Dallas Free Press expands community engagement with pop-up newsroom
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The best way for us to reach our neighbors is face-to-face and word-of-mouth.
It’s ironic, considering that all of our communication so far is digital — our website, this newsletter you subscribe to (thank you!), our Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn pages, and especially the texts we exchange with South Dallas and West Dallas residents (in English and Spanish).
We started 2021 with 161 text subscribers. Today, we have 566 — a three-fold increase.
The lion’s share of these came from our survey efforts early in the year and the time we spent at 2021 MLK Food Park events with our pop-up newsroom. Better Block and TREC graciously included us in the initial four-week series, and as Desiree “Dee” Powell of Do Right by the Streets continued to iterate the food park, she invited Dallas Free Press to become an ongoing presence. (That’s the incomparable Dee pictured above with Dallas Free Press executive director Keri Mitchell.)
By the end of 2021, we had it down to a formula:
- Haul the Better Block-designed Tracy kiosk to an event.
- Ask neighbors to answer survey questions or share story ideas, and to sign up for our text messages.
- Give neighbors a $5 gift card or a $5 token to exchange at a vendor booth.
- Pay vendors for their collected tokens at the event’s end. (This was a win-win for us — supporting local, Black- and Latino-owned entrepreneurs AND creating a way to keep interacting with neighbors!)
Because we had a pop-up newsroom and a plan, we were able to show up at events in South Dallas even beyond the MLK Food Park — Mill City Neighborhood Association‘s Fourth of July block party, Bridge Builders‘ Juneteenth celebration in Bonton, the Skip Shockley Foundation’s Pecan Festival at Opportunity Park, and the Sunny South Harvest Festival.
Thank you to all of our community partners for welcoming us to your gatherings!
We’ll expand our pop-up newsroom outreach into West Dallas in 2022, and look for more opportunities in South Dallas. We’ll add more neighbors to our community engagement team, look for more volunteers to staff events, and find funders who understand the need to build communication infrastructures in ignored and neglected neighborhoods.
You can help!
- Know of a 2022 event where Dallas Free Press can meet lots of new neighbors and support local businesses? Reach out to executive director Keri Mitchell.
- Want to help us fund these efforts? Donate today and your gift will be tripled by our NewsMatch funders.
Thank you for your support of equitable local journalism,
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Keri Mitchell has spent 20+ years as a community journalist, including 15 years dedicated to community and civic journalism at Dallas’ Advocate magazines. She launched Dallas Free Press in early 2020 with the belief that all neighborhoods deserve reporting and storytelling that values their community and holds leaders accountable.
Mitchell says she is energized by “knowing our work is making an impact — listening to people, telling their stories with strong narratives paired with compelling data that leads to change. I also love spending time in our neighborhoods and with our neighbors, learning from them and working to determine how journalism can be part of the solution to their challenges.”
Mitchell is proud to be the winner of multiple awards during her journalism career including: Finalist in Magazine Feature Reporting (2018) and Finalist in Magazine Investigative Reporting (2017) from Hugh Aynesworth Excellence in Journalism, Best Feature Story (2011) from Texas Community Newspaper Association and Best Magazine Feature (2011) from Dallas Bar Association Philbin Awards.
Areas of Expertise:
local government, education, civic issues, investigative and enterprise reporting
Location Expertise:
Dallas, Texas
Official Title:
Founder + executive director
Email Address:
keri@dallasfreepress.com
