A Parent’s Guide to Public Schools (2019 Finalist)

A Parent’s Guide to Public Schools is a free magazine-style guide from Voice of San Diego that is distributed to 50,000 families annually. It aids parents in making decisions about their children’s education by providing an overview of every public school’s performance in easy-to-read charts and answering common questions about local public school options.

Matter Mobile

Matter Mobile is a portable, pop-up studio taken to different community events to conduct high-quality audio and video interviews about thorny issues like urban development. The collapsible studio is constructed of wood, soundproofing foam and windows made out of acrylic sheets. This structure offers interviewees more privacy than recording vox pops openly in the field.

Local Switchboard NYC

Local Switchboard NYC is a collective of women who produce multimedia content for and by the communities of New York City’s varied boroughs. Local journalists and community members are trained in audio production so they can cover their own neighborhoods and tell stories often overlooked and underreported by larger media organizations. This new initiative was piloted at WBAI-FM.

Classics for Kids

Cincinnati Public Radio’s Classics for Kids program introduces thousands of children to classical music in a fun way through lesson plans, online games, email newsletters for teachers and parents, partnerships with local music organizations, and events.

WBGO Media Fellows

WBGO Media Fellows is a paid fellowship program that opens the door for a public broadcasting employment experience members of our local community. Each year, two students from Newark are given a “hands on” opportunity to be mentored by our station news team and our Jazz Night in America production team for 8 weeks during the summer. Fellows learn first hand everything from pro tools to podcasting, meeting etiquette to interviewing techniques. They have real time deliverables and are paid a realistic working wage.

Strike a Chord

Strike a Chord is a campaign that aims to bring awareness to local issues in the New York metro area and connect volunteers with opportunities to make a difference.

RadioActive Youth Media

Now in its 16th year, RadioActive is an award-winning youth journalism and radio storytelling workshop at KUOW. Last year, RadioActive served 900 teenagers at 25 schools and community organizations study journalism, sound recording, editing, interviewing, script writing and speaking on the air. The initiative actively recruit participants who are underserved by high quality arts programs, including incarcerated youth, refugees youth, youth in low-income housing.

Phenology

“Phenology” is a program from KAXE/KBXE featuring local student reporting on natural phenomena and the changing seasons. The “Phenology” team works with 15 different schools around the state and both broadcasts and podcasts kids’ nature reports once a week.

Remembering Flight 232-The Exchange

This program was remembrance of the valor of those who helped rescue victims of the crash of United Flight 232 in 1989 at the Sioux Gateway Airport. Also, it was a way to remember the 120 people who died in the crash.

Delaware Public Media’s Generation Voice Program

In partnership with two public high schools, Delaware Public Media’s Generation Voice program provides innovative career-building opportunities for students interested in digital media. Students work with professional journalists to learn the highest standards of news gathering and reporting. In the past year, participants have written and produced features on colorism, teen vaping, youth immigration, and gun violence; they produced creative storytelling podcasts and a series of parent/grandparent interviews done in the manner of the StoryCorps.

Valley Sounds

Valley Sounds is an all-local show featuring original music from classical to rap to punk to country to gospel to electronica and everything in between, all performed in the Tennessee Valley. Artists are encouraged to submit their recordings to Valley Sounds online or at an in-person meet and greets. The meet and greets, held at local bars and music venues, act as a community producers meeting, where musicians and fans can share ideas about the show.

Missouri Health Talks

Missouri Health Talks is a conversation-based journalism project that shares Missourians’ stories about access to healthcare. Health Reporter Rebecca Smith travels throughout the state to network with community organizations, record conversations and edit them into four-minute pieces. The interactive Missouri Health Talks website enables visitors to find stories from their own communities. In the project’s first two years, it has produced 79 original conversations, a rural community health resource fair, many live events, in-depth 30-minute specials broadcast on the local talk show, and a spin-off podcast.

Jazz singer Emily Sage at the 2017 launch event for Amplifier

Amplifier

Amplifier is a biweekly podcast that shines a light on Charlotte’s local music scene. More than 500 musicians have submitted their songs and shared their experiences. It features everything from award-winning jazz singers to emerging pop acts, DIY venue owners to established record producers, and beyond. Amplifier was named Charlotte Magazine’s “Best Podcast”, and received a Webby Award for innovation in music/arts podcasting.

Multimedia Utah Government Reporting Project

45 Days is a multimedia reporting project from KUER that covers local government in Salt Lake City and state government in Utah. The project includes a podcast about the 45-day Utah legislative session, an accompanying email, and infographics on kuer.org which compare and contrast candidates and propositions during elections.

Peril and Promise

Peril and Promise: The Challenge of Climate Change is a reporting project from WNET in New York about the impact of climate change.

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.

Women and Depression

Depression is the leading cause of disability worldwide, according to the World Health Organization, and affects women at about twice the rate that it does men. The Connecticut Health I-Team dove deep into the data about women and depression and interviewed doctors, psychologists and women suffering from depression. The result was two 20-minute podcasts on women and depression and stories that accompanied them. The stories were featured on C-HIT’s website and published by C-HIT’s 16 media partners.

Podcast Party

Podcast Party is a live event that brings together several of our station’s podcasts. For one evening, our listeners can see their favorite podcast hosts and get a new perspective of some of their favorite stories. Over the course of two hours, the event is a multi-act showcase of our podcasts in new, creative, whimsical and thought-provoking interpretations. This includes a live musical performance, a short exercise break and a puppet show version of an episode of Curious Nashville.

The Intersection (2018 Finalist)

The Intersection is a series of hyper-local audio documentaries co-produced by David Boyer and KALW that look at the changing Bay Area of California through physical intersections — street corners — where different histories, motivations, policies, and people meet every day. The show pinpoints the different forces and factors at play there and, over the course of a piece or a season, connects the dots between the past, present, and future.