Current (https://current.org/project-status/semi-finalist/page/6/)
In collaboration with the Minnesota Housing Partnership, TPT Partnerships produced “Sold Out: Affordable Housing at Risk,” a documentary that examines the shrinking supply of affordable housing in Minnesota through the experiences of displaced tenants and concerned experts. They also produced a number of digital shorts and a discussion guide to aid in meaningful engagement with the project.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Via a four-year community engagement campaign that began in fall 2017, WTVI PBS Charlotte partnered with local workforce-related organizations to roll out a three-part media project (Dreamers, Doers, Destiny) designed to empower youth to capitalize on their dreams. The target goal is to engage with and help educate 600 local public high school students in career pathways and leadership training, leading to education completion and lasting success in the workforce.
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 continuing opioid crisis in Maryland prompted Maryland Public Television to develop an awareness and education initiative in early 2017. “Addiction & Recovery” is a multi-month project in which MPT and its partners sought to honestly portray the dark side of addiction, while also providing hope, encouragement, and information for those impacted by opioid use. The effort culminated in the broadcast of “Breaking Heroin’s Grip: Road to Recovery” in 2017.
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.
To Foster Change is PBS SoCal’s initiative to raise awareness around the systemic and personal challenges Los Angeles foster youth face and overcome every day, while providing opportunities for youth to take control of their own stories. The station partners with over 30 social service organizations to support and encourage caregivers, share positive stories, create a space to brainstorm new approaches to supporting youth, and train young adults in media arts.
North Country at Work (NC@W) has been collecting photographs and audio content that tell historic and contemporary stories of people at work, town by town, across the vast rural geography of New York State served by North Country Public Radio. NC@W is now returning to the featured towns, setting up photo exhibits, and hosting work-related story slams, which are recorded and added to the NC@W permanent archive.
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.
As part of a digital initiative that coincided with a documentary of the same name produced by Arizona Public Media, reporters asked community members to share stories about how they or their families were impacted by the Vietnam War. Stories were archived online to be watched or read, and some were broadcast by Arizona Public Media stations. Stories were written or taped at live screenings.
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.
100 Days in Appalachia is a reporting project created the day after the 2016 election that pushes back against parachute journalists’ and national narratives about rural America. It’s published at the West Virginia University Reed College of Media Innovation Center in collaboration with West Virginia Public Broadcasting (WVPB) and The Daily Yonder, of the Center for Rural Strategies, headquartered in Kentucky.
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.
In a year-long initiative, WTTW/Chicago PBS explored the intricacies, challenges, and voices of the local Pilsen community. It aired as a 60-min. documentary, followed by a live town hall, produced in collaboration with Univision Chicago. After the premiere, WTTW hosted a series of events across Chicago and partnered with the Chicago Public Schools to host a video production workshop for high school students to produce short documentaries about their neighborhood experiences. The project will culminate in a youth film festival.
After the 2016 election, we focused on KC exurbs, looking for issues that don’t surface in KC. Led by our community engagement team we went to Atchison, Kansas, to develop an hour-long show. That content also became two local Morning Edition stories, several digital stories and a shorter podcast for KCUR’s series Midwesternish. This content approached the town from a hard news perspective as well as character-driven stories that appealed to both listeners in Atchison and the Kansas City metro.
Made Here is an initiative designed to bring local Vermont (and other regional) filmmakers work to Vermont PBS viewers, on air and online. The station hired a Local Content Manager, Eric Ford, and tasked him to find and acquire Vermonter-produced content. With Ford’s guidance and focus, the station was able to significantly increase the amount of local content they procured enabling the station to dedicate 12-14 hours per week to local programming in addition to new show premieres every month.