Improving local journalism through community engagement

In the Summer of 2025, the UC Berkeley Possibility Lab partnered with leadership at LA Documenters to design and disseminate a survey to participants, with the purpose of exploring their motivations for joining the program, what skills they acquired through participation, and what kept them in the program, among other questions. The survey was sent to all participants in LA Documenters since the program launched. A total of 26 respondents completed the survey out of 102 who were on the mailing list.

Overall, respondents described positive experiences participating in the LA Documenters program - from the ease of the application process, to the skills they developed during participation, to their willingness to recommend the program to others. Key findings from the survey are described in this short brief.

The Documenters Network was created in 2018 by City Bureau, a nonprofit civic journalism lab. Documenters are currently operating in 11 cities across the country. In 2025, the Network launched a site in the County of Los Angeles as part of the Los Angeles Local News (LA Local) Initiative. LA Documenters recruits, trains, and pays Los Angeles residents to attend local government meetings and take notes, then turn those notes into news articles in the Boyle Heights Beat publication. The first cohort of “Documenters” began taking meeting assignments in the spring of 2025.

Learn more about the partnership and survey results here.