Editorial design & implementation, public engagement

Engaging the public: Knight Commission on Trust, Media & Democracy

In 2018, the Aspen Institute and Knight Foundation convened a high-level bipartisan commission to examine eroding public trust in media and develop recommendations for funders and institutional leaders seeking to counter these trends. The commission needed a way to gather and synthesize public input — not just from experts in the room, but from citizens and practitioners across the country.

I designed and managed the public engagement strategy, launching and editing an online publication on Medium that brought the commission’s work to a broader audience and created a channel for public response. I developed synthesis of the commission’s deliberations, summarized research, and moderated public comments.

The commission’s final report and recommendations informed funding strategies across the journalism and civic information sector at a moment when the question of how to rebuild trust in news was moving to the center of philanthropic strategy.