LOCALORE: FINDING AMERICA • REPORT TO THE FIELD

Break
Form
MAKING
STORIES
with and for
THE
PEOPLE

 Break Form: Making Stories With and For the People was written and prepared by lead researcher
Mallary Tenore, Localore Executive Producer Sue Schardt, editors Jessica Clark, Betsy O’Donovan, Stevie
Beck, data analyst Scott Williams, Tom Webster and Melissa Kiesche at Edison Research, Jeff Sonderman
at API, and with Finding America’s lead producers and station collaborators: Eve Abrams, Audrey Atkins, John
Biewen, Avory Brookins, David Brower, Stacia Brown, Kelly Burley, Tayla Burney, Michael Chihak, Mariana Dale, Katie
Davis, Regina Dean, Loren Dixon, Dave Edwards, Joaqlin Estus, Jack Gibson, Glenn Gleixner, Sonya Green, Allison
Herrera, Greg Hill, Josie Holtzman, Rachel Hubbard, Isaac Kestenbaum, Kliff Kuehl, Alex Lewis, Kelley Libby, Brad
Lichtenstein, Paul Maassen, Jess Mador, Michelle Maternowski, William Marrazzo, Carla McCabe, Andi McDaniel,
Kyra McGrath, Steve Mencher, Rachel Osier Lindley, Sophia Paliza-Carre, Kelsea Pieters, Ali Post, Mary Quintas, Steve
Ramsey, Marsha Reeves Jews, Ellen Rocco, Janet Saidi, Jaclyn Sallee, Jason Saul, Jackie Sauter, Matt Shafer Powell,
Marcellus Shepard, David Sommerstein, Connie Stevens, Brendan Sweeney, Eve Troeh, Meredith Turk, Eric Von
(1958–2016), Connie Walker, Michele Williams, Bruce Wirth, Jeanette Woods, Mona Yeh, and JJ Yore.
Thanks to AIR’s home team:
Josh Banville, David Dawson, Bec Feldhaus Adams, Adriana Gallardo, Teresa Gorman, Dan Kass, Karen Lally, Ryan
McGrath, Alexei Miagkov, Betsy O’Donovan, Bab Oommen, Laurie Selik, Ryan Somerfield, Joanie Tobin, Aidan Un,
An Uong, and Lindsey Wagner.
And our many collaborators and supporters:
Ayah Abdul-Rauf, Ana Adlerstein, Paul Ahlers, Jamie Alsabrook, Hans Anderson, Jenny Asarnow (LL ’12), Joshua
Atkinson, Hope Austin, Phil Batta (LL ’14), Shyanne Beatty, Kyle Bell, Jennifer Brandel (LL ’14), Colleen Brennan,
Martina Castro (NV ’10), Jeremy Charles, Liz Cheng, Frank Chythlook, Russell Cobb, John Crigler, Bob Cross, Hodari
Davis, Jax DeLuca, Matt Diffie, Greg Dixon, James Dommek Jr., Rachel Edelman, Doug Eichten, Free Egunfemi, Neenah
Ellis (LL ’14), Jody Evans, Lisa Marie Evans, Jennifer Ferro (LL ’14), Field, Sally Jo Fifer, Rudy Flores, Kymone Freeman,
Brandon Gatling, Cheryl Gerber, David Giovannoni, Liliana C. González, Melissa Gray, Anya Grundmann, David
Haas, Bill Haenel, Marcus Halley, Scott Hanley, Jesse Hardman, Sterlin Harjo, Laurie Beth Harris, Pat Harrison, Chris
Hastings, Colleen Heine, Whitney Henry-Lester, Stuart Hetherington, Bob Hill, Grant Hindsley, Lettie Holman, Feather
Houstoun, Mya Hunter, Denise Igo, Kathy Im, Josh Jackson, Marsha Reeves Jews, John Johnson, Mary Ellen Jones, David
Joseph, Sally Kane (LL ’14), Alex Kapelman, Laine Kaplan-Levenson, Lori Kaplan, Sam Keenan, Kitchen Sisters (Davia
Nelson and Nikki SIlva) (LL ’14), Paul Kjelland, Joan Kobayashi, Yuko Kodama, Michael Krall, Julia Kumari Drapkin
(LL ’14), Asha Lane, Chioke l’Anson, Mark Levin, Michael Levy, Michelle Lopez-Rios, Jeff Luchsinger,Joyce MacDonald,
Jessi McEver, Kyra McGrath, Todd Melby (LL ’14), Viki Merrick, Kathy Merritt (LL ’14), Sarah Metz, Chris Michaels,
Caitlin Moran, Claire Mullen, Alyce Myatt, Cleveland Neal, Fantastic Negrito, Holly Mititquq Nordlum, Lauren Ober,
Mike Oreskes, Lauren Pabst, Maureen Pao, Patty Parks, Vikram Patel, Boqin Peng, Luis Antonio Perez (NV ’11), Schyla
Pondexter-Moore, Erika Pulley-Hayes, Allison Quantz, Barbara Raab, Mawish Raza, Katy Reckdahl, Tena Rubio, John
Sallee, Lauren Schiller, Mahnaz Shabbir, Bill Siemering, Tevin Smith, Leslie Snow, Jeff Sonderman, Laura Starecheski
(NV ’09), Bruce Theriault, Chris Turpin, Kiran Vee, Tracy Wahl, Darren Walker, Noland Walker (LL ’14), Carline Watson,
Jacquie Gales Webb, Spencer Weisbroth, Goorish Wibneh, Flawn Williams,Sonja Williams, Kortney Williams, Nancy
“Mama Nia” Wilson, Sarah Wolozin, and Liz Wood.
and AIR producers, who are everywhere.
LL ’12 or ’14 = part of previous Localore productions
NV = AIR’s New Voice program 

Design: Angelynn Grant • Illustrations: Cal Tabuena-Frolli

 DEDICATED TO ERIC VON,
AIR’S LEAD PRODUCER FOR
PRECIOUS LIVES: BEFORE THE GUNSHOTS
WITH WUWM RADIO

  

If you give me form, I will give you music.
?Patricia Barber, introducing ?Muse?

Break Form: Making Stories With and For the People
Introducing Finding America
Sue Schardt, Executive Producer
The first glimmers of Beyond Belief, our Finding America production in
Kansas City, emerged from darkness. A 2014 shooting at the Jewish
Community Campus left three dead. AIR’s Finding America lead producer Steve
Mencher, one among 150 people working on this national initiative, had moved from
Maryland to help public television partner KCPT make new kinds of stories, to deepen
the station’s ties to the faith community, and to help people in Kansas City connect
across margins of faith and belief. Steve and his team fanned out across the city to
mosques, churches, synagogues, temples, and communities of nonbelievers to
capture stories and produce live events, establishing a rich collaboration with people
of differing faiths.
Steve, who describes himself as a “sporadically practicing Jewish-Buddhist,” immersed
himself in new worlds, observing and absorbing the lives and practices of hundreds of
people. In the process, he established a fledgling center of gravity for public media, a new
conversation around commonalities like praying, perseverance, ritual, asking for help, and
reliance on something greater than oneself.
Reflecting on the effects of the work on his journalistic practice, Steve says, “If you’d told
me a year ago that I’d be attending Bible study every Tuesday morning, I’d have found it
hard to believe. And if you’d told me I’d sometimes be leading Bible study, I’d have said you
were totally out of your mind.” He continues, “As a journalist, I believe in the importance
of fairness, objectivity, and balance. I’ve learned, too, there is also love. Love and the core
tenets of journalism can go together.”
By opening himself to a deep human connection, Steve brought a new dimension to
his work. His experience demonstrates that a bold journalist who pursues new kinds
of relationships with his or her subjects will deliver something different, and may be
changed by the experience.

Mencher’s approach — slow journalism that finds a community and explores it — stands
in contrast to the breakneck speed of the internet, the Twitterfication of politics, and
the politicization of news. We’re coming to appreciate the price we pay for speed. We
miss a good chunk of what’s happening on the deeper levels of daily living. The price of
Break Form: Making Stories With and For the People  1

 deadline-driven journalism is that nuance is sacrificed to speed. Storytelling at the pace
of Twitter tends to relegate whole communities of people into simple, sound bite-friendly

“

narratives that suit the pace.

We are demonstrating how it is possible —
necessary — that today’s new journalism
be both fast and slow.

Speed, then, is one important factor that defines what’s
different about our Localore: Finding America production.
By experimenting with this and other aspects of traditional
storymaking practice, we begin to break open traditional

form, and surface new ways to move deeply into communities — to make stories “with
and for the people.” We are demonstrating how it is possible — necessary — that today’s
new journalism be both fast and slow.
Another challenge confronting local communities today is the continuing consolidation
of the newspaper industry. Nearly two decades in, it has given rise to what researcher
Penelope Muse Abernathy calls “news deserts.” In her recent study from the Center
for Innovation and Sustainability in Local Media at the University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill, she identifies specific rural communities with aging populations where
declines in manufacturing, mining, and farming have led to the highest rates of poverty
in the country. These are the communities where there are virtually no outlets for local
stories and, as her case studies illustrate, where the internet has emerged as the sole
source for people seeking meaningful news of the day. This is a powerful context for
understanding our contemporary social and political environment. It also points to
opportunity — arguably, an imperative — for those working at local public radio and
television stations to fill a critical void.
As part of the Finding America initiative,
AIR collaborated with Greater Public,
ITVS, the National Federation of
Community Broadcasters, and the Public
Radio News Directors Association to
commission a study from Edison Research
to vet our theories about the relative
strength of public media in the Localore
communities, and to identify new
opportunities for producers and stations

ACTION:

Thirty-seven percent of content broadcast on U.S.public radio stations is
local, with just 4 percent local on public
television.2 With the proliferation of
“news deserts” across the U.S., there is an
obvious opportunity — and also a glaring
deficit — public media should move to fill.
Success would have significant positive
effect on American culture and society.

