For years, jesikah maria ross had been engaging community members at Capital Public Radio, producing award-winning content. She felt she’d found a way of doing participatory journalism that consistently generated public dialogue and community change. Though each issue and community she worked with was different, she sensed she was using a similar methodology each time–but which she couldn’t quite define. Every time it felt like she was starting from scratch, re-inventing the process and having to justify what she was doing. 

She asked Praxis Associates to help her create a principles-focused framework that she could use to plan and evaluate participatory journalism. Through a series of conversations, collaborative writing sessions, and prototypes, we crafted a project planning framework and the set of principles that now guide the way Capital Public Radio engages with any community, about any issue. Because these projects involve multiple interactions among people, cultures, organizations and government, we created an Impact Picker database that cuts through the complexity, identifying what is important to evaluate and what methods to use.