Kiran Saini, audience manager for the nonprofit newsroom Outlier Media, amplifies the voices of readership in her newsletter. Beyond content strategy, her role seeks to recultivate trust in journalists through a solutions-based approach to news-delivery, but also inventive headlines and everyday discourses with readers.
In her undergraduate years, Saini joined the Wayne State Institute for Media Diversity. Co-founded by the Wayne State University Department of Communication and editors of the Detroit News and Free Press in 1984, the program helps WSU students acquire hands-on experience and contacts in the field in beginning their careers.
Initially, Saini envisioned her future as a political reporter. Becoming a managing editor and then Editor in Chief for Wayne State University’s student newspaper, The South Side, however, revealed a new path.
“I fell out of love with reporting and more so editing,” Saini said of this shift. “I really loved having the puzzle pieces fit together, sort of amplifying a reporter’s voice in a story.”
For her, this meant more than editorial decision-making, but demanded an active leadership: guiding the writer along a journey and helping them to refine their craft and hone their voices on paper.
Saini, who worked previously in audience management at Wisconsin Watch and the Detroit Free Press, brings a similar approach to delivering on credibility and solutions-based journalism for readers of Outlier’s newsletter.
Being responsive — inside and outside of the newsroom — is indispensable to quality journalism.
“A lot of news organizations do not directly address who they’re talking to; it’s more sort of … this thing happened and that was it. I think bringing humanity back into the writing is a way that we’ve really been able to build trust with hosts,” Saini said.
As an audience manager, Saini holds the door open for audiences to share concerns that help tailor content delivery to real needs, reactions and frustrations.
She also expressed that, at times, it is necessary for newsrooms to move away from a strictly objective tone; instead, acknowledging the emotional dimension to create spaces for healing among the readership.
Denoting a potential harm of neutrality, she also said a refusal to call out corruption has the effect of distorting moral understandings. This can add to feelings of confusion and frustration among readers, who believe that news coverage has dismissed their experience of an issue.
“It’s hard for a person to come to terms with that, when no one seems to be acting the way they are,” she said.
As project manager for the newsletter, Saini communicates with reporters and editors to determine which stories are curated for a given day’s issue. The inclusion of any subject is made with audiences’ needs in mind and reflects communal impact, civic engagement and actionable takeaways.
Saini spoke of tailoring coverage to resonate with the community.
“We really try to stay away from stories that we think a lot of local news around [Metro Detroit] are highlighting because we want to, you know, if it’s important, we’ll highlight it and we’ll highlight it with our own spin and context.”
When tornadoes swept through states in the central U.S. in early March, including Michigan and Oklahoma, Outlier reminded readers to sign up for emergency alerts. Although the extreme weather did not affect Detroit, a county just two hours outside of Detroit was affected. Saini said that, in the event of a national emergency, the tip was meant to encourage people to be proactive about their own safety.
This kind of solutions-based approach seeks to shift focus away from a large, intractable issue to immediate impact — offering readers a way to respond with their own proximities and capacities. It is like placing a magnifying glass on one part of a mosaic, without taking away from the picture at large.
Research suggests that people who read solutions-oriented stories are more likely to share the content they read and seek out more information on issues encountered, as found in The American Journalism Handbook.
Outlier’s mission is to foster this kind of engagement among its audiences, offering practical skills training. Outlier hosts Community of Practice sessions to help people hone their note-taking skills, including drop-in evening hours for chats with editors and the occasional trivia night in Midtown Detroit.
Saini noted how supplementing online resources with face-to-face contact is a great way to learn.
“If something feels overwhelming in the digital space, you don’t have a lot of experience with it or you’re just a little bit confused. We also really try to offer a lot of in-person or Zoom opportunities,” she said.
Saini, who mentioned that Outlier publishes a lot of guides, recently hosted a FOIA workshop.
“FOIA for the People,” held on March 19, introduced attendees to the Freedom of Information Act, providing them with tools to submit public records requests to government agencies. In the newsletter issue, “Opening up About Open Records,” Saini, referencing the work of another Outlier journalist, measured the receptivity to FOIA requests it had made for police incident reports, contracts and other information from city agencies. This was installed to track compliance with the Government In The Sunshine Act of 1976, which requires decision-making bodies to make meetings open to the public.
In an age when the federal government has attempted to obstruct press freedoms, “FOIA for the People” empowered citizens to demand accountability, giving them tools to be journalistic actors in their own right.
From the angle of work, nonprofit newsrooms can offer a kind of flexibility that legacy organizations do not provide. Some believe they will play a significant role in the evolving, yet undetermined, future of journalism.
Not-for-profit newsrooms are financed through a mixed revenue: philanthropy, community donations, grants and independent fundraising. This could make them less pliable to the corporate pressures of advertisers and ownership interests that legacy media face.
As David Sassoon, a writer for The Global Investigative Journalism Network, describes it, “there’s no media mogul to milk [nonprofits] dry.”
“With nonprofits, you get to be a little scrappier and you get to try out some new ideas, and you don’t have to go through multiple groups to get something improved,” Saini said—noting that she has the flexibility to integrate multimedia and alternative frames into reporting if she chooses.
One of these upcoming projects is a zine designed in coordination with a local artist. It will center on the impact of Detroit’s foreclosure crisis.
Since 2009, Wayne County has foreclosed on one in three Detroit homes for inflated property assessments. More recently, in 2024, the Michigan Supreme Court ruled that the county was obligated to return its auction profits to the affected homeowners. Those who have claimed checks, though, will not recover their family homes.
Beyond figures and finance, as Saini points out, is the ripple effect of the foreclosures across living standards and generational wealth.
This is the overshadowed angle that Outlier—with creativity and testimony-based storytelling — seeks to bring to the forefront.
“We’re talking to fellow humans. I think bringing humanity back into writing is a way that we’ve really been able to build trust with folks,” Saini said.