across the country. One key finding is an opportunity for each local public media outlet to
“emphasize the credibility of its news and journalism.” Television is a key platform for
both public and corporate media consumers in the Finding America markets.1
1  Edison Research, Localore: Finding America Study, Summer/Fall 2016
2  CPB Station Activity Survey (SAS) 2017; NPR Research, Fall 2016
2  Break Form: Making Stories With and For the People

 Storymaking that is both fast and slow, and a critical deficit of reliable, local journalism:
These are the starting points for the work laid out in this report, and our aspiration to
“make stories with and for the people.” The work rises out of public media, but what
we share is timely and relevant to commercial and print journalists, or anyone with
interest in elevating and expanding the ways we craft the day-to-day story of America.
AIR’s investigator, Mallary Tenore, presents some of the techniques AIR’s team of
producers created (or borrowed!) as they produced stories from the “far corners” of local
communities for broadcast, live platforms, and social/digital streams. We present 10
obstacles that hinder success, and ways to work around them.
Localore: Finding America is the third in a series of national collaborations produced by
AIR. We began in 2010 with the launch of Makers Quest 2.0 (MQ2) followed by Localore
(2012–14). The collective work is both a multimedia production — generating thousands
of stories in formats that include audio, video, interactives, illustrations, performances,
installations, and more — and a field of sustained research and development taking place
across public media in an iterative way, with a combined reach of more than 76 million
gross impressions.
From its inception, the work was built on the premise that independent producers, like
those comprising AIR’s network, are ideally suited to lead a public media industry in the
midst of change. We have effectively tapped into the nimble and diverse indie producer
network and “married” it to the established network of public radio, television, and digital
operations across the country to create a series of local productions in cities large and
small — from Bellevue, Washington, to Williston, North Dakota, to Paonia, Colorado; from
Los Angeles to Chicago and Washington, D.C.
What began as a series of experiments to help “public radio” make the shift to a diversified
“public media” has evolved into a movement involving hundreds of producers, station
staff, community organizations, and collaborators. Those who participate in these
inclusive, community-based projects are expanding public media to engage, inform, and
serve their neighbors. Each of these national initiatives builds on the previous work,
deriving and designing around the best practices and refined objectives that we share in
this report.
The lightning bolt is Localore’s emblem. We draw the lightning and welcome it: Moments
of instant, catalytic change are possible. We have also learned that real change demands
that we capture those flashes of energy or insight and direct them into what we hope will
be a state of sustained invention.

Break Form: Making Stories With and For the People  3

 The projects also create optimal conditions for many of our lead producers to do their best
work, and we encourage and support our lead producers in taking what they’ve created
in one community and spreading it to others. The trajectory of our talent “diaspora” is
the strongest evidence of how individuals, empowered by their Localore experience,
drive change. We look to Localorian Jennifer Brandel’s Hearken — a growing “peoplepowered” journalism platform — Julia Kumari Drapkin’s iSeeChange climate project, and
the new music platform VuHaus, inspired in part by Delaney Hall’s Austin Music Map in
partnership with KUT. We’ve seen Localore station producers step into leadership — Andi
McDaniel who, in a few years, moved from working as a digital producer at Twin Cities
Public Television to chief content officer at WAMU, NPR’s flagship station in D.C.; Sally
Kane, who managed Localore incubator KVNF in Paonia, Colorado, and is now leading a
rebirth of the National Federation of Community Broadcasters (NFCB); Noland Walker, a
brilliant freelance film writer, who moved to senior content director at ITVS after serving
as AIR’s network manager for Localore. Lead producers and stations from this latest
round of Localore continue to cultivate the “green shoots” of the project they created.
Since we began in 2010, the drive to reinvent local public media has taken hold. Stations
across the country — including many former Localore incubators — are investing in
building stronger local ties. KUT and WGBH are among those with new community
outposts; WNYC’s “Mott Haven Speaks,” led by Localorian Sophia Paliza-Carre, is part of a
new beat documenting changing New York neighborhoods; and WYSO in Yellow Springs,
Ohio, continues to build out its longstanding “Community Voices” program to bring new
local storytellers to the airwaves. Our work parallels that of inspired peers, such as jesikah
maria ross, senior engagement strategist at Capital Public Radio, who created a new
center in collaboration with UC Davis called The Art of Regional Change — or The Center
for Investigative Journalism’s StoryWorks project, which is experimenting with moving
hard news to the local theater stage.

The 15 current productions launched on Nov. 1, 2015, and incubated in their communities
for up to 12 months. Each represents a three-way partnership between AIR, an independent producer hired by AIR to lead the project, and a station incubator. These are not “oneoff” experiments. All parties agree to work together to establish new innovation capacity
that the station will sustain beyond the incubation period. When we complete our period
of experimentation, the stations are left with an R&D infrastructure. Our recent survey of
the field indicates nearly 60 percent of station managers are committed to continuing the
work at the station, and fewer than 5 percent say work will not continue.

4  Break Form: Making Stories With and For the People

 While this latest round of lead producers was embedded, they worked with our station
collaborators and the teams they assembled to invent new models for making stories
that put people they met at the front of the narrative. They were intent on turning a
fresh eye and ear on the day-to-day lives of the people. We cultivated those living in our
communities as collaborators, rather than subjects of a story.
Our lead producers were unconventionally more female (73 percent) and more racially
diverse (43 percent) than a typical news team, which was an important factor in our
approach. When recruiting lead producers, we explicitly sought storymakers who felt
and articulated an intense connection with nontraditional audiences and stories — and
what emerged in every market were teams that should make diversity-challenged news

“

organizations take notice.

We learned the primacy, not of
social media platforms, but of
social platforms: church services,
hot dog wagons, roller skating
rinks, drive-in movie theaters,
food pantries — the places where
people share their stories of
joy and grief, celebration and
creation, doing the things that
make up daily living.

An important first part of the Finding America assignment was to ask
our talent to suspend what they do best, leave behind their microphones
and cameras, and enter as observers. What is the rhythm and flow?
Who are the magnetic personalities? “Reflection” as a starting point
for reinvention is part of our experiment, and not simple to achieve: to
enter a new place with humility, forming what turned out for some to
be lasting bonds of love and friendship. This was especially difficult
for some of our lead producers, who heard the clock ticking from day
one and were eager to start producing, and yet was embraced strongly
by more than 65 percent of our station collaborators who welcomed a
respite from the everyday grind of daily news assignments.

The Localore approach includes working across the “full spectrum” — that is, blending
broadcast, digital, and “street” platforms in creating new models. In this latest production,
we learned the primacy, not of social media platforms, but of social platforms: church
services, hot dog wagons, roller skating rinks, drive-in movie theaters, food pantries — the
places where people share their stories of joy and grief, celebration and creation, doing the
things that make up daily living. It’s no surprise then, that from March through October
of 2016, we produced more than 30 live events across our local communities. These are
the places we are building a new public media, but not places where public media is well
known — or even recognized.
In June 2016 as part of the Edison study, pollsters were dispatched to Finding America live
events to test our assumptions about the media habits of those living in the “far corners”
of local communities, and also to draw a clearer demographic profile. The findings
reinforce the importance of live events to raise awareness of public media service, and
also to expand stations’ awareness of “crucial voices we may be missing.” As you’ll read in
Break Form: Making Stories With and For the People  5

 more detail later in this report, Finding
America produced 41 live events.
Producers experimented with and
expanded on creating live platforms
— bike rides, neon flashing mailboxes,
abandoned drive-in movie theaters.
Edison highlights another important
strategic finding about a new cohort
of community collaborators: This “plugged-in, switched-on” constituency is influential.
Working in close coordination with AIR’s independent lead producers, they represent
important connective tissue between public media stations and those living in the wider
community public media is trying to engage.
Throughout the report are graphs that visualize how the local productions developed
and experimented, month by month. Also detailed is public engagement with AIR’s

ACTION:

own social/digital platforms, including our online meta-documentary, which connected

Live platforms designed around
the habits and patterns of people
living in new corners of the
community are key to the future
of local public media.

themes and findings across all of the productions. Although “local” is
very much in our DNA and design, we understand that neighborhood
stories reveal national concerns. We extended our reach via national
broadcast and digital pathways in partnership with NPR’s All Things
Considered and WGBH’s WORLD Channel. In total, Finding America
has generated more than 48 million gross impressions.3

Our production units have been based in communities whose realities aren’t well
represented in newsrooms. Localore provides dedicated producers and respectful
collaborators, and communities respond by sharing stories beyond the limited narrative
of despair, poverty, struggle, or injustice served up by the 24/7 news cycle. Immediate
presence is key to the design of the experiment. Our teams work and live next to teenagers
living day to day with gun violence in Milwaukee, gun capital of the U.S.; families of those
incarcerated in New Orleans; bus commuters outside of Seattle who can no longer afford
to live in the city where they work; Yupik elders who walk the dissolving shorelines of
Alaska; veterans living in the shadow of Fort Drum, home to the most deployed battalion
in the country.
We don’t want to sugarcoat difficult realities facing these communities. We do want to
tackle the limitations of a news cycle that rewards stories of despair and division, often
3  Gross impressions represent the number of instances of engagement with content, including, for example, headcount at an
event, likes on a Facebook or Twitter retweets, listening to a radio story, or watching a television promo.

