Choose Your Own Adventure: Gamifying Local News in Colorado’s Front Range

When classrooms shut down during the pandemic, Suzie Glassman worked as a freelancer while at home with her children. She suddenly had a front-row seat to her children’s schooling – and she noticed her daughter struggling. Her third grader was ultimately diagnosed with dyslexia – a late diagnosis Glassman said should have been caught sooner. 

“I got a firsthand look at the flaws in the education system,” said Glassman. “I felt like the only reason she was diagnosed was because she was at home during the pandemic and I could see it. I had enough privilege to be home with her to see that, but I thought, ‘What about emergency workers who aren’t home and can’t see this?’ So, that's when I got into education reporting.” 

Her articles landed in multiple national publications, including The New York Times, Wired and Forbes. Now, Glassman is the education reporter for the Colorado Trust for Local News, a subsidiary of the National Trust for Local News. Based in the Denver area, Glassman covers broad trends at the school board level, explaining how decisions are made, and delineating exactly what those high-level decisions mean for the community. She covers five school districts across three counties for the Golden Transcript, Brighton Standard-Blade and other COTLN newspapers. Her coverage area includes the second-largest district in the state outside Denver, down to sprawling, rural districts with 2,000 students.

A few years ago, Glassman covered school consolidation in Douglas County, just south of Denver. Tempers flared as parents and community members weighed in and school board members ultimately decided which schools to close. When Glassman interviewed school board members afterward, all of them talked about how they wished the public understood how difficult the decision was. They knew, no matter what they decided, there was going to be a community they made upset and frustrated.

That experience came to mind when Glassman learned about NTLN’s first-ever News Innovation Sprint, sponsored by the Google News Initiative. The sprint aimed to empower NTLN’s journalists across three states to develop and pitch ideas to grow the reach and impact of their work. Glassman immediately thought of the Douglas County board members’ dilemma, and of the parents and taxpayers who often feel unheard or powerless. She submitted a pitch to embed digital, interactive journalism tools into online stories that put readers in the shoes of local decision makers. 

Following a live, virtual event where all 12 sprint finalists presented their ideas to their peers across the National Trust, volunteer judges awarded $55,000 in grants to six projects. Judges awarded $10,000 to support Glassman’s idea, titled “Interactive Democracy: Choose Your Own Adventure.”

“One of the things I enjoy most about education reporting is giving a voice to people who don’t have one,” Glassman said.

“I also see my main role as giving perspective into how things are done at the top make their way into schools,” she said. “This idea is a broader expansion of that. Instead of reading about democracy, readers will experience the complexity of civic decisions firsthand.” 

Using third-party technology, the Colorado Trust newspapers will embed tools like budget simulators and quizzes into decision-based stories, allowing readers to experiment with budget allocations, zoning determinations and other policy choices – and ultimately better understand the tradeoffs involved.

It’s Glassman’s hope the interactive tools will enable people to start discussions on social media, have well-informed conversations with decision-makers and help elected officials and administrators better understand their constituents. 

“It’s a way to get people to interact in new ways with each other and with reporters that go beyond just passively reading an article,” she said.

Glassman says other news outlets that have integrated these tools have seen engagement rates and website metrics skyrocket. Bringing this technology to Colorado newsrooms will enhance the hyper-local journalism the newspapers are known for while creating a reusable template other National Trust newsrooms can adapt across all beats. 

“We want to bridge the gap between information and participation, while driving more readers to engage with the quality, local journalism our newsrooms produce daily,” said Glassman.