There’s a gap between an article — and what people want and what’s useful.

So said Ellery Jones, audience engagement specialist for the Chicago Sun-Times, at the recent 2025 Collaborative Journalism Summit, hosted by the Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University in New Jersey.

That quote stuck with me. It’s true: Too often, we’re feeding our audiences traditional story formats when they’re looking for more easily distilled content. 

Jones spoke during a session on “Rapid, radical transparency: building trust with unconventional apps and tools.” This session delved into two experiments — both involving direct engagement via SMS — designed to improve trust with audiences.

The Texas Tribune aimed for radical transparency with 123 participants across Texas in a chat group, comparing that cohort’s trust and engagement against a control group. Matt Adams, director of audience engagement and growth for the Tribune, said the participants asked many questions — which couldn’t easily be answered in traditional stories. 

At the end of the experiment, the cohort showed a notable change in its trust of the organisation, said Benjamin Toff, director of the Minnesota Journalism Center at the University of Minnesota.

“This helped us understand what our audience actually wanted,” said Brian Fleming, director of product at Meedan, a not-for-profit that builds software and programmatic initiatives to strengthen journalism, digital literacy, and accessibility of information. “What they want is a conversation and answers.”

Chicago Sun-Times recruited about 2,000 people for a text messaging group centered on the Democratic National Convention in Chicago last year. The group then morphed and remained active through other notable news stories. 

Participants surveyed had an overwhelmingly positive experience with the group, run by Jones, and called her authentic and professional. 

News avoiders want to connect with a person more than a brand, Toff said.

“People want that kind of relationship,” Jones said. “Our attachment to the article form can blind us to what they are asking for.”

Amen. 

Bonus: People who came to articles via the SMS text group spent more time with the articles. 

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