Live Wire with VNN Paid Training

(MUSCOGEE NATION) VNN’s Brittany Harlow was recently featured on Mvskoke Media’s Live Wire show to discuss the network’s upcoming Citizen Journalism Project. 

Jerrad Moore: Okay guys, welcome back to our Holiday Edition of Live Wire, the program where we take your questions from the chat. I'm your host Jerrad Moore, as usual, and if you guys have a question, pop it in the chat, we've already got some questions in there, we're going to get to them after our little introduction thing. On today's program, we have Brittany Harlow, she is director and lead journalist for The Verified News Network. And Brittany, thank you so much for joining us today.

Brittany Harlow: Thanks for having me.

Jerrad Moore: So I guess to start off with, before we get into these paid training opportunities, tell us about Verified News Network, what is it? What's the philosophy behind it? 

Brittany Harlow: Verified News Network is a social news media network that was founded by me and my husband Kelly Tidwell a little over five years ago. I come from a traditional background of working in radio and television, and it was just not exactly what I thought I would be getting into when I went to school for journalism and got out into the field. And so I definitely wanted to be more of a community service and really be working with our community members directly and representing them and giving them what they needed. And so I met Kelly while I was the weekend anchor at KXII down in Sherman, Texas. And we had a lot of discussions and eventually decided to launch our own platform to give journalists like me a way to tell stories the way that we believe that they should be told, as well as give other people an opportunity to be more of an active participant in the news ecosystem. So that's how we came up with the idea of a social news media. And so what that is? It's essentially a social media that was developed exclusively for verified news and information. And everything posted there is all across the board held to the same journalistic standard. And again, it really just gives everybody more of an active role and opportunity to be part of the news process.

Jerrad Moore: Yeah. And I should mention to the audience out there, Kelly Tidwell, who's your husband, he is also a Creek citizen and he has Cherokee ancestry as well. And I wanted to mention this. You guys are Muscogee Creek nation CESO certified. Is that right? 

Brittany Harlow: Yeah. CESO. That's correct, yeah.

Jerrad Moore: So I think you guys might be the only independent journalistic agency that is CESO certified, which is amazing. And for you guys that may not know the acronym, it's Contracting and Employment Support, it's a support program that the tribe has and also allows the tribe to contract with Native-owned businesses, so that is really awesome. For the social network part of Verified News Network, how does that work? You guys have a thing where people can go create a profile, so it's like a mesh of a social network and a news platform. Is that the idea? 

Brittany Harlow: Yeah. So the VNN app is a digital experience because what it is, it's a progressive web app. And so it is a website that functions as an app, you don't have to go to the Apple Store or Android and download it and have a bunch of space taken up on your cell phone and constantly update it. That's all done on the back end, you can save it to your home screen and it has about the same 95% functionality as an app, but it really is just a fancy, complex website. So for the user or as we call them, "collaborators," you just go to app.verifiednews.network and you can find the link all over our website. And you're able to create a collaborator account, which is free. We have five different categories that people can classify themselves as. Journalists like me. We have affiliates, of which Mvskoke Media is one.

Brittany Harlow: Also, experts in their field. Officials such as local municipalities or police departments that designate themselves and are verified officials. And then we have a citizen category, which is essentially everybody else. And so anyone who creates an account is able to upload stories and comment on stories and like and be part of our community flagging system, which helps make sure that all of the content that we're publishing together is up to snuff. But you don't necessarily need an account to go to our website and our app and read our news, we have no paywall or anything like that. All of our news is always free for everybody, but it does unlock a lot of cool experiences when you do create that free account.

Jerrad Moore: And it's a free account, they don't have to pay anything? 

Brittany Harlow: That's right.

Jerrad Moore: So we've had some questions in the chat, but before we get to those, 'cause they're related to what we're talking about, let's talk about the paid... Oh, and I wanna mention to you guys watching, there are links to the website in the description of this video, there's also a link to the Facebook post for what we're going to talk about now, the paid training that will get you information on how to get signed up. So what's the paid training? Is that tying into the collaborator aspect of your guys' website? 

Brittany Harlow: Yeah. And so it's really a beautiful story because we launched VNN over five years ago, and it really was with citizens in mind, so that citizens could, if they wanted to have a social experience with news. Facebook, Twitter, a lot of places are flooded with misinformation and disinformation, which is intentionally misleading content.

Jerrad Moore: Absolutely.

Brittany Harlow: And so that was really important to us when we were designing how this would look. And it was focused on citizens so they could have an active role, but citizens really didn't jump on it. Journalists did, affiliates wanted to partner with us, but we were like, "Oh well, maybe citizens just don't want to be held to that same journalistic standard, they just wanna post whatever they want." But over the years, we did have a lot of people that approached me and said like, "Oh, I would love to be a journalist, I would love to learn more about how that works and I would love to contribute content to your network 'cause it really does give a cool platform for people to upload content and then share via email or to other social media platforms."

Brittany Harlow: And so finally, I started asking questions like, Well, what's holding you back? And it was really a lack of education, a lack of understanding about how the news process works, a lack of understanding of how to produce good journalism, and really not a lot of understanding about the editing process, so a lot of people didn't maybe have the confidence. And that's how I felt when I got out of journalism school and I got hired at the television station and I was like, "You're just going to let me post whatever I... Write whatever I want and say whatever I want on air?" And they were like, "No, of course not, you're going to be edited a bunch of times before you actually get to that point." So that's not necessarily a requirement for any of our collaborators, but it is an option if you're like, "Hey, I wanna publish this story. Do you have any feedback?" We have editors that will work with our community members to get them to that print-ready... Or just feel more confident about what they're putting out there. So that's also part of just like the education that we're planning to do next year.

