Article translated by Marine Slavitch — Original version published on the Popula website on August 7, 2023.
On a cold Saturday in November, I needed a place to work and decided to head to a branch of the Albany Public Library in the United States, just a few blocks from my home. The place was packed, with every seat taken on both floors. It was warm inside; unlike the parks and streets of the city at this point in the fall. A seat finally opened up, I unpacked my bag and opened my book. But after a few minutes, an altercation coming from the front desk distracted me.
A man was visibly upset; he had apparently tried to use the restroom, but another customer had been in there for a long time – far too long – and accusations were flying.
The librarian listened attentively, acknowledging the man's irritation as he described the details of what he had found so aggravating and offensive. As she listened, the man seemed to calm down and eventually withdrew. But a little later, he was back, even angrier than before. There had been another argument about the bathrooms; voices had been raised, threats had been made. Again, the librarian listened carefully, responding with all the reasons why it wasn't worth coming to blows over. Then she called a colleague for help. He reinforced her position, patiently listening to everyone. It's pointless, he kept repeating, to fight over this.
My sense that a physical fight could break out fluctuated during the confrontation, which lasted nearly an hour. There were several threats to settle it outside, but the composure and determination of the librarians never wavered. Eventually, everyone left or resumed their activities.
I didn't understand all the details of the conflict, but one thing was clear: I had just witnessed a masterful demonstration of de-escalation. In many other places and contexts, the police would have been called in unexpectedly.
I wasn't sure whether to be relieved by this peaceful outcome or troubled by the fact that this dispute would never have happened if people had simply had access to basic necessities: toilets, a reassuring and secure personal space, and the undisputed right to a warm place to sit when it's cold outside. I went home that day, furious at living in a community where these necessities are not guaranteed to everyone, where people are pushed to fight to obtain them, and where the only place where one can hope to find a truly free place to rest and stay warm is the public library.
Sharing effort
In a country where nearly every iota of our psyche and physical spaces has been captured for profit generation, the existence of public libraries is not merely radical—it's astonishing.
The few public goods and systems we have are constantly being questioned. Public toilets are disappearing. Public benches are being ripped out. Public parks are disproportionately accessible only to those who can pay. And yet, despite numerous coordinated efforts to reduce them, starve them of resources and control them, public libraries continue to thrive. They are a place where the effort to share—and even to co-own—a space encounters not the imprisoning impulse of discipline, but rather the impulse of support and listening. A place where the right of each person to toilets, to a place to sit, to clean water, to quiet, is clear and accepted as self-evident. A place where your ability to exist as a human being does not depend on your ability to pay. Such an experience is so rare in the 21st century that it's hardly surprising that people really, truly love libraries.
I work in journalism, a field whose objectives are (theoretically, at least) closely aligned with those of public libraries. Journalism also aims to make information accessible, so that people can participate in democracy, can share stories, make informed decisions, and hold power accountable. So they can access the knowledge they need, in other words, to govern themselves.
But public sentiment toward these two systems differs considerably.
Trust and reliability
Nearly 80% of American adults believe that " libraries provide them with the resources they need ", according to a survey published by the Pew Research Center in 2016; results published by Pew in 2017 showed that 78% of adults felt that " public libraries help them find trustworthy and reliable information " and 56% said that " libraries help them get information that aids in decisions they need to make. " Among adults, millennials [people born between the early 1980s and the end of the 1990s, editor's note] were the biggest library fans: in a separate article published by Pew in 2017, millennials had used libraries " more than any other generation of adults " in the previous year.
By contrast, citizens really hate the media. According to data published by Gallup in 2022, Americans' trust in the media to report news in a complete, accurate, and fair manner reached its lowest level ever recorded, at 34%, and only 7% had "great trust" in the media. A striking Gallup study on confidence in 16 American institutions found that newspapers ranked 12th, and television news ranked 15th—only Congress fared worse.
So, when I learned a few months ago that Albany Public Library (APL) had partnered with the city's local newspaper, the Times Union, to produce a series of articles, I wanted to learn more.
" We largely share the same objectives," Erica Smith, digital editor at the Times Union, told me. When we discussed our respective missions, we found many similarities. "
When media and libraries team up
Library Futures, a think tank and advocacy organization, initiated this collaboration when its executive director, Jennie Rose Halperin, received a grant from the Google News Initiative (GNI) to support partnerships between newsrooms and libraries. Ms. Halperin partnered with Jennifer Brandel, CEO of Hearken, a company that helps media outlets practice "engagement journalism," an approach aimed at involving audiences in the editorial process.
With MakeWith, a research and design firm, Library Futures and Hearken reached out to Albany's public libraries and the Times Union to work together.
"We want to make sure everyone has access to the information they need to make important decisions," says Deanna DiCarlo, APL director, about this collaboration. The partnership's initial goal was to improve access to news media through the library, but the group hadn't developed a specific plan for how to achieve it. "We wanted to help the library listen better to its users and understand their information needs," explains Mr. Brandel from Hearken. So the coalition launched a survey and, to everyone's surprise, nearly 800 library users and Albany residents responded.
« It's unusual for us, M. DiCarlo smiles, usually we send a survey to our subscribers and get a few hundred responses. The fact that 800 people are interested in local news and how it has changed for them over the past two decades is remarkable. »
An accessibility challenge
The inquiry yielded many useful findings, with one particularly notable: according to the final report, 65% of survey respondents who did not read Times Union cited lack of access as the reason.
"Subscriptions are the most frequently cited need by users to improve access to information. At first, we thought it would be great to establish a different relationship between libraries and media, since the latter could offer public-friendly versions of information to library users," explains Mr. Brandel, in contrast to the complex tools available in libraries, such as Newsbank. But this conflicts with the logic of the economic model, which is a bigger and thornnier problem. If you're wondering why it makes sense for media outlets to charge for access to information that concerns the public and is meant for them, you're asking the right question.
So rather than offering library users a free digital version of the newspaper, the group decided to jointly produce a rather original media outlet. A budget of approximately 100,000 dollars funded this collaboration to produce eight articles. The APL and the Times Union would both own the articles, retaining the right to publish them on their own websites and digital channels, with no paywall whatsoever, and thus free to read for everyone.
The past, present, and future of Pearl Street, a long avenue that runs through the entire city, is the main theme of the series. APL and the Times Union started by surveying their audience, asking questions like "What does it take for each block of Pearl Street to thrive?" As responses began to pour in, Shayla Lee Colon, the journalist leading this series, got to work.
Collaborations are multiplying
Across the country, numerous partnerships and collaborations between media outlets and libraries have emerged in recent years. In Dallas, a local newspaper partnered with the public library to teach community journalism to students; in Kansas City, community questions were addressed publicly through a collaboration between the local newspaper and library. Other collaborations have taken place in Chicago, Oakland, San Antonio, and in small towns in New Hampshire and Georgia. Some of these initiatives have involved independent media outlets, others traditional newspapers or public radio stations. All are relatively modest in scale: they are often limited, shaped by constrained resources, and depend on relationships among individuals within newsrooms and libraries.
The Albany project resembles these small initiatives. Almost everyone I spoke with mentioned time constraints as a challenge. "The experience went very well, we did the job, and we moved on," continues Mr. Smith, of the Times Union.
« That's where I struggle the most with philanthropy and how grants work, Ms. Brandel says. It would be very helpful if funders had a broader vision. When you give people money and the opportunity to launch projects, amazing things happen—things you wouldn't have thought of when you proposed that grant. »
When asked about the community's reaction to the Pearl Street project, Shayla Lee Colon notes that "initially, many people, if not all, were incredibly hesitant".
« I was new to the neighborhood, which may have played a role, but I'm also a journalist, she continues. Trust is essential, and it isn't always there… Perhaps mistakes were made in the past, but I think the lack of accessibility played an important role for this community ».
The Times Union is a traditional for-profit newsroom. Is it practically possible for an institution designed to serve profit and shareholder interests to be reformed to serve the needs of a community? Ultimately, how can you ask your audiences to believe the information you publish about them and their communities when they have to pay to access it, and in many cases cannot afford it? It's an unreasonable demand, yet it's one media outlets impose on their audiences every day.
Towards «public media centres»
Nevertheless, these various experiences offer a glimpse of something greater.
It is possible to imagine a different world: one in which the collective resources that people value are protected and developed, and in which audiences could truly take ownership of the stories produced about them. Victor Pickard, professor of media policy and political economy at the University of Pennsylvania, believes that public media centers, built from existing public institutions such as libraries and post offices, could serve as new anchor institutions.
« There are more than 30,000 post offices scattered throughout the country, notes M. Pickard. We could have a public media hub for every community. These hubs could be places where local journalists could set up, but they could also provide services to communities and municipalities ».
The most important story here is that of democracy – something that only becomes possible when people have access to the knowledge needed to make individual and collective decisions. Too often, those writing on these subjects obscure the real issues and overlook the potential offered by the existing cultural infrastructure of libraries, media organizations, schools, and communication systems. Despite these limitations and against all odds, modest, imperfect yet highly interesting partnerships suggest that it is possible to share information and narratives in a completely different way, and therefore that elements of this possible future are already present.
Following the completion of the APL/Times Union project, the project management team published a series of articles covering all aspects of Pearl Street's history, as well as the local, regional, and global forces that define it today. With help from APL librarians, Shayla Lee Colon also published an article directly addressing readers' questions about the street's cultural history, the origin of its name, and how the Times Union's move from downtown Albany to the suburbs in 1970 affected the community.
Ivy Morris, a longtime Albany resident and community activist, hopes to see the project gain momentum. "The fact that over 700 people responded to the survey is a good starting point – that's a lot of people for Albany," she explains. "Maybe people aren't too keen on the media, but they love libraries… So these should play a bigger role."
Everyone who participated in the Albany pilot project had a great time. "I'd really like to see more of this", says Shayla Lee Colon. The collaboration between the library and the newsroom continued to some extent. At the end of 2022, Times Union received a grant from the American Press Institute to work with Albany's public libraries to host community listening sessions and publish a voter guide.
Both the APL and the Times Union have strongly expressed their desire to continue working together.
" We have a lot of staff members who would love to work on a project like this, says Mr. DiCarlo. If I could assign five or six librarians to it, that would be huge. That's somewhat what we're hoping for everyone who reads the case study: This is a viable model that proves it works. You just need to have the necessary resources. "
Sense of belonging
Several months after the project ended, I attended a screening of short films written, shot, and produced by high school students as part of a program set up by YouthFX, an organization that works with young people of color, primarily from Albany's South End, Arbor Hill, and West Hill neighborhoods.
For one of the projects, the filmmakers asked students at Giffen Memorial, a public school located near South Pearl Street, where they felt safe. Koepaomu, 10 years old, answered that for her, it was the library, a place where people can benefit from a peaceful and quiet space to relax. "It's important to have spaces like the library," she considers. People can meditate, relax, and think about good moments rather than bad ones. In a library, everyone should be able to feel special and unique, like they belong in that place… The library, for me, is like a dream. I feel like I'm flying on clouds, looking at the city from above, and being able to spread my wings and fly above my thoughts. "
By the end of his speech, the crowd was in tears.
Koepaomu grasped what one feels in libraries, those places outside of space and time, sorts of small territories to retreat from the unstable and transactional realities of the world. The library confers a sense of belonging, and even of security. They represent the best of our efforts to take care of one another. Their permanent existence reminds us that, in a distant future, but also today, other paths are imaginable. We are often told that it is complicated to "fix" the media, particularly at the local level. In reality, it is not about fixing local news by restoring trust in old failing models, nor about spending millions to retroactively combat disinformation, nor about pleading with Silicon Valley media moguls to behave themselves. The main issue, as Darryl Holliday, co-founder of City Bureau, puts it so well in an article published in 2021 in the Columbia Journalism Review, is to "democratize the means of journalistic production".
Journalism is a public good. Let's allow the public to participate in it. Libraries are proof that when you make a public good truly public—that is, when it structurally belongs to everyone—people really appreciate it, a lot. Why not take inspiration from what already works?
Editor's note
This text is not a word-for-word translation of the original article published on the Popula website. We have added contextual elements, adapted certain expressions, and removed some passages containing specific references intended for English-speaking or American readers. We have also chosen to apply inclusive writing conventions to this translation, in accordance with the editorial charter in effect for all Médianes content.
