What if a news organization optimized for social capital?
I finally read Bowling Alone at the end of 2025, and I’ve been thinking about the role of social capital in journalism ever since. Most of the data is old now – the book was first published in 2000 – but the decline in connectedness it documents spanned decades.
My entire career in journalism has happened in the wake of this trend, which started with my parents’ generation and was well-established by the time I was born. Since at least the 1970s, people have voted less, volunteered less, gotten together less.
What should journalists do about this? We might say it’s not our job to fix, but if our business depends on trust and connection, this is our problem, too.
What can we do?
Journalism is great at creating learned helplessness. We are great at telling you what went wrong, and that’s an important part of what we do, but it doesn’t have to all of what we do.
This isn’t just a news problem. Putnam describes how civic organizations have largely reshaped and professionalized themselves to turn members into subscribers who send money to lobbyists. Finding solutions is someone else’s problem: “We remain, in short, reasonably well-informed spectators of public affairs, but many fewer of us actually partake in the game.”
What can news organizations do? The first step, I think, is acknowledging that giving our audience something to do is part of our job.
This is part of my argument for calendars: It’s a way of showing people what’s possible.
A calendar is an entry point for civic engagement. Reminding people that stuff is happening, and that there are things to be involved in locally should create an audience for the more story-centric journalism you’re doing, because it’s reminding people that there are ways to be involved.
Some other ways of attacking this problem:
How do we talk to each other?
News organizations have largely run away from this, except in specific cases. Most sites have turned off comments.
We can debate how news organizations ran their comment sections. Most did it poorly. But it’s clear that almost all conversation around news happens on other platforms. People talk about our work, and about us, away from our work.
I know some outlets are finding new ways to connect with communties. KQED runs a Discord server tied to Forum, and call-in radio shows are still a viable way to speak directly with an audience. Boston Public Radio is a local example. I’m curious what else people are trying.
Where do we gather?
Even before Elon Musk bought Twitter, people called it the hellsite, even as we all hung around, hoping it would get better and often trying to make it so. It was a place to hang out, even if it wasn’t a great place.
I remember thinking, as I abandoned that account, that it would be nice to find a better place to spend my time on the internet. I started posting on a barbecue forum and joined a Discord server for a BJJ podcast. I kept Slack open on weekends to see what was happening on News Nerdery. It was nice to have spaces that weren’t just tweets, where people weren’t just posting their gripes and arguments, seeking attention.
In retrospect, I was looking for a club, or maybe a lodge, something social but not exactly work. (The social science term is a “third place.”) Those words just aren’t in my vocabulary in a way they might’ve been for my parents’ or grandparents’ generation, because that sort of gathering has faded over the past half-century.
Do news organizations have a role in this? Maybe!
This is a hard problem, because there’s only so much gathering you can do online. Some social capital might need be built in person.
As one digital native said, “online ties may be a multiplier of sorts, but zero times a multiplier is still zero.”
I don’t know how much gathering needs to be in-person. I have friends in colleagues I only know over chat and Zoom, but I do think something does, even just a little.
I’m not done thinking about this.