Starting points for every journalist

  1. Understand your own values. Identify what matters most to you, and reconnect with why you chose to work in the media. Use the values map to identify your five most and five least important values. Notice when your work feels aligned with your values, and when it feels in tension. This awareness is the foundation for everything else. Tool 1 in the next section can help with this too.
  2. Make values-aware framing choices. Where you have editorial freedom – and most journalists have some – notice which values you default to and consider alternatives. For example, perhaps include economic data where relevant without making it the frame. Choose language thoughtfully: "residents" rather than "taxpayers", "people affected" rather than "locals caught up in". Balance institutional voices with those most directly affected.
  3. Notice patterns. Track which pitches get accepted and rejected. Notice which frames your editors favour. This awareness helps you navigate your context more effectively.
  4. Have strategic conversations. When the moment is right, question defaults with editors. Frame suggestions around strengthening journalistic goals: "This story is currently structured around the minister's announcement. I'd like to try leading with what the people affected are experiencing and what they say they need – I think that gives readers a fuller and more accurate picture, and it's more likely to build genuine engagement with the issue. Can we experiment?".
  5. Be transparent in whatever ways are within your reach. In your social media bio, your newsletter, your 'about' page, or in direct conversation with sources and audiences – name the values that shape your approach. You do not need organisational permission to be honest about your own practice.
  6. Find others. Colleagues in your newsroom or professional network might be wrestling with the same questions – connecting with each other helps.

For independent, public-interest and reader-funded outlets

Where ownership, organisational purpose and staff values align, you can move through all three stages of values awareness. In addition to the starting points above:

  1. Assess which stage of values awareness you are currently at. Which stage describes most of your current practice? Where are the gaps between stated values and actual practice? Tool 1 in the next section includes a self-assessment to help with this.
  2. Build shared understanding. Run workshops with staff on values and their role in journalism. Create space for journalists to explore their own values. Discuss the perception gap and the media's role in it.
  3. Audit your coverage. Review recent stories through a values lens. What patterns dominate? Where are you unconsciously elevating certain values? Is the content written assuming that your audience prioritises extrinsic values?
  4. Pilot values-aware approaches. Start with one beat or section. Give your team freedom to experiment. Document what you learn.
  5. Create support structures. Build values considerations into your editorial process. Consider establishing a 'values circle' for ongoing reflection. This is explained in Tool 6. Protect time for community-relationship building.
  6. Shift success metrics. Add qualitative measures alongside quantitative ones, such as tracking community feedback, whether sources return, depth of audience engagement beyond clicks. Tool 7 offers guidance on this.
  7. Publish your editorial values framework. On your 'about' page or in a newsletter, explain what values guide your editorial choices and why. An editorial values framework is a short, honest statement of what your outlet is for, what values it seeks to foreground, and how it makes decisions. It is distinct from a standard editorial policy – where a policy sets rules, a values framework explains purpose. Consider how to create or adapt one for your outlet, and invite audience feedback.
  8. Build networks. Connect with other outlets doing this work to share learning and resources, and create a community of practice. Contact Common Cause Foundation – we can connect you with others working in this space.

For journalists in commercially driven organisations

You face real structural constraints. You cannot change ownership interests or editorial culture on your own. But you have agency within your sphere of influence. The starting points above apply in full. Additional strategies:

  1. Document what you observe. Keeping informal notes on which framings your outlet favours, the values underlying them – and what that pattern reveals – is itself a form of values awareness. It can also inform future conversations with editors and help you better navigate the context you're working within.
  2. Practice values transparency where possible. In social media bios, newsletters, websites and even in conversations, explain your approach, and name your values and subsequent framing choices. Be transparent with audiences even if your organisation isn't. There are some great examples of freelancers doing this: journalist Ariel Zirulnik's website and Editor-at-large Kara Swisher's ethics statement.
  3. Prioritise your wellbeing. Acknowledge the tension between your values and organisational practice, and set clear boundaries around what you will or won't do. Focus on what is within your control and recognise progress, however incremental.

For editors and newsroom leaders

You have genuine power to shift culture – often within constraints, but significantly nonetheless. You shape what gets covered, how it is framed and whose voices are centred.

  1. In editorial meetings: Add values considerations to story discussions. Ask "What values does this frame foreground, and what does the evidence say most people in our audience actually care about?" Question defaults: "Why do we always lead with wealth/power/social status/achievement framing?".
  2. In commissions and assignments: Encourage journalists to be conscious of the values dimension in stories and give them as much time as possible for genuine community relationship building.
  3. In feedback: Recognise work that reflects what audiences care about, not just what gets clicks. Coach reporters on values-aware approaches.
  4. In hiring and development: Be explicit about the organisation's values in recruitment. Provide training on values literacy and awareness.
  5. In metrics: Look beyond reach and clicks to assess whether your coverage reflects the values you aim to foreground. Weigh community feedback, representation of different voices, and the depth and quality of audience engagement.

For those working for structural change

If your work focuses on changing media ownership models, advocating for public funding reform, or building alternative media infrastructure, this toolkit is most relevant at an organisational level. For example, in auditing coverage, developing editorial values frameworks or demonstrating what values-aware journalism looks like in practice. Together, these approaches can help build evidence that different ownership models, funding structures and organisational setups lead to different kinds of journalism.

The core arguments for changing editorial practice embedded within this toolkit – that journalism shapes culture, that the current emphasis on extrinsic values causes measurable social harm, and that there is an audience for journalism that better reflects what most people care about – also support the case for structural reform. The Responsible Media Forum’s work, the growing evidence base on audience trust and loyalty, and the examples of memberfunded and cooperative outlets in this toolkit all point toward the kinds of structures that make values-aware journalism sustainable rather than exceptional.

Contact Common Cause Foundation if you would like to connect with others working on structural change in UK media. We can connect you with the broader values movement, and with researchers and advocates working on media reform.

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