Access the immersive civics journalism curriculum that turns students into community experts

Date: Sept 2, 2025

By: Anthony Payne

How do you stay connected to what’s going on in your area if the news isn’t in a language you understand? Why would you want to tune in if what’s being covered isn’t relevant to your life? 

In today’s media climate it can be difficult to feel connected to what’s going on in your area, especially if what’s being reported on isn’t accessible to you. It’s easy to feel lost at sea and opt out entirely. The Listening Post Collective (LPC) works to combat this disconnect by identifying community-specific means to make information accessible to those excluded by dominant media channels.

The Listening Post Collective began in post-Katrina New Orleans, focusing on marginalized neighborhoods that were often spoken for by the media due to a shortage of locally-based reporters. The first “Listening Post” offered an opportunity for NOLA residents to represent themselves in the conversations around gentrification and reconstruction. 

Now, following several years of successful civics media projects in neighborhoods across the country, the LPC has turned their attention to the classroom. In collaboration with PBS News Student Reporting Labs, they’ve adapted their methodology into lesson plans for the classroom: the Playbook for Educators. 

Grace Northern, a senior program officer at the Listening Post Collective, manages the LPC’s Civic Media Playbook, a DIY guide for community engagement. The Civic Media Playbook breaks down how the LPC conducts information ecosystem assessments, the  extensive process of surveying community members to identify where and how information is currently exchanged, discover what’s missing and whose voices are excluded, and better understand how people want to receive information. 

“I sometimes refer to it as the ‘touch grass’ approach to journalism,” Grace says. “Instead of just reviewing or looking up a story online, this really encourages your students to get out there, go engage with community members and to really build those social and networking skills that’ll be critical throughout their academic and professional careers.”

In many areas, the dominant news infrastructure may exclude non-English speakers, fail to build trust with locals, or neglect to focus on subject matter that’s relevant or pressing to a large chunk of the community. The LPC uses information ecosystem assessments to diagnose these gaps and  prescribe and financially support locally-driven solutions. Their process ensures that people who actually live in the community are leading the conversation to practically address their needs, and encourages building on the informal ways that people are already exchanging information in their community.

“Today more than ever it’s really important that media and journalism work with institutions outside of media and journalism,” offers Grace. “That’s making sure newsrooms are connected to their local public schools, that they’re working with their public libraries, with their local public health centers. Creating bridges between these institutions is really the only way we’re going to move forward. The Playbook provides a great guide [for] how people can start doing that.“

Adapted from their Civic Media Playbook for newsrooms, the Playbook for Educators is a tool that teaches students and teachers how to do that work themselves. It includes modules for students to research and define their community, facilitate listening sessions, connect with local voices, and develop surveys and action plans. It’s designed to be incorporated into a curriculum at any level, with tiered lessons that enable teachers to apply them as lightly or as in-depth as they see fit for their classroom. 

Local journalism and face-to-face information gathering can feel daunting for young people who haven’t developed the skills and experience to feel like active contributors in their communities. Through hands-on, experiential learning, students build the foundations of civic efficacy by taking the time to understand and participate in the local conversation. 

This series of lesson plans guides students to connect with their neighbors and learn about the factors that influence the local information ecosystem. The Playbook for Educators is a tool that middle school, high school, or college level classrooms can use to better understand how information flows where they live, what gaps exist, and begin to do something about it. 

In prior applications, educators and students have used their findings to identify a need for accountability reporting around inequities in the school system, and created strategies to bring community members into the school physically to combat misinformation and change public perception.

“We’ve made the activities scaffolded, flexible, and created specific learning outcomes for each module,” Grace adds. “We made it flexible to where teachers can dive in at any part.” The Playbook gives students agency to have their own voice in their communities and better understand their roles as active contributing members, not just consumers.

In the present forest of misinformation, repairing trust in the media begins with students, and a strong democracy is cultivated in the classroom. With the Playbook for Educators, the LPC hopes to empower teachers to create citizens who are capable of making meaningful contributions to their community and beyond. Getting to know your neighbors is more fun and less daunting than students have been led to think. 

“It’s really powerful to just get out there and talk to your neighbor,” says Grace. “Young people may not think they have the credibility or confidence or trust in the community to start building some of these relationships – but I say you absolutely do. There’s a lot of people in the community that value your perspective, and we all started somewhere.“

The Playbook for Educators is available for free via StoryMaker. Sign-up and access the Playbook here.