Chuck Peters is co-facilitating a June 30 workshop at The Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum on applying community-building practices to a news media company that will take a different approach.

The workshop Chuck is involved in will have participants experience what it is like to create information differently through working deeply together in small groups for 45 minutes to an hour. In an interview a week before the June 30 to July 2 event in Bonn, Germany, Chuck says it would be a shame to not take the opportunity for the workshop to try an experiment with people from all over the world.

Chuck, CEO and president at The Gazette Company, took part in a pre-workshop planning teleconference last week where he found out forum participants are used to hearing from experts on stage. The workshop his team is planning will have “no sage from the stage,” he says.

In 2006, Chuck says conversations led to an assumption that The Gazette Company’s basic function didn’t need to change, rather there was a need to explore distribution in different formats. Since then, the need to do things differently is becoming clearer, Chuck says.

Now the Cedar Rapids, Iowa-based media company is experimenting with how a community can create information that it finds meaningful.

While this concept is difficult to explain in a 90-minute workshop, an immersive and personal experience might do the trick.

“We think that local information creation needs to be redefined at a very fundamental level. We are hoping to have the participants experience a different way of creating information — not just talk about it,” Chuck says.

Chuck says he looks forward to seeing what kind of interest there is globally in fundamentally changing the methodology of a media company. He also hopes to connect with and learn from people who are in different circumstances.

The workshop, entitled “A blueprint for building communities: Applying community-building practices to a news media company,“ is hosted by Waverly, Iowa-based Wartburg College. Travis J. Bockenstedt, a multimedia producer in residence at Wartburg College Department of Communication Arts, is moderating. Fellow panelists include Dr. Penni Pier, Wartburg College Department of Communication Arts department chair; Peter Pula, Axiom News founder and CEO; and Benjamin Smith, an applied anthropologist.

This is Chuck’s first time attending the Global Media Forum. This year’s theme is From Information to Participation – Challenges for the Media.

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A version of this article was originally written for EngagementHub.org, a partnership site for an American Society of News Editors and Journalism That Matters initiative. This repost, for which we received permission, follows the style guidelines of the original post. To learn more about generative newsroom options for your organization or community, please contact peter(at)axiomnews.ca.