Today, I am joined by Julia Hildebrand. As part of the award-winning Correctiv team, Julia leads a project called beabee. It is a tool that helps newsrooms turn audiences into engaged communities. Before that, Julia had worked for the social startup ChangeX in Dublin where she developed community-software that allows people to start their own local projects. I met Julia while we both worked for Germany's international broadcaster Deutsche Welle. During that time, she was developing new social media strategies, guidelines and workflows for more user participation.
Julia's expectations of community-journalism is high: “There is so much more potential for civic participation. Community-Journalism for me is a way, to unleash that potential and empower people to improve their own environment.”
I am very happy that she agreed to do this interview. We discussed civic participation and in how far journalism can or should foster that.
Some key takeaways: