[Be The Good]: Rappler wins gold for audience engagement at Digital Media Awards Asia-Pacific

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We won the gold prize under the Best in Audience Engagement category for our FloodControlPH crowdsourcing project

Hello!

I’m writing to you from the historic Manila Hotel on the last day of the Digital Media Asia conference organized by the World Association of News Publishers (WAN-IFRA). Here, executives and editors of news outlets from the Asia-Pacific region have gathered to discuss challenges and innovations in journalism.

Tuesday night was a big one for Rappler. At the Digital Media Awards Asia-Pacific, which capped the first day of the conference, we won the gold prize under the Best in Audience Engagement category for our FloodControlPH crowdsourcing project.

We were one of only two Philippine organizations recognized last night. It was great to see my three Gen Z Rappler colleagues come on stage with me to receive the award. They were among the youngest in the room.

Multimedia reporter Patrick Cruz, community engagement specialist Joan Alindogan, and community growth specialist Aidan Bernales may just be in their 20s, but they were instrumental in making FloodControlPH work.

They were the ones who promoted the crowdsourcing initiative on social media and our app, using video and creative visuals to get people to send in tips or information about suspicious flood control projects in their area.

They kept a Google Sheet with all the info sent in, which helped us keep track and assign follow-ups to our staff.

They deployed volunteers and interns to do site visits. They did fieldwork, integrating citizen-sent tips with Rappler’s investigative reporting team.

And in the rebranding and expansion of FloodControlPH to Corruption Watch, they have done it all over again, but with even more creativity and learnings from before.

Gen Z and how they consume news is a major theme at the conference. Managing editor Miriam Grace Go and I are attending panel discussions about how various newsrooms are trying to reach this age group. We keep hearing the same thing: video-first, dwindling attention spans, fanverse mentality.

But for me, the best and most useful insight for journalists about Gen Z came from Indonesia content creator Cania Citta.

Gen Z aren’t apathetic. They’re just born into a world full of crises, and feel they’re on shaky ground. While the world seems to be crashing all around them, they’re besieged by content that is often meaningless and distracting.

What they’re looking for is clarity and a sense of agency and purpose. I lit up hearing that, because I feel that is a need that good and courageous journalism can fill.

Gen Z, and all other age groups, are embracing chatbots and AI summaries to get information they need. Journalists, naturally, feel we are becoming irrelevant in such a world.

But Rappler co-founder and executive editor Glenda Gloria said it best in her speech at the opening plenary panel discussion. AI can gather information and analyze it at great speed. But AI cannot stand for truth. AI cannot fight for it. That is a battle that only humanity can fight and win.

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– Rappler.com

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