6  Break Form: Making Stories With and For the People

 ACTION:
leaving viewers and listeners feeling helpless and
hopeless, in a world that is out of control.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the creation
of public broadcasting. We have rich challenges and
fantastic opportunities to extend our journalism to
better reflect the rich diversity of America. In this
context, LBJ’s 1967 call for a public broadcasting
system that brings “enlightenment to all the people
of the United States” is more than an inspired vision.
It is a rallying cry for journalists, stations, and

Independent producers and
station staff have a willing
group of mission-driven
collaborators who can act
as guides and advocates.
Neighborhood organizers,
churches, local arts
organizations, small-business
owners, and even gyms are
important strategic partners
in building a more inclusive
public media system.

storymakers — coming at a moment of great national divisiveness — to tap the elemental
power of media to shed light on and reflect a broader human experience.
We hope to encourage those of you working at media outlets — editors, managers, news
directors, reporters — to trust your boldest instincts. Challenge what constitutes daily
news, and do what it takes to support your brightest talent to do their best work. Your
expertise in service to communities that are hungry for their stories to be told is key to the
flourishing new media we seek. With this work, we encourage independent producers,
documentarians, podcasters, and journalists to not only use your keen minds, but also
keep your hearts open in ways that challenge the image of a hard-bitten journalist who’s
seen everything. The world needs your compassion as much as your skills. You are the
vanguard, but you are not alone. We are ready and eager to help you.
Through public media and led by our most creative makers
and intrepid stations, we can, together, cross over bold lines
of division to bring forward a new, rich human dimension.
We are called on to help people explain lives of extraordinary
endurance, worlds of joy and faith, and the richly diverse
population of America today. And, importantly, it is our
moment to enlighten those already familiar with our work
— the educated, affluent, predominantly white Americans
who are already consuming public media — to worlds just
up the road. Their investment has helped build the national
treasure public media has become. We must lead them in a
new direction, pulling from one side to the other, helping to
bring disparate and divided parts of the community together.
Illuminating, connecting, healing: This is the power of media.

Break Form: Making Stories With and For the People  7

 A Reflection:
What I Discovered on the Way to Finding America
Mallary Tenore, Lead Researcher
In times of disparity and political division, storytelling can be
beautifully unifying.
My work on this report began in July 2016 with a weekend trip to Richmond, Virginia,
where I attended a live storytelling event that AIR’s lead producer Kelley Libby led with
the help of a community collaborator. There was a line outside the door to get into the
Hippodrome Theater where the event took place. Inside, I saw a mix of people from
different races and ages conversing, laughing. The energy and enthusiasm in the room
were palpable. Later, I learned that this is part of what makes the lead producers’ stories
and events so unconventional: They have brought together disparate and sometimes
divided parts of the community by providing them with spaces to share and hear stories
about an issue of common concern.
Community-driven stories hold power — to reveal hidden truths, activate public discourse,
and create positive social change. They feed the soul, providing us with emotional and
intellectual sustenance. They help us understand, and in some cases celebrate, differences.
Now more than ever, we need stories that give us a window into people and cultures
that are different from our own so that we can better understand and appreciate the rich
tapestry of America.
Many of these stories have remained untold in mainstream media, particularly
in the far corners of American communities that traditional public media
typically doesn’t reach. These corners are a mosaic of different cultures, races,
ethnicities, and political ideologies. They’re the places where public media
outlets need to establish more inroads if they want to build their audience
and remain relevant. Many are hard at work on this, including those that
participated in AIR’s Finding America initiative, which produced valuable
lessons and takeaways for the industry at large.
I’ve been researching this initiative and have co-authored this report with Finding
America Executive Producer Sue Schardt and with input from the lead producers, station
managers , and AIR staff. My intent was to learn more about what happens when public
media producers actively try to tell stories not just about people, but with and for people.
In my day job, I work as the executive director of Images & Voices of Hope (ivoh), a media

8  Break Form: Making Stories With and For the People

 nonprofit that aims to elevate media’s role as a force for good. Previously, I worked as
the editor of Poynter.org, one of the world’s leading media news websites. I covered
stories about buyouts, layoffs, and cutbacks, but the stories I was drawn to the most were
about best practices. There is plenty of criticism of media; I like to drill down into what’s
working and draw out lessons for the industry at large. My interest in looking at what
works, as opposed to only focusing on what’s broken, prompted me to help AIR conduct
research on the Finding America projects.
I write this from the standpoint of someone who has long had a bias
toward journalism. Because of this bias, I sometimes had trouble
finding the right language to describe the Finding America work.
I work in journalistic language — with words such as “cover” and
“report” — but over the course of my research, I began to embrace a
broader definition of “media” and “stories.” Once I moved past my
journalistic bias, I was able to see the Finding America projects for
what they are — a mix of reporting, anthropology, ethnography,
engagement, and art. Many of the lead producers’ success lies in their courage —
their willingness to go into communities where they were outsiders and not always
welcomed, and embed themselves there. They took bold approaches to storytelling, broke
(and remade) rules, pushed boundaries, and challenged their own perceptions while
maintaining the highest journalistic standards of seeking truth and minimizing harm.
They also embraced different approaches to measuring a story’s worth. They didn’t assess
it based on the story’s timeliness or how many clicks it generated, but rather on the story’s
importance and relevance to the people living in the community. The lead producers
found stories about love, triumph, and resilience, and they often let community members
narrate them. In an act of humility, they invited community members into the storytelling
process instead of wielding control over which stories were told and how they were told.
The resulting stories sound different from what you traditionally hear and see in public
media. They’re raw and real.
This authenticity stemmed from the producers’ approach. Rather than parachuting into
a community for a brief period and then leaving, they traded in parachutes for lawn
chairs, metaphorically speaking. Many of them embraced an approach that AIR referred
Break Form: Making Stories With and For the People  9

 to as “reposing” — in other words, spending concentrated time getting to know their
communities without the expectation of having to produce stories right away.
The idea initially struck me as far-fetched. I didn’t think it was realistic for journalists to
simply observe a community before reporting on it. There’s not enough time for this,
I thought. It’s just not practical. They need to report, not reflect. I realized, though, that this
is one of the beauties of the Finding America incubation period; it helped stations bring
in outside producers who had the freedom to explore what’s possible when you
experiment with different storytelling approaches — without immediate concerns about
time or money.
Reflection is an antidote to rushed reporting, but it isn’t always easy to embrace. It
requires time and patience to enter a community and simply observe — to listen to the
sounds and silence, to walk the streets with open hearts and a nonjudgmental gaze, to
engage with people who may see you as an outsider. It’s easier to pull out your notebook,
microphone, or camera and use it as a protective shield. But when you enter a community
as a person first and a journalist second, you begin to see it not through the lens of your
camera or the quotes in your notebook but through the eyes and ears of the people who
live there.
I’d venture to say that a lot of journalists
probably wish they could take this approach
but simply don’t have the time; they’re juggling
daily deadlines and doing the job of three people.
They might also lack resources or a feeling of
“permission.” That shouldn’t be an excuse, but
it’s a reality in many newsrooms. Newsrooms
can address this challenge by bringing in outside
talent — independent producers and community
storytellers — who have more freedom to
experiment with different ways of pursuing community-driven stories. Unlike many
newsroom staff members who are focused on producing daily content, independent
producers aren’t constrained by daily deadlines and often have more creative freedom
to tell stories with and for communities. AIR has long advocated for this idea, and it was
10  Break Form: Making Stories With and For the People

 central to the Finding America initiative.
Bringing in outside talent isn’t always seamless. Some station collaborators said it was
difficult to collaborate with independent producers who weren’t aware of the station’s
culture, workflow, and budget constraints. There was sometimes confusion around
roles and expectations, and uncertainty about how to work with the lead producers’
community collaborators—many of whom didn’t have any previous journalism
experience — in a way that wouldn’t be perceived as generating biased coverage.
Additionally, some of the lead producers wished they had more support from, and
interaction with, their stations. Despite the challenges, the Finding America experiment
has paved a clearer path for future collaborations between public media outlets and
independent producers, and shown a promising model for how public media can turn to
outside talent to fill gaps in coverage.
In 2017, those of us in media have an opportunity to envision and create media that unites
and inspires people, rather than tearing them further apart. Recent debates over what
constitutes truth vs. falsehood in the news have perpetuated a feeling of ideological and
political divisiveness in America. This is the time for producers, news organizations,
newsroom leaders, and media practitioners of all kinds to embrace radical, new
approaches to telling stories that reflect the full range of the American experience.
We don’t intend to sugarcoat any of the projects in this report. Rather, we want to be
transparent about the challenges and shine a light on what worked.
Editors, reporters, producers, public media executives: this report is for you. We want to
show you how to embrace new storytelling methods that can better serve communities
— and help you navigate challenges along the way — with the ultimate hope of changing
media for the better. Change doesn’t happen in one full sweep; it happens one risk, one
story, one person at a time.
It’s in this spirit that we present these findings and best practices. In addition to
highlighting lessons and takeaways, the goal of the report is to give you ideas about how
to push past obstacles and break from traditional journalistic norms. My hope is that it
will ultimately prompt you to reflect on how you can contribute to — and influence — the
movement toward community-driven, people-powered public media.

Break Form: Making Stories With and For the People  11

 Ten Key Steps to Making
Community-driven Stories

At a Glance: Finding America
Projects, Producers and Lead
Collaborators
Visit Finding America’s metasite —
findingamerica.airmedia.org — for
additional context and ongoing updates
from the projects below.

Anacostia Unmapped at WAMU
Katie Davis, Brendan Sweeney

Telling stories with and for people, instead of merely treating people as
“sources,” is no easy task. The Finding America lead producers faced myriad
obstacles while taking on the job of inventing new models for storytelling, but
didn’t let these obstacles deter them.
Some of the obstacles below involve finding ways to challenge traditional
journalistic practices and mindsets. Others relate to assumptions about
what public media should sound like, and whom it should serve. Still others
are institutional — making and sustaining change is hard. These obstacles
were identified through our research into the Finding America projects and,
specifically, our inquiry into how producers found creative workarounds.
The obstacles, and tactics to defeat them, are meant to help you move from
breaking news to breaking form — to step away from the conventions of daily
reporting and learn to embrace new and innovative forms of storytelling that
will engage communities and strengthen the way you approach your work.

Anacostia, a historically black
neighborhood that is literally omitted
from some maps of D.C., is where

Working with the Newsroom

WAMU and Davis invite residents to

1.  Make room for work beyond the deadline-driven 24-hour news cycle.

lead storytelling efforts and explore
the question “What if a radio station
sounded like the people it covers?” Three
community producers, working with
Davis, go out into the community to
interview locals on the subject of land:
Who has it, who wants it, and what
happens when it starts to change hands?

Rise of Charm City at WEAA
Stacia Brown, Marsha Jews, Ali Post

It used to be called Charm City. Now,
the Baltimore: Rise of Charm City team,
based at WEAA, seeks the hidden,
forgotten allure of Baltimore — and its

The media has long operated on the belief that sensational stories about crime,
poverty, and despair attract the most attention. There’s some truth to this (and
significant research to back it up) — our brains are hardwired to respond to
threats in our environment. But over time, we become desensitized to these
types of stories, and they can have detrimental effects. Research shows that
repeated exposure to traumatic news can cause acute stress symptoms, trigger
flashbacks, and lead people to overestimate the nature of crime or relative risk
of danger in their neighborhoods. Research also suggests that people crave a
different type of story.
Edison Lab’s benchmark study of the 15 Finding America communities found
the majority of people surveyed crave more “positive local news” — not fluff,
but stories of substance. Finding America producers captured stories of joy,
perseverance, resilience, faith, and determination, and showed that it’s possible
to surface these narratives without ignoring a person’s or a community’s
struggles — to show both the light and the dark.
Their stories suggest that the alternative to hard news can be just as sharp
and sometimes even more direct and meaningful. They also show the value
of exploring the “far corners” of communities that are often defined by single
narratives of violence and injustice. AIR’s Schardt describes a “far corner” as a

12  Break Form: Making Stories With and For the People

 place that’s “not a routine stop along the way. The only way we can get there is
by following someone who knows the back roads and byways.”
Here are two good ways to balance out the deadline-driven news cycle:

•• Let the community direct your storytelling. It’s easy to make assumptions
about what you think your audience wants. But assumptions can be
misguided and easily exclude whole groups of people. Through live events
and community engagement efforts, Finding America producers were able
to get a better sense of the stories and topics that were most important to
people. One example comes from WUOT, where producer Jess Mador and
her station collaborator Matt Powell expanded the station’s crowdsourcing
project Tenn Words. They asked people to answer the question “What
keeps you up at night?” in 10 words or less — online and at Finding America
events. Together they read through an estimated 750 responses that
had been gathered up to that point and found that health was a primary
concern. “People expressed fears about heart disease, obesity, memory
loss, lack of health care services, and the widespread opioid epidemic in
Southern Appalachia” — slow-simmer topics that might not ping on a
radar tuned to more urgent events. “We identified health disparities as an
important, underreported area for TruckBeat to explore.”
•• Seek help from new talent, inside and outside. Many of the lead
producers said they operate independently because it gives them the
freedom to tell stories that move beyond the “if it bleeds, it leads” adage.
Managers would do well to work with more independent producers who
can pursue stories that aren’t necessarily tied to breaking news or trauma
or tragedy. This raises a larger issue about the importance of creating a
newsroom culture that doesn’t just look for outside talent but that also
encourages this type of storytelling from within. Without support from
upper management, these stories remain at risk of being untold.

modern charms, too — with storytelling
in homes, assisted living facilities,
libraries, churches, and community
centers.

Beyond Belief at KCPT
Steve Mencher, Carla McCabe, Janet
Saidi

With digital and broadcast storytelling
and events designed with partners in
the interfaith community, Beyond Belief,
based at Kansas City’s KCPT, explores
the interplay of religious life — and lives
in which religion is absent — with youth
culture, race, civic engagement, and
economic disparity.

Dímelo: Stories of the Southwest
at AZPM
Sophia Paliza-Carre, Mariana Dale

Part public art, part storytelling project,
Dímelo: Stories of the Southwest at AZPM
explores identity, community, and the

2.  Adapt to the different styles and sounds you will get from
community collaborators.

cultural geography of Tucson. The com-

Telling stories with and for the people requires close collaboration with
community members — and an understanding that they may not be as
available or as willing to help out as you expected. Their stories may reflect
biases and strong opinions, and they naturally sound more amateurish by
public radio’s standards — a reality that excited some stations and gave others
pause. Finding a workaround is worth it because the authentic sounds of

munity shares micro-stories via Dímelo’s
“story mailboxes,” and the producers put
them at the center of local reporting.

Break Form: Making Stories With and For the People  13

 community storytellers create important connections that can lead to story
ideas, access, and trust that a more rigid approach may not deliver.

Every ZIP Philadelphia at WHYY
Alex Lewis, Jeanette Woods

Every ZIP at WHYY is a communitybased project creating a portrait of
Philadelphia through the stories that
people tell about their lives. Every ZIP
has told stories from ZIP codes that
WHYY hasn’t heavily covered and has
given Philadelphia residents a chance
to see and hear each other in new ways
throughout the City of Brotherly Love.

Frontier of Change at KNBA
Isaac Kestenbaum, Josie Holtzman,
Joaqlin Estus

In Alaska, climate change not only
threatens the natural world, it also
threatens cultural history held by rural
and Native communities. Frontier of
Change at KNBA builds immersive audio
tours of a land and community caught in
sudden, radical transformation.

In the Washington, D.C., neighborhood of Anacostia, for instance, producer
Katie Davis worked with three key community members who conducted
all the interviews for her project. “Mostly I am aware of the gulf of
communication between whites and blacks in this city, and I wanted to find a
way around that,” said Davis, a veteran producer. Asking community members
to decide whom to interview and how to tell the stories led to more authentic
narratives. “I feel like there was more honesty. There was a lot said just in the
way people talked to each other, just in the tone that they used,” said Davis,
who edited the community members’ stories, orchestrated live town hall
broadcasts, organized events, and more. “I wanted us to be able to understand
that community better, and that is a really good way to do it.”
Similarly, in Durham, N.C., lead
producer John Biewen taught
community members the technical
aspects of audio production and the
craft of storytelling — the idea being
that by “inviting people in to hear and
tell stories, and to get their hands dirty
in the making of storytelling, maybe
it makes ripples — of understanding,
acceptance, connection.”
Some of the teams reported more difficulties than others in establishing
sufficient trust with community collaborators throughout the incubation
period. During a round of conversations that AIR convened with each team
seven months in, one lead producer described unique challenges, saying that
establishing relationships with community members who don’t trust outsiders
was difficult. “Finding people who can vouch for you,” the producer said, “is
essential.” Compared to the 14 other projects, the progress on this project was
slower and the rate of output not as high. This led to some frustration, and
caused AIR to examine how it might have managed the work differently to
achieve a more satisfying outcome.
This instance underscores the importance of establishing trusting
relationships — and making strong connections with influential people in

14  Break Form: Making Stories With and For the People

 the community. Without these relationships, a project will, at best, take more
time and in some cases may fail to meet objectives. It’s also a reflection of the
human factors in the making of Finding America, with an incredibly diverse
range of communities and differing levels of experience among the producers.
It demands that AIR — and any organization overseeing a complex, highly
coordinated production — be attuned to the relative strengths and weaknesses
of its people, and assertive in addressing problems as they arise to ensure
that producers get the dose of creative solutions, moral support, and extra
resources they may need to do their best work.

Homefront: Fort Drum at NCPR

To build acceptance of new styles and sounds from people in the
community:

in upstate New York, the stronghold of

•• See yourself less as a reporter, and more as a director and editor.
Six of Finding America’s teams produced a set of features for All Things
Considered in the lead-up to the 2017 presidential inauguration. These
non-narrated stories were told entirely by community hosts. AIR’s lead
producers worked behind the scenes, acting as directors and editors of the
stories. “I love how direct non-narrated pieces feel to a listener,” said Every
ZIP lead producer Alex Lewis. “When they’re done well, people come away
feeling as if they’ve been introduced to someone in a deeper way.” This
approach isn’t about forgoing your role as a trained storyteller. It’s about
finding opportunities to share creative processes with others in the
community and loosening control so all of the power doesn’t lie with
the journalist.
•• Identify strong community figures and empower them to make the
story themselves. Take time to reflect, get to know people in the
community, and zero in on those with good stories who tell them well.
When you’re ready to start producing, explain that you’d like them to
share their story — in their own words. Be direct about what it will take
to make the story as strong as possible, and your commitment to working
with them. “There were plenty of times throughout the project where, in
hindsight, I’d be kicking myself for not asking someone to better describe
or contextualize something,” said Mona Yeh, lead producer of What’s the
Flux? “I tried as best I could to tell people up front what style I was going
for, and would push for descriptors and narrated explanations of what was
going on. (Example: Describe to me what corner we’re at, which bus we’re
waiting for, and what this corner looks like.)”

Meredith Turk, David Sommerstein

One percent of America’s population
bears a large burden: military service.
Who is in the military? How do their
families cope and connect? At Fort Drum
the 10th Mountain Division, thousands
are actively serving. In the communities
that surround Fort Drum, thousands
more are military retirees. Homefront:
Fort Drum and NCPR tell the stories of
their lives, portrait by portrait, by taking
listeners behind the scenes of a closed
community.

Invisible Nations at KOSU
Allison Herrera, Rachel Hubbard

Oklahoma is home to 39 federally
recognized Indian tribes — some of
whom came to the state on the Trail of
Tears. Invisible Nations is a multimedia
project investigating and exploring the
lives of Native people. In a partnership
between KOSU, FireThief Productions,
and tribal media outlets, Invisible Nations
tells stories that go beyond, as one
subject put it, “powwows, gambling,
and diabetes.”

Break Form: Making Stories With and For the People  15

 Reach and Impact:
Localore (2014) and Localore: Finding America (2017)

In terms of reach, local radio
broadcast delivers, and with best
value.

The Finding America teams produced
hundreds of local news features, talk
shows, promos, and documentaries
presented via broadcast airwaves and
at a cost of one-third of one cent for the
Finding America production. There was
just one local television station incubator
accounting for a relatively minor impact

Here we assess the reach and impact of two national Localore productions in
2014 and Finding America in 2017 across three platforms of engagement with
which each production team experimented — broadcast, digital/social, and live
events. These represent both local and national reach, as well as activity on the
Finding America metasite where AIR’s documentaries are presented together
with local stories, a series of audio dispatches, and more than 50 digital streams.
While the number of local productions has increased by 50 percent, from 10 in
2014 to 15 in 2017, the overall reach across the field has grown by 71 percent, or
by more than 20 million gross impressions. Cost per impression breaks out how
much was spent for each single impression for each platform.

in the broadcast category.

76.5 million gross impressions*

Digital impact grows, cost decreases.

Broadcasting remains the dominant
platform, though its relative impact
has diminished slightly with the
In 2014, digital accounted for 5 percent

Finding America
2017

of total gross impressions, costing 38¢

48.3 million

increasing variety of digital platforms.

per impression. In 2017, digital impact
doubles to 10 percent of the overall

Localore
2014
26.8 million

impact and the cost drops 25¢.

Broadcast
70 million

Cost per Impression
 

2017 2014

Broadcast 1/3¢  1/2¢
Digital  25¢ 38¢
Live 

$26 $10

2017

2017

43.3 million

Live

47,949

67,369

2014

2014

19,420

24.5 million

2017
5M

Digital
6.4 million

2014
1.3M

16  Break Form: Making Stories With and For the People

 2017 Broadcast vs. Digital by Platform:
50

Broadcast Total: 43,253,025

Gross Impressions in Millions

40

Branded sites a plus.

Nine stations posted project information

10

well as the station home site. Of these,
seven were substantially more effective

Digital (& Live): 5,089,244

20

on websites named after their project, as

Local Television (KCPT): 346,485

Local Radio: 31,994,340

National Radio: 10,912,200

30

in attracting page views than the rest of
the productions.
Local events have a growing but
relatively small reach, yet have a
quantitatively different impact

than that of broadcast or digital
distribution. Edison’s Tom Webster says
this: “Live community events are
important not only to raise awareness
and support for public media, but also to
hear crucial voices that may be missing.
These free events brought out a highly

1

different group of people, and serve to
humanize public media at a time when
the media (in general) are having some
perception problems. The relatively high
cost — $26 per impression — likely has
many factors, including the need to

Digital (& Live): 5,089,244

create a new platform with each event.
Other (Tumblr, Instagram, Google Plus): 31,116
Video Views: 43,325

Sources:
30 Live Events: 47,949

Scott Williams (data analyst); NPR
Research, Fall 2015 and 2016; NPR Digital;

Audio On-Demand: 55,089

Nielsen Fall 2015, Spring 2016, Summer
2016, Fall 2016

Websites (Stations & Projects): 517,004

*G
  ross impressions represent the number
of instances of engagement with content,

Facebook: 2,050,945

including, for example, headcount at an
event, likes on a Facebook or Twitter post,

Twitter: 2,343,816
1

2

3

listening to a radio story, or watching a
4

5

television promo.

Break Form: Making Stories With and For the People  17

 3.  Seek out those who are “tuned in, switched on.”

One of the key ways Finding America producers have moved past simply
telling narratives of despair and violence is by developing ties with
community collaborators. These collaborators include organizers, churches,
nonprofits, and people who have a stake in an issue and a decided point of
view. They have taken producers deep into neighborhoods, advocated for the
work, and made personal introductions.

The Junction
Mary Quintas, Rachel Osier Lindley,
Audrey Atkins, WBHM

Ensley is a group of neighborhoods
on the west side of Birmingham,
Alabama. To many people outside
of these neighborhoods, “Ensley” is
synonymous with “crime and poverty.”
The Junction and WBHM seek to reveal
a fuller portrait of Ensley by exploring
what life is really like in the community,
according to the community itself.

Precious Lives: Before the Gunshots
Eric Von, Brad Lichtenstein, Michelle
Maternowski, WUWM

Milwaukee’s inner city is engulfed in an
epidemic of gun violence. Through
stories and live events created by and
with people touched by this violence,
Precious Lives: Before the Gunshots and
WUWM examine the roots of the
bloodshed in an effort to improve life for
everyone in the city.

Edison’s study of Finding America describes an important cohort of individuals
who are, in many cases, highly educated, ethnically diverse, and deeply
engaged in the greater good. These “activators,” as we’re calling them, are
willing and often necessary partners. Partnering with community activators
can make journalists uncomfortable; it goes against what they’ve been taught
about objectivity and neutrality.
And yet, there’s been a growing appreciation for
the potential that lies in working with community
activators. Libby, lead producer of UnMonumental,
forged a deep alliance with Richmond historian
Free Egunfemi, who attended community meetings
with her and served as a collaborator on events
and stories. “I think sometimes activists speak loud
because the rest of us aren’t listening. There are
stories in Richmond that have been buried, literally,
and [Egunfemi] is a person who unapologetically calls
attention to these ‘missing pieces’ in the historical
narrative. And she doesn’t just speak for herself; she
speaks for a community,” Libby said.
“Sometimes she says things that not everyone, even in her community, agrees
with. But she gets the conversation started. That’s one of the things I love
about journalism, that it is a platform upon which people can freely speak
their minds and by doing so invite a response. Journalism catalyzes dialogue.
And when people start talking, that’s when real change starts to happen.”
To successfully collaborate with community activators:

•• View community activators as allies who can identify problems and
prompt you to seek solutions. These allies work deep inside communities
and are often privy to problems that the community faces. Investigate the
problems they surface, but don’t get stuck there. “I don’t think we in the
public sphere should shy away from the tough stuff, because sometimes

18  Break Form: Making Stories With and For the People

 going to the root of a community’s pain is where you’ll find solutions for
healing that pain,” Libby said. Challenge yourself to look into potential
solutions. Seek out positive deviants — people, stories, or organizations
that are more successful or effective than average. Consider: Who is taking
on the problem? How have other communities tackled it? It’s possible that
the people who are most actively involved are closest to the solution.
•• Anticipate challenges. Working with those most active in the community
requires you to set clear boundaries and anticipate challenges. Ask
yourself guiding questions ahead of time: If your collaborator is asking for
editorial control, how will you answer? How will you respond if listeners/
viewers/readers feel that, by presenting new and authentic voices from
the community, you are biased? Being transparent — with your editor,
with your collaborators, and with your audience — is key. Collaborating
with people who are vocal about their viewpoints and political ideologies
puts the onus on you to make sure the related stories you produce include
context and a range of perspectives. The goal is to create stories that are
inclusive and informed by collaborators who know a community from the
inside out.

Storymakers
John Biewen, David Brower, WUNC

Storymakers and WUNC work with 15
storymakers — people who live in one of
the South’s most diverse and fastgrowing cities — to explore divisions of
race, class, and opportunity through a
new public media platform created in
partnership with SpiritHouse Inc. and
Duke’s Center for Documentary Studies.

TruckBeat

Working with Public Media Stations

Jess Mador, Matt Powell, WUOT

4.  Move your focus beyond your core, older, white audience.

about East Tennessee. Lead producer

Public media has had a long-standing aspiration to sound and look like
America, but in practice the business model has often revolved around superserving its core audience — which is largely white, older, and affluent, and
reflective of people who called in during pledge drives in the early days of
public media. Over time, public media programming evolved to serve this
loyal audience.

Jess Mador and WUOT take a food

TruckBeat is a health storytelling project

Many producers, as well as those working at public radio and television
stations and the networks have been working to correct this. In 2015, NPR
published a study of the racial/ethnic diversity of sources on NPR’s weekday
newsmagazines. Keith Woods, NPR’s vice president for diversity in news and
operations, has written and spoken extensively on the findings of this report.
He recently wrote that Asians and blacks make up 9 percent of NPR’s editorial
staff, while Hispanics make up about 5 percent of the editorial workforce.

truck-turned-mobile studio on the road
to report on community health topics in
depth: addiction, obesity, mental health,
access to health care — and why your
neighborhood may affect your health,
even more than genetics.

Diversity is relative, and race and ethnicity are not its only indicators. Other
factors, including age, gender, geography, and socioeconomic status, are often
part of the equation. The Finding America lead producers are a diverse bunch;
Break Form: Making Stories With and For the People  19

 UnMonumental
Kelley Libby, Kelsea Pieters, Connie
Stevens, WVTF

Richmond is a city of monuments, but
many people who live there say the
monuments don’t tell the whole story
of the city — and many historic sites go
entirely unmarked. UnMonumental and
WVTF bring you this series about how
Richmond remembers its past through
the voices of the people who live in the
city now.

Unprisoned: Stories from the System
Eve Abrams, Jason Saul, WWNO

From New Orleans — the world’s
incarceration capital — Unprisoned
and WWNO meet those serving time
inside and outside the criminal justice
system. Unprisoned shares stories to
incite conversation about the ways
mass incarceration affects families,
communities, and notions of justice.

they range in age from 24 to 62, nearly 44 percent are people of color, and 73
percent are women. Collectively, they have reached wide-ranging groups of
people, including individuals who had never tuned into public media. They
made it a priority to work with a broad group of community when capturing
stories, and they worked with their station collaborators to make sure the
content wasn’t simply labeled as “diversity” content.
Rachel Hubbard, associate director/general manager at KOSU in Oklahoma,
said this approach was a welcome change.
“Public media has developed this segregation of cultures; it seems like an
encouragement for all the other cultures to tune out,” Hubbard said. “I
feel like it doesn’t start a conversation about sharing culture and creating
understanding across boundaries.”
Invisible Nations producer Allison Herrera, who worked closely with Hubbard,
helped the station build deeper ties and connections within Oklahoma’s
Native American community. As a result, KOSU aired more stories about
Native American tribes and was able to more fully integrate them into the
station’s coverage. KOSU heard from multiple listeners and members who
said they renewed their support for the station partly because they were so
impressed by Invisible Nations.
“Really like the Invisible Nations project,” one listener wrote. “Am relieved to
see a mainstream outlet show that Indian Country’s more than just diabetes,
powwows, and casinos.” Another listener wrote: “In the past I allowed my
membership to lapse out of frustration over the lack of racial and, in particular,
gender diversity in local programing. Recently I have been extremely
impressed with your Invisible Nations series and am very happy to resume
supporting you.”
Here are ways to expand your reach beyond your core audience:

•• Seek out luminous characters in new corners of the community. If you
want to avoid defining “the other” in stereotypical terms, find a group of
people from widely different orientations who can share perspectives
on a given topic. To deepen his understanding of the nature of the faith
community in Kansas City, lead producer Steve Mencher, working in
partnership with his incubator KCPT television, created a steering
committee of local religious leaders. He hadn’t previously covered religion
and wasn’t very religious himself, so he hoped members of the group could
offer ideas, insights, and feedback. “I decided early on that representatives

20  Break Form: Making Stories With and For the People

 of the religious community should
be consulted regularly, and I wanted
them to have a stake in the outcomes,”
Mencher said. “I also wanted to see if
I could assemble a small but diverse
group to model the kind of outreach
and impact I wanted to have.” He met
regularly with the committee — which
consisted of the minister emeritus of
a local church, a Muslim leader who
is also active in interfaith dialogue, an
Episcopal priest, and a rabbi — to stay abreast of religious activities in the
city and to seek their feedback on Beyond Belief’s stories. The committee’s
feedback, he said, shaped the interviews he sought and the stories he and
the station captured and shared. “These were people who I could check in
with and also who would challenge me to do better,” Mencher said. “We
adapted where we could, and I used their experience and wisdom to guide
the project toward our goals.”

