Citizens Journalism Workshop

Local residents were invited to a two-hour workshop during which local news professionals described the steps of reporting, writing and editing a news story in their community. Then, the residents brainstormed story ideas and sources with the professionals, guided by an IowaWatch journalist who identified journalistic practices related to the ideas that were presented.

Local Music Month

Triple A radio station KXT’s Local Music Month introduces listeners to homegrown, regional acts by recognizing those artists who make North Texas so unique During Local Music Month (October), KXT highlights local music on the air and hosts a free Local Music Showcase, featuring a diverse lineup of live music from bands in Dallas, Fort Worth, and Denton. In 2018, over 800 people attended this celebration of the music scene in North Texas.

Curiosity Club

KUOW’s Curiosity Club is a nerdy supper club exploring the possibility that great food and compelling storytelling can transform a group of diverse strangers into a community. It’s like a bookless book club for public radio nerds.

Richland Source's community baby shower gave families an opportunity to get health information from local organizations including Richland Pregnancy Services

Richland Source Community Baby Shower

Richland Source hosted a community baby shower as a way for the local community to engage with solutions journalism work about infant mortality. Approximately 20 community organizations and 500 attendees came together to learn about resources and educational materials available to help with having a safe and healthy pregnancy and raising a healthy and happy baby.

Writer’s Block

Writer’s Block is a station initiative that brings together local playwrights, poets, and story tellers to present their original work before a live studio audience.

Nostalgia Nights

Nostalgia Nights is an experiential event series designed to engage first-stage adults (ages 25-45) with Twin Cities PBS. The events are fun social gatherings that leverage beloved PBS shows and personalities like Mister Rogers and Bob Ross to spark a sense of nostalgia among audiences who grew up with these formative icons. The live events are themed, include a cash bar, and have the potential to pull in new members and listeners.

Side Effects Reporting: Opioids and Minorities in Indiana

Side Effects is a public health journalism initiative of WFYI Public Media in Indianapolis, in partnership with the Indiana Minority Health Coalition, to explore the issue of the opioid epidemic being presented as a “white” problem and its implications, like disparities in access to treatment, criminal sentencing, and even the language used to describe the addicted. The project includes a documentary, a panel discussion, and more.

Out North: MNLGBTQ History

Twin Cities PBS’s “Out North: MNLGBTQ History” was designed to explore the untold histories of Minnesota’s LGBTQ pioneers, legislators, change makers, and resistors. Starting as one idea from one donor, it grew organically into a comprehensive initiative comprising one two-hour film, more than seven shorts, and more than 45 community events. It combined local community partnerships, screenings, intergenerational conversations, and watch parties — all in response to appetite and demand for engagement around these histories.

Sights & Sounds of East Oakland

KALW’s Sights & Sounds of East Oakland is a multi-pronged project that aims to shine a light on creators in a community often mis- or underrepresented in media. Through live community events featuring dance, music, storytelling and visual art, as well as multimedia presentations based on reporting from KALW’s newsmagazine Crosscurrents and community partners like Oakland Voices and East Oakland Youth Development Center, we celebrate grassroots creativity and build new connections within and beyond these communities. The project also encompasses community media training with youth and adults through our partners, and utilizes our Hearken-powered, crowd-sourced journalism project Hey Area to draw coverage and story ideas from East Oakland residents.

Dream Land: Little Rock’s West 9th Street Initiative

The Arkansas Educational Television Network (AETN) produced an Emmy-winning documentary on the rise and fall of Little Rock, Arkansas’s successful yet segregated African-American business district (1940-50’s), using a historic building in the district known as the Dreamland Ballroom as a focal point. AETN has built dozens of community partnerships; held educational screenings, panels discussions, and workshops; and conducted riveting community dialogues on diversity and race relations throughout 2018 that will undoubtedly continue.

Splash N Bubbles Gilley Pool Event

Hosted a community pool party with a get in free with a book donation for children 12 and under. The theme was Splash N Bubbles PBS Kids Characters. The books were given back to the community library. Activities were provided, and we put on a movie for families wanting to get out of the sun.

CapRadio Presents: Tiny Desk Sacramento

Spurred by the voice of a community member, Capital Public Radio created the region’s first Tiny Desk concert, showcasing multiple local entrants who entered this year’s national contest and highlighting numerous others with promotional and follow-up blog content at capradio.org.

Ester Commack

Community in Unity (2018 Winner)

Community in Unity is a solutions journalism project and event series from Alaska Public Media to begin critical and thoughtful dialogue between different people. APM works with community partners to invite people inside homeless shelters, community centers, prisons, and TV studios for recorded conversations about topics that are affecting them. Topics have ranged from race and identity to mental health, immigration, and incarceration.

Community Conversation on Mental Health

WFDD hosts community conversations on topics that impact local residents. Using a Hearken-powered web module, listeners voted for mental health to be the focus of one such conversation. WFDD reporters covered relevant stories in the days leading up to the public event, during which listeners had round table discussions with one another. WFDD reporters solicited questions for follow-up coverage and connected interested listeners directly with the stories that came out.

Participating in a Capital Public Radio Story Circle in August 2017

Place And Privilege Story Circles

As part of Capital Public Radio’s multi-platform documentary, “The View From Here: Place And Privilege,” there were Story Circles that brought wildly diverse residents face-to-face to talk about Sacramento’s housing affordability crisis. The experience was so successful that CapRadio secured funding to train 20 community partners in the Story Circle methodology, host additional events, and produce a downloadable guide for newsrooms, community organizations, and others who want to discuss housing, belonging, and community well-being.

Midnight Oil

Midnight Oil is an ambitious and collaborative project from Alaska’s Energy Desk that explores the rich history of how Alaska became an oil state. The project is an eight-episode podcast, a video series and a standing room only storytelling event.

Aging Matters | NPT Reports

Aging Matters is NPT’s landmark original series focused on exploring how an aging US demographic will impact life in our community and communities across the nation.

Nathan Blaesing of Iowa City

Voices of Veterans

IowaWatch.org sought out military veterans in August through November 2017 with two simple questions: What should Iowans know about being a veteran, and what could Iowans do to show their support other than simply saying they do it? We answered these questions by 1) going to veterans at places where their service is noted publicly, 2) producing two separate radio reports distributed statewide on a network of 19 stations, 3) producing written stories distributed statewide to Iowa newspapers for republication, 4) hosting a live storytelling event where five selected veterans told about something significant in their lives and 5) recruiting partners to help spread these stories.

WVIA’s PBS Kids in the Classroom

PBS Kids in the Classroom’s Heads Start Program is a program designed to provide Health and Wellness learning for PreK-2 grade students by leveraging the most well respected children’s educational programming on the air today and bringing it DIRECTLY to every student.