Jerrad Moore: So how is this going to work? They apply, where would they go to apply? Can they contact you guys through Facebook? Is there a specific link or email? 

Brittany Harlow: Oh yes. This whole program is made possible, thanks to Oklahoma Media Center, which is a state-wide collaborative. They did this really cool ecosystem engagement surveying, which talked to our community members, especially in underserved areas, and asked them a lot of questions. And one thing that they found out that we had already known is that there needs to be more of a boots-on-the-ground way of getting our community members to be part of the news process. And we've actually been pushing for funding for this citizen Journalism project for over a year now.

Jerrad Moore: Wow.

Brittany Harlow: And so this ended up being a perfect fit of being able to get this grant to be able to fund this program. And so there is a Google Form where people just answer some questions. It is tailored, the curriculum is tailored, this program is tailored for underserved communities across Oklahoma but specifically in Tulsa area because you will have to travel to Tulsa for the in-person classes. But it's really not that hard to be an underserved community member in the news ecosystem, and so there's a lot of qualifications that we have to fit into that category as far as how we define it. And so basically, people just have to fill out this quick form online, it is on our website, on our social media, and we can share that wherever else it needs to be shared, we're pushing it everywhere. But basically, that just needs to be filled out by the 5th, and then we'll notify applicants thereafter that were selected, and then the classes will actually start at the end of January and run through the beginning of March. And there will be six in-person classes, and so for six weeks, it'll be one class per week during that time.

Jerrad Moore: Okay. And so they get their application in, they get notified, they take the classes. Do they get paid at the end or is it like each class you get an amount? How does that work? 

Brittany Harlow: And so we'll probably do it... There are some logistics, I am not going to lie, that have not been worked out yet. And we're going back and forth as far as like, Will we pay everybody weekly or biweekly? I do think that I am leaning more towards, as in speaking with others, doing it every week because people are taking their time every week. I definitely don't want to maybe hold all the funding, we're certainly not going to pay it all up front, but I think that that probably will be how it works out every week. It is $25 an hour, and that's for two hours a week, in-person learning hours, and one solo on-your-own hours outside of the class. So it's technically three hours of commitment a week during that time. And then after, they will be paid an additional $150 to publish a story on our network as a citizen journalist.

Jerrad Moore: Oh wow, awesome. So this program will get you all the way published. Right? 

Brittany Harlow: Yes, on our platform.

Jerrad Moore: Groovy. Well, I think we've covered all the bases there, I'm going to dive into these chat questions 'cause they're starting to pile up. The first one is, "Have you thought about reaching out to the radio program, African and Indian Table Talk on KBOB 89.9 hosted by Muscogee Citizen Eli Grayson every Tuesday to promote this?” It is a bit of a plug and also a question.

Brittany Harlow: Cool, in fact, I've heard of Eli Grayson. I'm not familiar with that broadcast, but we surely are interested in plugging it wherever we can and talking about it reaching as many people.

Jerrad Moore: Awesome. Well, if you have contact information for that program or Eli, email it to me and I'll pass it on and we'll see if we can get that done. The next one is, "Would you consider making an appearance to give a presentation to local community groups or governmental boards like at a Tulsa Creek Indian community meeting or greater Tulsa Indian Affairs Commission?" And just for you, on that particular question, to set this story up, I ran into Brittany at the Tulsa Indian community's Christmas carnival thing they had most recently, but go ahead, and would you consider making any appearances like that? 

Brittany Harlow: Yeah. Totally. We are interested in getting this word out to as many people as possible. We were at the Tulsa Creek Indian Community Center 'cause that is where my husband is a... That's his community center that he's a member of, so they were gracious enough to let us have some fun media games for kids and tell people about our program. We certainly have also presented there in the past as far as our news coverage, but we would love to go into as many locations and places and speak with as many people as possible about this program and really a lot of other programming and cool things that we have going on at our network.

Jerrad Moore: Awesome. So the next question is... And he also mentions here the greater Tulsa area Cherokees. I don't know that group, but if you have contact information for 'em, go ahead and email it to me and I'll pass it on to Brittany. Let's see. "Is this something non-Indigenous citizen journalists can be an eligible collaborator?" I guess he's asking, "Is this just Indigenous journalist citizens or any citizens?"

Brittany Harlow: So we do a lot being that Kelly is Creek and Cherokee and has a lot of concern for uplifting Indigenous perspective and coverage in really true and valid perspectives into the news ecosystem, we do have a lot of Indigenous focus. I myself am not Indigenous, I'm 98% Irish American, but just being here, I have become quite an ally. I feel like I had a lot of coverage when I was in KXII, I was on the Chickasaw reservation when I was in Ada, and then when I was down in KXII, I was in Durant, covering the Choctaw reservation. And so I think that you certainly don't have to be Creek, you don't have to be Cherokee, Indigenous people are very encouraged to apply just because of how much those perspectives have been oppressed in the last many hundreds of years. But it's certainly not a requirement. We encourage all BIPOC community members to apply, we encourage women to apply if you've been justice-involved, there is a lot of... And you can... On that application form, it'll actually ask you, "Are you a member of an underrepresented community?" It will list several examples of what that means to us, but there's also an option too to say "other," and that maybe there is another underrepresented community that's not on our radar. And so really, it's a wide net of underserved voices that we're trying to capture here.

To listen to the full broadcast, click here.