularly deserve our gratitude this week.

It’s not only the right thing to do, but it’s also good for yourself as research shows that an “attitude of gratitude” can measurably improve your overall well-being.

“Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues but the parent of all the others.” – Cicero.

And I also want to add my gratitude to the readers of this newsletter. Thank you.

1. The Goals of this project are to:

• Build a list of perspectives often missing in newsrooms.

• Collect examples and ideas around what types of hiring practices and questions could help bring in more intellectually diverse candidates.

• Create a list of potential hiring questions that would help increase intellectual diversity of staff.

• Identify legality and practicality of these questions with HR departments and hiring editors.

• Use those findings to have conversations internally in newsrooms to further identify perspectives that might be missing within existing staff.

• Use those findings to create a resource guide that editors can use during the hiring process.