What’s the Flux?: Commuter
Dispatches
Mona Yeh, Sonya Green, KBCS

A daily ritual — the commute — shapes
our exploration of mobility, access, and
economic movement from the margins
of a city to its center. With broadcast,
social media, ’zines, and more, What’s
the Flux: Commuter Dispatches and KBCS
bring curiosity to hidden, nonstop
migration from the vantage point of
Bellevue, Washington.

•• Learn to question your own biases as a producer. Remember that even
if you feel your own identity and beliefs might be underrepresented, it’s
important to consider whether the views and experiences of those least like
you are also being marginalized. Done well, public media should report on
the full range of public opinion, and should include people who sound like
all of America rather than some generic “radio voice.” The Finding America
producers challenged themselves to push past biases and assumptions.
Their stories originated in the community — not in the newsroom — and
painted a well-rounded picture of people and neighborhoods that are often
depicted through a narrow frame that perpetuates single narratives and
stereotypes. In essence, they reflected “public” media in a literal sense of
the word.
5.  Use live events to bring together different parts of the community.

Many public media events are geared toward making work that suits a core
audience that is predominantly white, older, and affluent. New Orleans station
collaborator Jason Saul, director of digital services at WWNO, said there are
many reasons why it’s good to hold events that attract core listeners — “not the
least of which is the joy we bring the people who have been dedicated to public
radio for many years.” But he also acknowledged the need for new approaches:

Break Form: Making Stories With and For the People  21

 “

At WHYY, the only reason a reporter might go to The Village would be
to do a piece on conflict or the effects of poverty or crime. WHYY staff
and audience went to that neighborhood as neighbors. People were
not thinking of that neighborhood through the lens of its stereotype —
even for some reporters — as a scary and crime-ridden place. Everyone
there was on the same footing, enjoying a very different kind of
relationship. And WHYY helped bring that about.

Five community voices and
what they taught us

“We’re really good at going to a retirement home and playing A Prairie Home
Companion, but that’s not super helpful for bringing in new audiences.”

Each Finding America team immersed
themselves deeply in their communities,
first as outsiders and, over time, building
meaningful relationships. The degree
to which they succeeded in their
assignment to create new story-making
models was directly tied to their ability
to establish trusting bonds.

AIR challenged producers to combine traditional broadcast platforms with
digital tools that are used on the street — and by the communities where they
were embedded — to create new “full spectrum” storytelling models in order
to meet new people on their own terms. The live-events platform offers up a
much-needed change of pace for stations and a new opportunity for reaching
further into the community. Edison’s research points to an opportunity here,
particularly for public television stations.

1.  People are yearning for the
chance to be heard and
understood.
“Storymakers gave me a chance to tell a
story that has been on the edge of my
mind for a long time,” said Kimani Hall,
who pursued a Storymakers piece about
his experience dealing with people
who tell him he’s “articulate” and “talks
white” as a young African-American
man in North Carolina. “The validation
I had from the people I interviewed, as
well as the people that had heard my
story, was exhilarating. Because I was
able to release my own story, people were
able to see my views — or at least take
that first step toward understanding me.”
(Kimani went on to become a part-time
producer at WUNC after Storymakers
ended.)
2.  Untold narratives are hiding in
unlikely places.
Richmond activist Egunfemi created
altars across the city to mark significant
historical places that are — sometimes
literally — buried. In one of the Finding
America stories that aired on NPR’s All
Things Considered, Egunfemi took
listeners through a local restaurant
basement that was once part of the
Underground Railroad. “This was the last
space in Richmond that many people

Finding America events were held in unusual places frequented by people in
the community: a drive-in theater in Watertown, New York, a roller skating
rink in Baltimore, Maryland, and an elementary school in the heart of New
Orleans — where Unprisoned lead producer Eve Abrams held an event in
partnership with “Bring Your Own,” a popular roving storytelling project.
Perhaps more importantly, Finding America teams brought together people
who aren’t usually in the same room — public media’s traditional audience
and community members who don’t tune into public media.
Another example comes from
Every ZIP, a Localore project
based out of WHYY. Last June,
Every ZIP lead producer Lewis
and station collaborator Jeanette
Woods held a storytelling block
party with Philadelphia poet
laureate Yolanda Wisher as
the emcee. The event featured
community members sharing
stories around a central theme:
“Stories we would tell our younger selves.” The community storytellers
included Jasmine Combs, a recent Temple University graduate who’s active
in the Philadelphia poetry scene; Tony Jones, who helps lead the men’s group
at the Serenity House community center; and Vashti DuBois, an artist and
nonprofit leader who founded the Colored Girls Museum.
Woods said the day of the event, which was held at The Village of Arts and
Humanities — an arts organization that facilitates community building — was
one of the best days of her life.

22  Break Form: Making Stories With and For the People

 “At WHYY, the only reason a reporter might go to The Village would be to do a
piece on conflict or the effects of poverty or crime. WHYY staff and audience
went to that neighborhood as neighbors,” Woods said. “People were not
thinking of that neighborhood through the lens of its stereotype — even for
some reporters — as a scary and crime-ridden place. Everyone there was on
the same footing, enjoying a very different kind of relationship. And WHYY
helped bring that about.
“That kind of integrative interaction, a true creation of community, at least
within the scope of the event, has always been my goal in public media.”
Woods continues: “People who had never been there — and would never go to
that part of the city — got to see it as just another part of the city. People who
lived there, who had never heard of WHYY, discovered that the station is a
place where their voices were valued, where their experiences could be heard
without the filter of ‘reporting,’”
Want to attract new audiences through live events? Here are some ideas:

•• Bring people from disparate and divided neighborhoods together around
a shared interest. In Milwaukee, lead producers Brad Lichtenstein and the
late Eric Von held live events featuring teenagers who shared stories about
living day to day with gun violence. Dave Edwards, longtime director and
general manager of partnering station WUWM, said the event attracted
a mix of white core public radio listeners — drawn by the station’s heavy
broadcast and online promotion — as well as families, friends, neighbors,
and educators who knew the young storytellers. “It was a very powerful
experience for me. I grew up in Milwaukee and
spent all my life in this community. I was a
reporter in my early days and covered a lot of
gritty stories and interviewed a lot of parents
who lost children to gun violence. I thought in
some respects I was immune to some of that
and thought I really understood what was
going on,” Edwards said. “There was so much
energy in that room that affected me emotionally and in a much different
way than I could have predicted. It was not the kind of event that I was
even prepared for.”
•• Use a wider lens when telling stories about people who are considered
“marginalized.” Public media has an opportunity to bind the human experience through the stories it tells, the projects it pursues, and the events it

actually occupied before they whisked
themselves to freedom and started a new
life in places like Philadelphia. This was
something that I was able to uncover
through conversations with the people
who live and work here, and digging for
the untold story,” Egunfemi said. “Richmond
is a majority black city … and our
narratives have not been celebrated, nor
have our accomplishments.”
3.  We need more safe spaces for
youth to share their stories.
This reality was especially evident
after a Precious Lives performance that
featured teenagers sharing stories about
their experience with gun violence.
Thirteen-year-old Zanaria Banks, who
shared a painful story about her baby
brother being shot, told the Milwaukee
Journal Sentinel: “It really hit me really
hard, but getting it out with Precious
Lives really helped me. I needed to tell
my story, because if I didn’t, I knew that
I was going to continue to cry at night in
my room.” Timberley Princess Brown, 19,
who lost her cousin to gun violence, had
a similar experience: “In many places,
they probably don’t see gun violence.
I touched as many people as I could
tonight. Even though the people I lost
are gone, sharing my story gave me a
sense of relief.”
4.   People are more resilient than
media coverage would suggest.
Many of the Finding America projects
were rich with stories of resilience. One
example comes from competitive sprint
kayaker Dorian Taylor, a paraplegic who
collaborated with the What’s the Flux
project. “Sometimes I don’t know how
I’m still alive. I think, ‘I’m not strong
enough to do this,’ and ‘I’m not strong
enough to do that,’” Taylor said. “It is

Break Form: Making Stories With and For the People  23

 kind of interesting to still have so much
anger around what happened but still be
at peace with my body and who I am. It’s
kind of amazing how anger and sadness
can create something so beautiful and
something you weren’t expecting.”

holds. It’s no doubt important to paint a well-rounded picture of communities that aren’t typically highlighted in media, or that are too often defined
by a single narrative. But challenge yourself to go a step further — by
finding ways to bridge the gap between these communities and those who
are better off — and be open to advice from community collaborators.

