How Journalists Engage

Sue Robinson is the Helen Firstbrook Franklin Professor of Journalism in the School of Journalism & Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is the author of Networked News, Racial Divides: How Power and Privilege Shape Public Discourse in Progressive Communities (2018), which won the AEJMC Tankard Book Award, and co-author (with Matt Carlson and Seth C. Lewis) of News After Trump: Journalism's Crisis of Relevance in a Changed Media Culture (Oxford, 2021).

• AcknowledgmentsPrologueChapter One: How Journalists Trust: Engagement Practices in an Industry Paradigm ShiftChapter Two: How Journalists Engage: A Theory of Trust AppliedChapter Three: How Journalists Identify: Trusting Agents of Engaged CareChapter Four: How Journalists Might Care: Trust Building Through News Listening-to-Learn Literacies Chapter Five: How Journalists Can Listen to Learn and Learn to Listen: Two Interventions in Newsrooms and J-SchoolsChapter Six: A Theory of Trust Building: Framing Journalistic Practice with an Identity-Aware Caring through EngagementAppendixReferencesIndex

The doctrine of neutral professionalism tells journalists that their work will be trusted if they keep themselves out of it. No, says Sue Robinson, you have put yourselves into it. You have to engage with the people you are trying to inform and come clean about your own identity as a private citizen and public professional. Her brave book, How Journalists Engage, describes the 'built environment' where an alternative—and far more humble—approach is slowly coming into view. In this detailed account of engagement work, there is a rethinking of journalism's entire professional project. I, for one, welcome that.