Casey Newton on developing trust with sources: “You’ve gotta have skin in the game”

This article is part of #CommsConversations, a LinkedIn series where I talk with peers to unpack what it means to build (and rebuild) trust within the organizations we work, communities we live, and institutions we rely on.  

 When asked, “where do you get your news?” my knee-jerk response used to be to only list outlets and organizations, but more and more these days I’m adding individuals to that list. Can you rely on a person, not an entity, for information? I think so. After talking with @Casey Newton, founder of Platformer, formerly of The Verge, I’m even more convinced.

You can catch our conversation here.

Here are three highlights that stood out most to me.

1.      Migrating trust from institutions to individuals 

“Anybody can start a newsletter, just like anybody can open a Twitter account or start a Facebook page. And this comes with a lot of trade-offs. That's mostly what I write about, the trade-offs involved in this sort of incredible democratization of media that we have seen. It's been very hard on the media industry in particular, but I'm sort of a chaos is a ladder person. And a thing that I observed was that so much of the trust in the world was migrating from institutions to individuals. And so, to the extent that people trusted me, I felt like I could actually turn that into a tiny media company and try to build from that sort of a new atomic unit.”

2.      Vulnerability is key to relationships

“The folks who work in comms that I have the best relationship with tell me things they shouldn't. This is how I actually develop trust with people. They take a risk with me. They say, you know what, I am going to actually tell you this and you can't use it now. Or you could know this, but it didn't come from me. That's how I actually develop trust with people. Like, if you don't have any skin in the game, we can have a productive, collegial relationship, but I'm never going to feel like this is somebody who I can actually make a bet on.”

3.      As a journalist, be upfront from the beginning

“When you subscribe to Platformer, I send you a link that says, this is how I see the world. And it lays out like these are the questions I'm trying to answer in this publication. This is how I do my reporting. This is where the information is coming from. This is how I correct things when I get them wrong. This is my ethics policy. So you know what I will and will not do for money, basically. And I just give that to people up front.”

As someone who is often talking with reporters and representing a major organization, the idea of having skin in the game is grounded in that vulnerability (Point # 2 above), and it’s a two-way street. The work that we do as communicators and the work that journalists do is based on trust. A reporter has to trust their sources, but your sources have to feel confident in your intentions as a reporter.

And as the idea of micro-publishing really amps up, journalists can’t rely on the reputation of publications anymore. Sometimes they’re starting from scratch, or close from scratch. I’ve said before that we swim in the same ecosystem as our friends in journalism, and so we should root for and support them – outlets, organizations, and especially individuals. Celebrate the work, cheer for them to learn, and let’s learn with them.

I hope you enjoy the series, and I welcome any feedback.

fxs