What Does An Audience Engagement Job Look Like?

The Newmark J-School's degree in social journalism, launched in 2015, has been renamed — engagement journalism. The new title more accurately describes the program, which focuses on interacting with and serving communities. To mark the occasion and celebrate the work our Engagement Journalism alums do, we met with grads and panelists to take a look at the current status and future of engagement journalism as it continues to evolve. This session is two of three.

Panelist Beatrix Lockwood: Beatrix Lockwood is the Community Engagement Editor at Reuters, where she helps the global news agency build and engage with online audiences. Previously, she used engagement reporting, social media, and newsletters to tell stories at The Marshall Project and The Trace. Her work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Marie Claire, and Vice, and elsewhere. She is a 2019 graduate of the Engagement Journalism program at Newmark.

Panelist Mekdela Maskal: Mekdela Maskal is passionate about visibilizing journalism work and supporting community participation in the reporting. Prior to joining Covering Climate Now as their engagement editor, she helped launch THE CITY’s ongoing Open Newsroom project, an initiative that brought communities and journalists together in public libraries to build trust and make reporting a more collaborative process. She’s earned a B.S in Media, Communications and Culture from NYU and an M.A. in Engaged Journalism from CUNY.

Panelist Alyxaundria Sanford: Alyxaundria Sanford is the Audience Engagement Producer at The Intercept. She’s worked across all facets of journalism including broadcast news. She is a 2017 graduate of the Social Journalism program at Newmark Graduate School of Journalism.
Panelist Isadora Varejão: Isadora Varejão is an engagement producer at Retro Report. She is a graduate of the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, where she developed the Women Against Violence Experiment (W.A.V.E.), a multidisciplinary platform that brings information about domestic violence to immigrants through an interactive play and a chatbot. She began her career as a general assignment reporter at local radio stations in her hometown of Rio de Janeiro.