Documented, an immigrant-facing nonprofit newsroom, shares the creative and innovative ways it has gone about reaching underserved communities

Media organizations are struggling to break through in an overcrowded and chaotic information environment, and communities aren’t getting the information they need. There is an approach to address this that may seem obvious but is surprisingly under-adopted by media organizations: shaping editorial, content, product, and audience development strategy in direct response to asking communities their needs and what matters to them. At Documented—a New York-based, immigrant-facing nonprofit newsroom—we deliberately built a system from our founding to integrate community research and product development into how we function. We built a unique two-way communication publishing platform on WhatsApp and were one of the newsrooms to engage directly with users through WeChat and Next Door—all in response to community input. As a result, we have reached many people previously underserved with critical information. While these ideas may seem most applicable to other newsrooms, there are lessons in our experience that apply to any organization looking to develop innovative ways to meet the information needs of their audiences, including community-based organizations, philanthropies, universities, and local governments.