5.  Media can be a powerful catalyst
for difficult conversations.
“I think Unprisoned opens the
conversation to a lot of things people
aren’t always willing to believe or talk
about,” said Asha Lane, a New Orleans
teen who collaborated with lead
producer Abrams on an Unprisoned story.
“I do believe that America turns a blind
eye to racial inequality, in believing
that racism no longer exists. Unprisoned
discusses things, such as race, that prove
that those beliefs just aren’t true.”

•• When first starting his Storymakers project, lead producer John Biewen said
he planned to create a storytelling project focused on the experience of
people of color in East Durham in response to the national focus on cities
where unarmed black men had been shot by police. “My thought was to
invite the stories of folks in a low-income, heavily policed, largely black
community,” Biewen said, noting that one of his community collaborators
challenged him on this idea. “Nia Wilson responded that she appreciated
the impulse. But she argued that in this time of increased racial tension,
what’s needed is engagement by everybody, people from all parts of the
community, ‘including white, middle-class people being asked to consider
their privilege.’” Biewen agreed and embraced this approach when
recruiting storytellers for his project.
6.  Place more value on your local storytelling rather than
national programs.

Public media’s business model is built largely around nationally distributed
programs that drive core audience, especially in public television. Many radio
stations are changing direction, but it takes time. Approximately 37 percent
of content broadcast on U.S. public radio stations is local, and 4 percent of
the programming on public television nationally is local, according to the
Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s 2017 Station Activity Survey.
Through their work, the Finding America producers explored the need for
local public media stations to create high-quality content that the community
can’t get elsewhere. WUOT’s Powell puts it this way: “What we have to do as
a station is adopt the philosophy that we can present something to listeners
that Ira Glass can’t, that Diane Rehm can’t, that Morning Edition and All Things
Considered can’t … In the future we’re going to move away from that model of
being the conduit to national programming.”
A big part of this has to do with avoiding what Powell refers to as “speed
bumps” — the noticeable difference in quality when a station switches from
national programming to local programming. “You’re driving along and you
hear a speed bump,” Powell says. “The technical quality breaks off; the talent
isn’t as good.”
24  Break Form: Making Stories With and For the People

 There’s always the risk that new local projects will eat up too many resources
without yielding a strong return. But sometimes it’s a risk worth taking.
In TruckBeat’s case, it paid off. During a recent pledge drive, station members
said TruckBeat was their favorite storytelling initiative.
To take on the local vs. national programming challenge:

•• Experiment with risk. It’s easy to fall back on status quo. Embracing a
new local experiment that aligns with your mission and pushes you to
pursue new storytelling methods and models can change the sound, look,
and feel of your output. If you succeed, the change can have a contagious
ripple effect, sparking further innovation. At WAMU, daily talk show host
Kojo Nnamdi broadcast live from Anacostia as part of the Finding America
project in D.C., sparking some controversy with listeners of the station. But
Andi McDaniel, WAMU’s chief content officer/senior director of content
and news, said Anacostia Unmapped “had the effect internally of setting a
precedent of something that sounded different. The more our staff feels
we can be successful with those things, the more comfortable they’ll feel
suggesting them and testing new ideas.”
•• Give people stories they can’t get elsewhere. North Country Public
Radio’s David Sommerstein — Homefront’s inside collaborator — said that
while the station had covered active military from Fort Drum for quite
some time, it hadn’t done a deep dive into the day-to-day lives of the soldier
and their families on the base. Lead producer Meredith Turk took a fresh
approach by going to great lengths to gain access to a community that is
typically guarded and private. Her efforts enabled her to capture stories of
triumphs, struggles, and love in an ongoing and consistent way.
“What does ‘finding America’ mean? It
assumes that something is lost or hidden,”
Turk said. “When it comes to life in a
military community, there is a growing
gap between the families of those who
serve and those who do not. It’s not that
we don’t know they are there, but we don’t
have the opportunity to sit with the people
who live that life every day. That’s my job.”
Her project changed the sound of NCPR
and enabled it to become a more visible

Want to repose? Here’s how
you do it …
The Finding America producers were
encouraged to take time at the start of
their assignment to “observe and absorb”
for an extended period of time. If the goal
was to subvert the traditional approach
to capturing the story of a place, it was
important they begin, simply, as a human
being — curious, respectful, discerning,
and humble.
1.  Let go of assumptions.
When entering a community, especially
one where you don’t necessarily look like
the people living there or don’t speak
the same language, put aside what you
think you know about that place or those
people and be open to surprises. Making
yourself a learner, without putting
up walls, will help you build trust in
a community. That trust is critical to
getting to know a community and
capturing authentic stories about it.
2.  Be intentional about where you
situate yourself.
Where are people spending their time?
Why are they there? Where are the
gathering places? Community centers,
libraries, churches, and parks are all
places to explore. If you’re choosing
an area where you’ve lived or worked
before, visit a part of town that you don’t
typically frequent.
3.  Put aside familiar tools.
You’ll be tempted to bring your camera,
laptop, phone, and microphone, but
don’t. They can create a barrier and can
be an impediment to building trust,
particularly for those who don’t feel
comfortable being interviewed by people

Break Form: Making Stories With and For the People  25

 “

The idea of respecting someone down to the core of their beliefs is not
something that should be new to me at this age, but my relationship
with all of that changed by hanging out with so many people for whom
faith and religion and God is a central part of their being. You can’t
help but be changed by that.

they don’t know. Leave your equipment
at home and enter the community with
your whole, undistracted self.

presence in the military community. It also distinguished the station’s
content relative to the national coverage of U.S. military, providing
listeners with a unique, local angle they couldn’t find elsewhere.

4.  Embrace your inner
anthropologist.
Embed yourself in the community with
open eyes and ears and a healthy dose
of curiosity so that you can get to know
the ebbs and flows of the place. Dig for
what’s hidden in a community and, like
an anthropologist, seek people and draw
out their stories of the past and present
to help you make better sense of the
context.

7.  Push the boundaries of what “public media” is supposed to look and
sound like.

5.  Find a good transition point.
When reposing, it’s important to
determine when to put aside your
anthropologist hat and don your
storyteller hat. After you spend time in a
place, patterns will emerge. This is your
clue to move from observing to creating.

This is perhaps the most pervasive and difficult obstacle because it gets at the
heart of the perception of what the existing audience wants (and tolerates).
Scholar and journalist Chenjerai Kumanyika addressed this reality in a
popular Transom essay. He wrote: “Journalists of various ethnicities, genders,
and other identity categories intentionally or unintentionally internalize and
‘code-switch’ to be consistent with culturally dominant ‘white’ styles of speech
and narration.” This issue relates to both the journalists who tell the stories
and the sources they feature — and it’s reflective of a discussion that’s been
going on for more than a decade, particularly in radio.
Finding America producers have shown that new sounds and voices surface
when you approach storytelling not only prepared but also excited to break
with convention. Many of the Finding America projects producers found that
they were personally transformed by the experience of highlighting voices
and topics different from what they were used to. Some, including Beyond
Belief’s Mencher, gave themselves permission to be humans first and
storytellers second.
“I don’t think I ever really had
a meaningful conversation
with a pastor or a rabbi — and
certainly not with leaders of
African-American churches or
Christian churches — before
this project started,” Mencher
said. “I even started to attend
a Bible study each week. We
never did any stories about
that, and I never wrote about
that, but to be accepted and respected for my own thoughts and views and
to be able to learn from them about how they see the world was something
that, to me, is irreplaceable. The idea of respecting someone down to the core
of their beliefs is not something that should be new to me at this age, but my

26  Break Form: Making Stories With and For the People

 relationship with all of that changed by hanging out with so many people for
whom faith and religion and God is a central part of their being. You can’t help
but be changed by that.”
At the organizational level, WAMU’s McDaniel spoke at length about how
the station was affected by the unique sound and nature of Anacostia
Unmapped stories.
“This content sounded much different on our air than a lot of other stuff we do.
It didn’t follow the sort of normal news formula; it was more raw, it was longer
… it sounded like black Washington and that was why I think it made our
audience sit up straight,” McDaniel said.
One listener went as far as to file an FCC complaint after being offended by the
passion of a community collaborator in one of Anacostia Unmapped’s stories.
Overall, though, Anacostia Unmapped stories were the most highly engaging
pieces that WAMU has ever placed on NPR One and performed quite well in
terms of eliciting positive reactions from the audience, according to McDaniel
and Nick DePrey, WAMU’s digital programming analytics manager. “We read
this as an indicator that the audience wants more of these pieces,” DePrey said.
According to an internal AIR survey, WAMU also ranked No. 1 in reach with
more than 15 million gross impressions across the broadcast, digital, and live
event platforms.
DePrey noted that, on average, listeners had more trouble getting through
the entirety of the Anacostia Unmapped stories compared to other WAMU
news stories. “This is not surprising given the unique nature and audience of
Anacostia Unmapped,” said DePrey, who lives in Anacostia. “An improvement
opportunity for future series might be to justify why the audience should care
about this little neighborhood.”
To push boundaries of public media’s sound and look:

•• Create clear rationale up and down the chain of command.
To successfully defy convention, there must be clear communication from
the bottom all the way to the top. Journalists and newsroom managers
must be on the same page about why they want to experiment with ways
of breaking with traditional norms. What are the goals and the importance
of defying convention? How will you handle bumps that will inevitably
arise? What will success look like? Asking these questions and seeking
agreed-upon answers before you begin presenting things in new ways will
help you create a shared game plan for success.

Newsrooms: Turn sources
into storytellers!
Journalists rely on sources to be able to
write or produce a story. What happens
when you change up the sort of dialogue
you’re able to have with your source?
What happens when you let go of the
things you’re used to controlling and put
your “source” in the lead?
1.  Address potential challenges
early on.
Make sure you and your manager are on
the same page about your desire to give
people who would otherwise be sources
the power to tell their own stories. Be
transparent about the fact that the
stories they produce may be more
conversational and less polished than
traditional public media stories, but will
ultimately be rich and authentic. A lack
of support from upper management will
make it difficult to pursue and sustain
people-powered journalism.
2.  Identify people who have deep
ties to the community.
Or, in the words of Edison Research,
figure out who is “turned on and tuned
in.” Shadow them and witness them in
action. Are they good storytellers and
listeners? Will they help pull back the
curtain on parts of the community that
are misunderstood or misrepresented?
Do they want to tell their story and the
stories of others in the community? If
the answer to these questions is yes,
gauge their interest in collaborating.

