Introducing Trust Week: The relationship between the local news media and our communities

The best relationships are built on trust and encourage participants to grow and learn. That’s the relationship we work to maintain with our readers on every local news story we cover. But admittedly, we’re much better at reporting local news than we are at sharing how we develop those stories and the complex decisions and ethics that are involved.

Because many of today’s news consumers worry about the accuracy of the information they hear and read, we believe it’s important to build trust with our readers. That’s why we created Trust Week: a week dedicated to highlighting what makes local news credible and vital to our communities.

Throughout Trust Week, readers will hear from a variety of reporters, editors and industry experts who will offer an inside view into our news operations. We’ll share how we find sources and develop news and opinion pieces. We’ll elaborate on how we correct mistakes and work to maintain credibility in a rapidly progressing news cycle. We also plan to engage directly with readers via polls and surveys to find out where we can improve. And we’ll be shedding some light on the many impacts local news has on a community.

There are five key pillars guiding our work this week. We hope to:

• Train readers on how to distinguish truth from fiction, especially when it comes to news.
• Reinforce what makes local news trustworthy compared to other sources.
• Understand what readers want and expect from their news.
• Sell subscriptions that support trusted community news and information.
• Tell the stories of how local news (or lack thereof) has impacted communities.

Through the week’s series of articles, podcasts and videos, we hope to answer questions, create dialogue and build trust. To aid in this mission, we’ve taken down our paywall for the week so readers can fully experience the value of local news. We’ll still be writing and reporting as always, but we’re also listening, inviting questions and accepting suggestions for improvement, which can be sent to trustweek@forumcomm.com .

We hope our readers find this series informative and insightful, and we look forward to growing and learning together as we continue to serve our communities.

Kris Hauge is the marketing manager for Forum Communications.