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On Friday, WHYY became a center of community discourse as the first day of the WHYY News Civic Dialogue Summit brought together a diverse crowd of journalists, educators, students and community members, all united by a common goal: building stronger and more responsive connections between local newsrooms and the communities they serve.

The free, public event is a collaboration between WHYY News and Bridging Blocks, a partnership with the Free Library of Philadelphia.

“We are excited over two days to be discussing how newsrooms can better connect to local communities and how you all in the community can better inform the work that we do inside newsrooms,” said Sarah Glover, vice president for news and engagement at WHYY, after opening the session. “This will be a very collaborative two days and you’ll learn lots of best practices.”

The first day’s agenda featured a series of insightful panels and discussions, opening up with a panel titled “Civic News Connects Communities.” Timothy Shaffer, the chair of civil discourse for the Stavros Niarchos Foundation; Angelique Hinton, executive director of PA Youth Vote and Julie Silverbrook, vice president of civic education at the National Constitution Center, joined WHYY News reporter Johnny Perez-Gonzalez and moderator Cherri Gregg, host of WHYY’s Studio 2, to talk about how their organizations are creating news that engages communities in public debate and supports our democracy.

The panelists agreed that partnerships between civic groups and media can develop symbiotic relationships that provide benefit to local communities. Hinton used the example of a legal battle over public education in Philadelphia in which a court ordered the school district to reduce inequality, which her organization closely followed.

“They still haven’t fully addressed it, but we will continue to use our partnerships with the media to lift up the stories about how these students who are in these underserved schools are not having equitable access to resources,” she told the audience.

Shaffer added that it’s important for media to be personally out in the community, developing in-person relationships, noting that technology has diminished the public square.

“How do we hear what we need to know?” he said. “We’re talking about the decline of … social capital, these relationships that come from our membership and clubs and associations. When we lose these opportunities, it’s not surprising that we retreat. We can be alone together sometimes. And so we got to figure out how to be together, together.”

WHYY’s CEO Bill Marazzo then took the moderator’s mic to talk with Fred Sutherland, former executive vice president and chief financial officer of ARAMARK, and Tony Cuffie, senior manager for the WHYY News Community and Engagement Team.

Marazzo asked Sutherland, who also serves on the WHYY Board of Directors and as a trustee of the National Constitution Center, what motivated him to be so active in his retirement and what drew him to those institutions.

“I just became interested in how government works, how society works, how people relate to each other, how things get done in a productive way. I think civic dialogue and knowledge are coupled together,” he said, before quoting James Madison: “A popular government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy.”

That’s one of the purposes of WHYY’s Bridging Blocks program, of which Cuffie gave an overview.

“The effort is bringing people together on a hot button issue and helping them speak to each other in a civilized manner,” Cuffie said. “The thing that I find very compelling is that you’ll have people who will come in with greatly different opinions, and when they humanize each other by interacting in conversation, they often discover that their similarities are more prevalent than their differences. And that’s powerful.”

Another highlight was two panels on funding news and best practices with representatives from local foundations, who talked about what funders look for in local news coverage.

During a panel titled “Press Forward & Funding Best Practices,” Nina Sachdev of Media Impact Funders said that it’s essential to preserve hyperlocal community news.

“As newsrooms have diminished in capacity or closed down entirely, obviously that has left a void in coverage of the issues that foundations care about, whether it’s education or health or the environment,” she said.

Other panelists included Jess King, executive director of The Steinman Institute and Emma Restrepo of 2PuntosPlatform. Jim Friedlich, executive director and CEO of Lenfest Institute of Journalism, moderated.

Glover moderated a panel on “Funding Local News,” which included Naeema Campbell, program officer for The Fund for New Jersey; Frances Sheehan, president and CEO of the Foundation for Delaware County; and Jessica Richards, program director for democracy and civic initiatives at the William Penn Foundation. Panelists shared the challenges of their efforts to help community news outlets provide information.

“We’re starting to understand that there are different kinds of ways communities get information,” Campbell said. “How is the news getting to people where they are at? Is it print anymore? Not always. Digital? How do you sift through that and how do we have those messages in those mediums where people are as technology is changing so quickly?”

Another panel, hosted by WHYY News Managing Editor Madhusmita Bora, explored “Why We Need Civic Dialogue.” Jamie Brunson, executive director of First Person Arts, said that civic dialogue helps bridge gaps between communities that are often isolated from each other.

“Philadelphia is a reflection of our national character in that we have these amazing neighborhoods and these neighborhoods are tight and they are fiercely proud,” she said. “I wish we’d be more inquisitive about their culture and their food and their way of loving and showing love. Because in my humble experience, it is amazing to open that door and talk to somebody you never thought you’d talk to and learn from.”

The summit also addressed the role of student journalists in shaping the future of news media and reporting on their own colleges during what is proving to be a tumultuous period on campus and for media.

“We are dealing with a lot about how Penn’s dealing with executive orders,” said Emily Scolnick, editor-in-chief of the Daily Pennsylvanian, the student paper at the University of Pennsylvania. “And something that we’re trying to emphasize in our news coverage – how is this affecting the Penn community itself?  Who can we reach out to and what stories can we tell from that?”

The summit will continue Saturday, April 5 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

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Editor’s note: The William Penn Foundation, Lenfest Institute for Journalism, The Fund for New Jersey, Fred and Barbara Sutherland/The Chatham Foundation, and The Foundation for Delaware County are WHYY supporters. WHYY News produces independent, fact-based news content for audiences in Greater Philadelphia, Delaware and South Jersey.