As part of our latest initiative, the Bay Area Media Collaborative, Renaissance Journalism is convening unique, Bay Area-wide conversations to help journalists and community residents exchange their views about the region’s housing crisis.
The effort will be organized by Spaceship Media, a nonprofit organization founded by two veteran reporters, which encourages respectful and journalism-supported dialogue to bridge divides and build trust between the media and the public.
“We’re excited to be partnering with Spaceship Media on this initiative,” said Jon Funabiki, executive director of Renaissance Journalism. “They have worked successfully with a number of news organizations and communities around the country to convene similar dialogues on a variety of tough social issues, such as immigration, race and the achievement gap, and our country’s deep political divide.”
The Renaissance Journalism-sponsored Spaceship Media conversations will engage a diverse group of residents and journalists from throughout the Bay Area who will meet in a closed and moderated Facebook group for sustained dialogues.
Journalists will be in the conversation not as observers but as participants along with roughly 75 residents. “The intent is to do far more than generate story ideas,” said Jeremy Hay, co-founder of Spaceship Media. “The goal is to drive deep conversations and community-rooted news coverage about Bay Area housing issues while simultaneously increasing public trust in the media. The conversations do this by strengthening relationships between journalists and the communities they serve.”
As a result of these dialogues, notes Hay, community members who participate come to have a better understanding of one another’s opinions and different points of views about a range of complex, controversial and typically divisive issues.
About the Bay Area Media Collaborative
These dialogues are part of Renaissance Journalism’s Bay Area Media Collaborative (BAMC), our groundbreaking effort to encourage and challenge news organizations to work together to address the crisis in housing—from the unbridled gentrification of neighborhoods to the displacement of longtime residents and the rising problem of homelessness. Together, these issues profoundly impact the quality, health and character of life throughout the Bay Area. Moreover, they bring into sharp relief some longstanding equity and social justice issues.
In addition to the dialogues, Renaissance Journalism is sponsoring a series of training sessions and news briefings, conferences and other community engagements to support innovative news coverage about the housing crisis. We also will offer mini-grants to support collaborative reporting projects undertaken by groups of news outlets.
About Spaceship Media
Spaceship Media, a nonprofit organization founded by reporters Jeremy Hay and Eve Pearlman, uses dialogue journalism to bridge divides. Its aim is to reduce polarization and help repair trust in the media.
Spaceship Media partners with news organizations to convene people in respectful dialogue with others who hold opposing and different views. It has a seven-step process to gather participants, prepare them for a moderated conversation experience, embark on a sustained dialogue, support that dialogue with reporting provided by our partner news organizations, and consult with our partners on content about and arising from the conversation.