Community news outlets should build on high voter turnout in presidential election

More
than 160 million people voted in the US presidential election, more than any
other election in US history.

About two-thirds of eligible voters cast ballots, the
most since 1900 when more than 7 in 10 eligible American voters cast ballots,
according to numbers from the United States Election Project.

The
youngest voters, ages 18 to 29, were key to the surge in voting. As the last
votes were being counted, Gen Z and Millennials turnout topped 53 percent, besting the previous high of 51 percent, set in 2008, according to
the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at
Tufts University.

This
creates an incredible opportunity for us to make the case for our own role, as
journalists, in civic engagement, particularly to that young demographic we so
far have been largely unsuccessful in courting as subscribers. It is our
responsibility to remind our readers the importance of staying involved now
that a president has been elected. After all, we will be the ones holding
elected officials accountable for the promises they made as candidates. Our
role as fact-checkers will continue.

It
won’t be easy. Our country is deeply divided along partisan lines, and people
tend to remain in their own bubbles with similar viewpoints, creating echo
chambers that leave them unchallenged and too often uninterested in facts that
don’t support previously held beliefs. A Pew Center report this fall found that
roughly
four-in-ten registered voters say that they did not have a single close friend
who supports the other major party candidate.

Journalists
are no exception. Our readers suspect that we are in the “liberal” camp of
voters, and a 2020 study from three academic researchers confirmed that indeed,
a dominant majority of journalists identify as liberal or Democrats. But the
study also found little evidence that our political leanings impact our
journalism. We have failed to communicate the latter to our readers.

Still,
even if many of our newsrooms are operating virtually at the moment because of
the pandemic, we risk letting our own echo chambers reinforce how we see the
world if our colleagues are the people with whom we primarily interact around
the election. We have an obligation to seek out viewpoints that differ from our
own and to do it purposefully, through our work and through our personal social
media networks.

Since
the hand-wringing of 2016, national news organizations visited our smaller
communities to understand how President Trump could be elected. That continued
as journalists tested his popularity in the days leading up to the election.
Most published caveats about national polling for fear of getting caught again
with a narrative that doesn’t match a reality that we well knew in our smaller
communities.

I
don’t need to read an op-ed in the New York Times about why white Midwesterners
voted for Trump. These are my people. I grew up with them and am friends with
them on Facebook. (I worked with several at our college newspaper in Southern
Illinois.) Many of my family members support Trump.

After
the election ended–and when the pandemic ends, we will still send birthday
greetings, gather for Thanksgiving and celebrate milestones.

Likewise,
our communities will still gather. People who supported Donald Trump will share
church pews and mosque carpets with those who supported President-Elect Joseph
R. Biden. People who think the coronavirus is the same as the flu will share
the grocery store aisles with nurses from our local emergency room. Teachers
who came out for Biden will have the children of voters who cast ballots for Trump
in their classroom.

These
groups will speak to each other and argue and point fingers and retreat to
their bubbles for reassurances.

No
matter what happens, we need to be there.

A version of this story first
appeared in Publisher’s Auxiliary, the only national publication serving
America’s community newspapers. It is published by the National
Newspaper Association. GJR
is partnering with Pub Aux to re-print Jackie Spinner’s monthly “Local Matters”
column on our website. Spinner is the editor of Gateway Journalism Review.
Follow her on Twitter @jackiespinner.