Earning Trust: Practical Strategies for Investigative Journalists

As trust in journalism continues to erode, investigative reporters are increasingly affected by the fallout. Yet the instinct of most journalists is to let their work speak for itself. This workshop offers a different approach: practical, research-backed strategies to help you actively demonstrate your credibility, earn your audience’s trust, and build stronger relationships with the communities you serve.

Led by Joy Mayer, founder and executive director of Trusting News, this session will equip you with concrete tools to communicate your integrity, explain your reporting process, and engage with skeptical audiences without compromising your independence or your journalism.

By the end of this workshop, you will know how to:

• Understand why audiences distrust news (and what investigative journalists can do about it).
• Use transparency as a daily practice, not just a crisis response.
• Respond to criticism and hostile feedback with confidence.
• Build habits that turn skeptics into loyal readers.

Date: July 2, 2026

Time: 9:30 am EDT. (What time is it in my city?)

Register for the Zoom training here.

Trainer’s bio: Joy Mayer is the founder and executive director of Trusting News, a nonprofit initiative that studies how people decide what news to trust and helps journalists and the public understand each other. She and her team train journalists on strategies for demonstrating credibility and actively earning trust. Mayer launched Trusting News in 2016 after a 20-year career spanning newsrooms and academia, including 12 years at the Missouri School of Journalism, where she developed an audience engagement curriculum and led a community outreach team.