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How Elise Stolte's use of social media is transforming the city hall beat

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Amplified, plugged in — Elise Stolte’s use of social media is setting a new bar for what it means for a beat reporter to be digitally engaged with the community she covers. 

The articles included in her awards submission show the final result. But here are examples of the conversations that helped inform that work. 

Harassment at the city

After months of research, Stolte broke the story about serious harassment issues within the city’s workforce and immediately started getting text messages, emails and direct messages on Twitter and Facebook from current and former employees.

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They were passionate, and sometimes devastated by their experiences. She started Tweeting snippets. 

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These tweets significantly amplified the article’s reach. More people retweeted the initial link and commented on what bullying meant in their workplace. Still more employees emailed messages of support and reflections.

Then former councillors weighed in. The official opposition tabled that first article in the Alberta legislature. Charles Adler called to do a radio interview for his show syndicated across Western Canada. 

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In the meantime, Stolte was writing her second instalment — details from a city employee engagement survey. It showed a paper trail proving something was not right, even with some of the data withheld by the city.

Edmonton refuses to release harassment data for city employees

‘A punch in the face’: Morale takes deep dive in city’s communications branch

She kept getting more emails and messages. The quotes she pulled on Twitter were poignant, and spoke to people. It was an example of understanding the medium and using it to its fullest. 

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Stolte’s use of Twitter also moved the story forward. She started asking each current and former employee what they thought the solutions were, and what they thought of the city manager’s current plan: to have all complaints sent directly to her office for triage. 

It put the voices of the employees in front of city councillors and administration, who all monitor the #yegcc hashtag closely.

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Within two days it was obvious from the responses that a) this was very widespread issue at the city and b) workplace problems are not limited to the city.

Within three days, Stolte’s stack of confidential messages from city employees was growing unmanageable. She shared them with city columnist Paula Simons and they co-anchored a Facebook Live. City employees later told Stolte many watched live from their work computers over lunch.

Posted by Elise Stolte on Thursday, November 16, 2017
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Then the story just got bigger. The city’s auditor had the harassment data. He revealed nearly one in five city employees reported harassment and most did not trust the city’s complaint system to deal with in. 

Meanwhile, the messages and emails kept coming in. In the end, Stolte got more than 100, plus messages from people dealing with bullying in other organizations. 

She shared more in a video, trying to give voice to the voiceless. 

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One week later, she covered the audit committee meeting live, sending out 103 Tweets with quotes and more detail, knowing many city employees would be glued to their screens. 

Facebook — a crowdsourced editorial board

While Twitter featured prominently in Stolte’s harassment stories, her innovative use of Facebook provided the impetus for her work on pedestrian “beg buttons.” 

Reporting for the story published in 2017 started in November 2016, when Stolte posted an offhand comment about her experience walking. She included a screen capture of a city guideline that suggested traffic signals should be more responsive to pedestrians. 

She expected a few replies, but the topic exploded when 50 people joined the debate, describing problem areas and first-hand accounts of how forcing pedestrians to wait minutes in the cold across from a bus stop leads to high-risk behaviour.

If you want more detail on how she developed this Facebook community, feel free to read this March 2017 ‘note’ she posted thanking her community

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