Hear from MPR News' Reverb team, the Texas Tribune's audience team and the MJC's Ben Toff about building trust and relevance with younger audiences
Photo: MPR News Reverb team members Anne Guttridge (left) and Feven Gerezgiher (center right) interview “Love is Blind” participants Vanessa Boreland (center left) and Kylie Schuelke (right) on the Stone Arch Bridge in Minneapolis on Feb. 12. Ben Hovland | MPR News
Join the Minnesota Journalism Center's cohort of nonprofit and member-supported news organizations for a noontime conversation about smart approaches to building trust and relevance with young audiences.
We'll hear from Kaila White, who leads MPR News' youth-focused Reverb team (which just took their social coverage in person with a live event on the Minneapolis season of "Love is Blind") and the Texas Tribune's audience producer, Laura Duclos, and director of audience growth and engagement, Matt Adams.
Ben Toff, the MJC’s director, will join the trio to talk about his work studying how audiences are responding to efforts — like those at Reverb and the Texas Tribune — that are focused on at connecting with newer, younger members of local communities. Ben's research was conducted in Minnesota and Texas with support in part from the Texas Tribune, the Google News Initiative and the Alliance for Trust in Media.
Kaila, Laura, Matt and Ben will kick it off, but a big part of the conversation will come from you: Bring your newsroom's best ideas, quiet successes and most creative ways of connecting with new audiences in your community. We hope to build a resource of our very best tips and approaches to building community and trust with younger listeners, readers and audience members across Minnesota.
Here's how to join:
- When: Wednesday, March 26, 2025
- Time: 11:30 a.m.
- Where: Virtually, on Zoom
- Who: Audience editors, producers, news leaders, reporters, photographers -- anyone who's interested in connecting with younger audiences in their communities
- Register: Sign up here
We hope to see you there!
Meet the speakers
Matt Adams is the director of audience growth and engagement at The Texas Tribune. Before joining the Tribune in June 2023, he was the supervising editor for the audience team at NPR, where he focused on reaching new audiences and finding more ways for a radio company to do more things on the internet. Prior to NPR, he was a senior producer at National Geographic, leading the team that ran Nat Geo's online photo community that hosted over 1 million members. He helped lead the redesign of the platform and produced the Best in the World photo assignment where one community member's photo was featured on the cover of Traveler magazine. Connect with Matt on LinkedIn.
Laura Duclos joined the Texas Tribune in 2024 as an audience producer specializing in video. She writes the Monday edition of The Brief, the Tribune’s daily newsletter. Laura began her journalism career as a photojournalist for a Lubbock TV station after graduating from Texas Tech University. Laura became the first multimedia producer at the Houston Chronicle in 2020 and worked with the Poynter Institute’s media literacy program, MediaWise, as an audience editor and creative director. Connect with Laura on LinkedIn.
Ben Toff is the director of the Minnesota Journalism Center, where he leads research focused on understanding changes in the local news ecosystem as well as applied projects partnering with local news outlets to test the effectiveness of strategies designed to rebuild relationships with the public. He is a leading expert on news avoidance, and previously led a three-year international study on trust in news at the University of Oxford. Connect with Ben on LinkedIn.
Kaila White is a digital editor at MPR News, where she helps teams across the newsroom create content and develop strategies to serve and grow online audiences. As part of that, she manages Reverb, an MPR News initiative and reporting team focused on serving younger (and young-at-heart) Minnesotans. Before moving to Minneapolis in 2022, Kaila spent 10 years at The Arizona Republic and azcentral.com in Phoenix. Kaila’s work has earned several distinctions, including a Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Reporting for her and her team’s work on the podcast “The Wall,” awards from the Minnesota Society of Professional Journalists and the Midwest Broadcast Journalists Association, and as a finalist in the Gannett Greatest Awards from the USA Today Network. Connect with Kaila on LinkedIn.
Questions about the session? Contact the Minnesota Journalism Center's Meg Martin ([email protected]) or Regina McCombs ([email protected]).