WhatsApp is at the center of ¿Qué Pasa, Midwest? engagement with Latinx audiences

From the beginning, WNIN’s bilingual podcast ¿Qué Pasa, Midwest? has focused on meeting the community where they are — virtually and in-person. That’s meant figuring out how to connect with them on WhatsApp, which is quickly becoming a go-to destination for finding and sharing news. Here’s how they made it happen.

Tell us who you are, and share a brief summary of the reporting project.

We are the ¿Qué Pasa, Midwest? team, a bilingual reporting network telling the stories of Latinos living in the Midwest. 

After conducting a source audit of ¿Qué Pasa, Midwest? Season 6 to get a baseline of our source demographics and diversity, we continued our mission of creating authentic content by ensuring that we are striving to work with sources that are in or of the communities we are creating content for. We want to make sure that we are reporting from and for the Latinx community instead of about the community.

How did community engagement inform your reporting? 

We started working with WhatsApp as a way of community engagement. With this, our goal is to produce relevant content that addresses the specific needs and interests of Latinx living in the Midwest. Sourcing the content via Whatsapp, has helped us decide it would be best to meet them where they are. In the coming weeks, we will share our first monthly newsletter with the results of reporting based on the crowdsourced topics directly in the Whatsapp group. 

How did you build trust in the community you were reporting on?

By meeting our audience where they are at. In our case, WhatsApp or in-person. And by creating culturally authentic content. Other organizations have had success using similar models, and we believe it will be the best way to reach and serve the Midwestern Latinx community

How are you bringing this reporting back to the community?

We will share three articles and one ¿Qué Pasa, Midwest? episode per month which will be distributed back to the community via a newsletter shared directly in the Whatsapp group as well as posting the content on the ¿Qué Pasa, Midwest? website. We will use social media to help make people aware of the Whatsapp group and the availability of crowdsourced reporting. We believe this engagement model will be the most effective way of reaching Latinx in the Midwest and giving them the opportunity to help generate content that is uniquely tailored to them.

What lessons do you take away from this project in terms of strengthening your engagement?

We have learned to pivot when needed. We started with a podcast and this has now transformed into a bilingual network and a WhatsApp newsletter because we listened to our audience with community engagement initiatives. This has been crucial to the growth of our content and the trust from our audience.