Expressions of Art

KVCR radio partnered with our sister station, KVCR TV, to produce stories about art organizations in our region. We produced 15 radio stories and 16 stories for television with a focus on the arts in our community. We worked to highlight many art-based, educational and non-profit organizations in low income areas to show the significance of the arts and people on behalf of the youth in our area.

The Soundtrack of the Vietnam War

Designed as a cross promotional tool for our sister television station KVCR’s broadcast of Ken Burns and Lynn Novack’s The Vietnam War, film KVCR Radio produced an eight-part series with veterans sharing their time in service during the Vietnam war. Our focus was the music of that time and the songs they remembered and reflect on when thinking about the Vietnam War.

Live Radio Theater for a Rural Community

For the past three years, KZMU has used open auditions to cast an original musical play in our small community (population 5,000). We rehearsed for six weeks and performed in front of live audiences at a local venue and aired the play on the radio. The first two seasons were aired in episodes, and the last as an entire piece. Our actors/singers/Foley technicians/musicians/engineers have ranged in age from 6 to 70, and our audiences have grown each year as more people are engaged in this locally created audio theatre.

Southern Remedy

Southern Remedy is Mississippi Public Broadcasting’s flagship health and wellness initiative. It includes a doctor call-in radio show every weekday, a health and wellness documentary TV/digital program, a Health Minute interstitial that airs during the weekly half-hour news round-up, health issues news and radio reporting, a healthy living guide, and materials to teach adults and children about good health habits.

News Briefings & Classical Conversations

Every other month, Nashville Public Radio hosts either a News Briefing or Classical Conversation luncheon event at our station. The News Briefing is a chance for listeners of WPLN 90.3FM (the news station) and local community leaders to visit the station, meet local hosts, hear first about upcoming projects and, most importantly, to ask questions and provide feedback directly to the station.

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.

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.

90.5 WESA Celebrates …

Western PA has a strong tradition of neighborhood, personal and community commitment. 90.5 WESA Celebrates aims to honor individuals and organizations that are making a difference in people’s lives on the ground level and reminding us we are all truly connected to each other. We will compose sound-rich profiles of people committing the smallest acts of kindness as well as a town that comes together after a natural disaster to rebuild each other’s homes.

NEXT with Marcus Atkinson

“NEXT with Marcus Atkinson” on WQLN Radio 91.3FM/Erie began as a series of unscripted, unrehearsed interviews with the “next generation” of local voices, young leaders who are guiding Erie through challenges affecting the city’s minority communities, including an epidemic of gun violence, a scarcity of professional opportunities, a lack of safe and affordable housing and incidences of police brutality. The series has recently expanded to new platforms, reaching thousands of additional audience members, especially those outside of the public media “traditional” audience, and its focus has expanded beyond challenges that are specific to the city, touching on topics that are equally relevant to young residents beyond the city and county limits.

TriPod: New Orleans at 300

To mark the city’s Tricentennial, WWNO New Orleans Public Radio produced TriPod: New Orleans at 300, a radio series and podcast that explores New Orleans’ lost stories and rich history. TriPod seeks out stories that haven’t yet been told, and voices that haven’t been at the table. TriPod is a collaboration with the Historic New Orleans Collection and the University of New Orleans Midlo Center for New Orleans Studies.

Out of the Blocks

Out of the Blocks is an immersive listening experience built from a mosaic of voices and soundscapes on the streets of Baltimore. In each episode, producers Aaron Henkin and Wendel Patrick make it their mission to meet and interview everyone on a city block.

WYSO Community Voices’ Peer-to-Peer Initiative

WYSO’s Peer-to-Peer Initiative is an innovative approach to story collecting that has grown organically out of the station’s Community Voices training project. With help from freelance producers, WYSO trains citizens to interview each other. These interviews became radio and web series and community engagement events. When their stories are shared on the radio, the storytellers are validated and the listeners meet people whose experiences are likely different from their own.

Heart 2 Heart Breakfast Series

The Heart 2 Heart Breakfast series linked event participants who share a passion for service to the people of the community to each other, support, services, resources and the station. The Heart 2 Heart Breakfast series is now a year-old initiative designed to promote, showcase, and connect non-profits and grassroots organizations doing good work in the Triangle. 

Mohammed Bakr

KUOW’s “Ask A…” Project

KUOW’s “Ask A…” project is a community engagement initiative to promote empathy and understanding with groups that have been “othered” by media or politics. It features person-to-person conversation events where a group of “askers” have consecutive eight-minute conversations with a group of “answerers,” followed by a group discussion and a shared meal. Events have included Muslims, Trump supporters, transgender people, journalists, foster parents, immigrants, gun owners, and Special Olympics athletes.

88 Cities

“88 Cities” is a listener-driven series: we solicit people to become tour guides for their own city and tell us what makes it unique among all others in the county. Our end goal is to enlighten our whole audience about the cities that are their neighbors.

Turning the Tables: KC Showcase

In a local take on the NPR series “Turning the Tables,” musician and staff writer at 90.9 The Bridge, Michelle Bacon, looked at gender, equality and the future of the Kansas City music scene. Her four part series “Turning the Tables: KC Edition,” published at bridge909.org, culminated in a live panel and showcase of women in music.

Melissa Torres learns how to conduct an audio interview during an NEPR Media Lab class.

NEPR Media Lab

New England Public Radio (NEPR) Media Lab is an after-school program and youth initiative (ages 14-18) powered by the art of storytelling. Through journalism and audio production, students learn to tell stories with sound. Participants learn how to interview, write, and produce commentaries and feature stories. Media Lab’s goal is to train young, diverse voices to tell stories that are important to youth and empower them with the knowledge that they have something to say.

Human Voter Guide

KPCC’s Human Voter Guide started in 2016 as a series of questions and answers on the radio and online. Its goal was to help Southern California residents navigate elections and voting through personalized research. Using the web-based engagement platform Hearken and the text-messaging engagement service GroundSource, KPCC is now able to track a larger volume of questions and offer election-related reminders via text message.

The SPARK and The SPARK Awards

WKNO’s The SPARK is a monthly half-hour interview program highlighting efforts in community service and technological and collaborative innovation by nonprofits, corporations, local businesses and educational organizations. The SPARK is produced in partnership with cityCURRENT, a privately-funded organization comprised of 80+ local businesses focused on moments and media along with philanthropy and volunteerism to “power the GOOD” and provide a positive influence in the Mid-South.

She Says

WFAE’s new investigative podcast “She Says,” follows the story of a sexual assault survivor in North Carolina’s Mecklenburg County and the long and difficult process of finding justice. As of this writing, no one has been brought to justice.