Current (https://current.org/project-status/semi-finalist/page/5/)
The Future Jobs initiative explores the careers that are trending now and will be in the near future in Western Pennsylvania, not just in urban areas, but in the suburbs and in rural communities. This multi-platform project aims to deliver information to the public when they need it, notably to middle school students and their teachers.
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.
Iowa Public Television’s Iowa Land and Sky project provides general and classroom audiences with a unique perspective of the state’s geology, biodiversity, and environmental issues. Through short video stories, online experiences, classroom resources, and social media conversations, this initiative has helped Iowans better appreciate the ecological and geological diversity of the state.
Twin Cities PBS’s groundbreaking multi-platform arts program, ART IS, elevates renowned Minnesota artists of color who pick three up-and-coming artists across any genre and develop a series of media and public events. Over a nine-month period, TPT and artists co-create powerful short digital films that provide context and visibility for the artists’ work, enhanced by a series of public events in our studios.
Twin Cities PBS launched the multi-year reporting initiative, One Greater Minnesota (OGM), to engage a broad statewide audience in learning more about the many ways Minnesota communities are interconnected. OGM has produced a total of 140 pieces for digital and statewide broadcast distribution, including video reports, articles, social media posts, and more. Segments and public forums foster civic participation, cultivate a more respectful civic environment, and aim to enhance public media programming in Minnesota.
Pennsylvania Public Media stations WHYY, WITF, WLVT/PBS39, WPSU, WQED, WQLN, WVIA are collaborating to produce educational programming that focuses on the opioid crisis with the goals of increasing awareness, reducing stigma, aiding prevention, and helping people find treatment. This state-wide project included long-form documentaries, online features, educational interstitials, and strong social media support. Battling Opioids helped to direct more than 23,000 calls to the state helpline since the project started.
Public Media Network (PMN) is a Public, Education, and Government (PEG) media arts organization founded to serve five Michigan towns. Say Something! Youth Voices provides young residents access to training, equipment loans, media production facilities, programming distribution, and vocational instruction in media production to local high schools. PMN also operates WKDS 89.9 FM, a 100-watt FM non-commercial/educational radio station licensed to the Kalamazoo Public Schools.
The Eva project started off as “Eva: A-7063,” a documentary by WFYI Public Media and Ted Green Films about Holocaust survivor turned global peace advocate, Eva Mozes Kor. Through extensive, community-based work and engagement, it expanded into the Eva Outreach and Education Program, which includes the Eva Educational Toolkit and the Eva Virtual Reality Traveling Exhibit, which have had national and international exposure.
Many parents want to do things with their kids, not just for their kids — to explore shared interests like hiking or, in this case, live music. Saturday Morning Tunes is a series of live concerts, mini-festivals, and other events from WTMD which appeal to kids and parents alike. Held in and around Baltimore each month, they’re broadcast live on air and streamed on Facebook Live, and have brought together thousands of adults and children.
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.
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.
Our in-depth engagement and reporting project, “Public Works? A Level Foundation” is a strong example of local public media at its most service-oriented, bringing together community sponsors and partners, public participation and a station-wide multimedia and multi-platform effort. Over six months we took a topic of rising national importance, affordable housing, eviction and gentrification, and localized it for our community by pulling back the curtain on the reputation of the “affordable Midwest.”
The KUER Sound Booth brings radio production to the community and introduces and excites local people about listening to and recording their own audio. The mobile sound booth structure, complete with audio recording equipment, travels to various community and station events. Kids and adults are invited to record a personal story or news segment, which is then emailed to them and used in station promotional material and fund drives.
OETA Foundation envisioned and produced a series of 30-minute documentaries, entitled “Mosaic Oklahoma,” which celebrate the communities, people, and landmarks that epitomize Oklahoma’s unique culture. The pilot episode, filmed in the northeastern Oklahoma town of Pawhuska (population 3,500), explored the history and heritage of the Osage Nation, which is headquartered there, and the revitalization of the downtown, where the Food Network’s “Pioneer Woman,” Ree Drummond, has her popular deli, bakery, store, and hotel.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.