Break Form: Making Stories With and For the People  27

 “
3.  Be humble.
If you truly want to involve community
members in the storytelling process,
be aware of the control you wield as a
journalist, and be willing to surrender
it. From the stories you pursue, to the
sources you select, to the way you tell
the story, be open to sharing the process
of determining which stories get told,
how, and by whom.
4.  Be fair. Be generous.
If you’re asking community members to
help you tell stories, provide them with
payment, good equipment, and whatever
else they might need to produce stories.
Furthermore, invest in their success by
giving them constructive feedback early
and often. Extending this fairness and
generosity may make you feel like you’re
paying sources (an ethical challenge),
so talk with your manager about how
to best approach this and how to clearly
establish that these are collaborators,
not sources.
5.  Give them a stage to celebrate.
Create a live event where your
community collaborators share their
stories in front of a live audience.
This audience may be composed of
their neighbors, or there may be an
opportunity to bring together disparate
and divided parts of the community into
an integrated whole.

To produce an effective live
event, you should …
As they became more deeply involved,
producers became familiar with the
places that held greatest meaning to
people living in the community and
incorporated them in the production.

We’re asking our audience not to be sleepy. Public radio for a lot of
people is this comforting voice in the background. We think in order to
continue to matter, we need to be more than that.

•• Expect mixed reactions. You’re likely to hear from your audience if you
break with convention. When this happens, take it as a sign that you’ve
succeeded in creating something different. Take the feedback into account
and keep looking for ways to surprise listeners. “We’re asking our audience
not to be sleepy,” McDaniel said. “Public radio for a lot of people is this
comforting voice in the background. We think in order to continue to
matter, we need to be more than that.”

Working with the Bottom Line
8.  Invest resources in live, community-focused events.

Social media and online comments sections have created important ways
for news organizations, writers, and independent producers to interact with
their audiences. But too often, online engagement is seen as a substitute for
in-person engagement. The Finding America projects that were most successful
in terms of engagement succeeded on both platforms. They interacted with
people online, and also used tools in the physical environment that incorporate
art and have an element of fun. They magnetize people who aren’t necessarily
tuned into broadcast airwaves, or active users of social media.
TruckBeat’s Mador and Powell, for instance, found and remodeled a 1980s
bread truck and retrofitted it as a sound booth with the station’s call letters
blazoned across the side. They used it as a roving billboard, listening booth,
and recording studio — and continue to do so.
Mador drove the truck to community health fairs and street festivals in farflung neighborhoods across East Tennessee and organized several TruckBeat
events as part of her in-person engagement efforts. “There’s something
disarming about the truck; it’s a physical, tangible engagement tool … that’s
eye-catching and fun, which was part of the idea behind its design,” Mador
said. “We were able to build buzz and excitement for TruckBeat, and people
seemed to want to be part of what we were doing in a different way than
with a conventional journalism project where you’re not able to bring your
storytelling into the community in quite the same three-dimensional fashion.”
Similarly, lead producer Sophia Paliza-Carre, paired with Arizona Public
Media (AZPM) in Tucson, worked with a local artist to create and design
storytelling mailboxes. She set them up in various locations across the city
where AZPM hasn’t traditionally had much of a presence — particularly in

28  Break Form: Making Stories With and For the People

 the southwest, predominantly Hispanic part of the city. The mailboxes were
accompanied by postcards with questions that people could answer and then
stick in the mailboxes. Paliza-Carre, who collected 60 to 100 mailbox postcards
per month, kept a database of all the responses and used them to inform the
people she engaged and the stories they made.
Some ideas for how to creatively establish live public media events:

•• Partner with local artists to create a physical engagement tool. Frontier
of Change producers Isaac Kestenbaum and Josie Holtzman joined forces
with local artists as part of an interactive scavenger hunt they created in
Anchorage. Participants were instructed to text a specific phone number.
From there, they heard stories that Kestenbaum, Holtzman, and station
collaborator Joaqlin Estus produced and then got a clue about where to go
to find the next story. The stories explored changes that have occurred in
Anchorage in recent history and were intended to help participants think
about the city’s future. Participants were given passport books, and the
local artists made limited-edition prints in them at each stop along the way.
•• Think about design as a form of engagement. It’s important to choose
colors, placement, and objects that reflect the understanding of the people
in a community. Dímelo’s Paliza-Carre found this to be the case. “An
unanticipated surprise came when we realized that the mailboxes could be
effective as public art, not just receptacles to gather stories,” she said. “We
put the first saguaro-shaped mailbox on a common
hiking path in town, with a number on it to text with
stories. We saw very few stories come in. We also
saw that kids loved to climb on it. So, we pivoted
on the other mailbox designs, and made them more
interactive — one of them is chalkboard (which kids
also love) and the other has a remote control that
changes the lights glowing inside of it. We started
to realize that by just getting people’s attention, we
could intrigue them and by simplifying the message/
instructions on the box, send them to AZPM’s
content or social media.”
9.  Identify the seeds of innovation that will yield a rich harvest.

Sustaining innovation after a period of experimentation is one of the most
difficult hurdles to overcome with a project like Finding America. The stations

These live events were creative new
platforms for public media storymaking
and distribution. They were also celebrations and, in some cases, a means for
bringing disparate groups together for
the first time.
1.  Bring together divided parts of
the community around an urgent
and common concern.
Finding America events in Philadelphia,
Milwaukee, and Anacostia brought
together disparate parts of the
community — public media listeners
alongside ex-cons, homeless people,
people forced out of their homes, innercity children whose family members
and friends have been murdered. Their
partnering stations used the airwaves to
draw in a core audience of public media
listeners, while the producers used their
community collaborator networks to
draw in people from the community.
The result was a series of emotionally
charged events that created a new model
for diversifying public media’s audience
and relevance.
2.  Empower youth to share their
stories.
In New Orleans, lead producer Abrams
— who’s also a teacher — found teens
to share stories around a central theme:
When the Young Feel Old. The idea for
the event originated with a story she
told about Jahi Salaam, an 18-year-old
poet who had been kicked out of several
schools and ended up in the juvenile
court system. The story featured a rap
from Salaam, who said he was much
older than his age because of all he
had gone through. The Precious Lives:
Beyond the Gunshots team in Milwaukee
brought together youth around the
topic of gun violence. Teens who had

Break Form: Making Stories With and For the People  29

 “
lost family members and friends to gun
violence were invited to share their
stories on stage in front of hundreds
of audience members. “There’s this
catharsis about sharing your own story,
and the thing about doing it in front of
a live audience is you’re in communion
with the audience, and making that
connection has a tangible value for
people on both sides because you feel
understood and heard,” said filmmaker
Brad Lichtenstein, one of the principal
producers of the project.
3.  Use audio to transport people to
a different time and place.

Transport listeners to places they
don’t have easy access to by taking
them on a “soundwalk” — an event
that’s similar to a museum tour but
takes place outside. Frontier of Change
lead producers Isaac Kestenbaum
and Josie Holtzman created one that
transported people to Shaktoolik — a
remote Alaskan village that’s at risk
of being swept into the sea due to
climate change — through sound-rich
audio stories. The soundwalk, which
took place outside the Anchorage
Museum, lasted 30 minutes — the
amount of time it would take to walk
the length of Shaktoolik.
4.  Create conditions that give new
meaning to familiar geography.
Invite community members to take
a bike ride to places of historical significance hidden in plain sight. Invisible Nations’ Allison Herrera created a
bike ride in Tulsa with tour guides who
included a historic and cultural preservation specialist, Creek citizens, and

Worst-case scenario is that this won’t get us one more listener, or
raise one more dollar. But the reason we’re doing it is because it's part
of our mission. The community engagement philosophy is becoming
a much bigger part of the culture of WUOT, and I don’t want to see
that die on the vine.

that took part, and the station managers in particular, signed onto the project
with a commitment to continue the work AIR’s teams created. Some station
collaborators have since said they don’t have the time, money, or resources to
keep the projects going. Lead producers, meanwhile, express frustration over
not having fundraising experience and say it’s unrealistic to keep their projects
going without funding. In recent months, however, many have found ways to
sustain certain aspects of their projects.
Innovative projects can’t exist in isolation; they require multiple cheerleaders
— both inside the station and out. In the case of Finding America, managers
will be stymied if they’re of the mindset that they need to hire a full-time
staffer to continue the work. It fails to recognize the real riches of innovation
within a network of promising “green shoots” — pockets of continuity where
the energy and excitement from the project remain active. A green shoot is
often a new relationship with a community collaborator, or one new technique
used to promote an event, or a creative form of engagement such as a mailbox
or a bread truck. The task of a manager is to identify and prioritize these green
shoots and then make a commitment to growing them. Some stations and lead
producers have been more successful than others.
Carla McCabe, senior vice president for digital and multimedia content
at KCPT, said that Mencher’s Beyond Belief project renewed the station’s
commitment to religion reporting and prompted it to become a more integral
part of the station’s coverage. “We did not report enough on faith and we’ve
seen in the Kansas City media a big shift away from it,” McCabe said. “The
interesting thing is that [Beyond Belief] has
really urged our producers to think more
about faith. It’s definitely much more on
our radar so we can ask questions like
‘what’s the faith angle?’ and ‘how does
faith play into that?’ — even if it’s a health
story. We’re trying to look through that
lens more.” The station also designated
someone on staff to continue sustaining
the relationships that Mencher had built
during the course of the project.
UnMonumental’s Libby has found creative
ways to keep her project going. She and
community collaborator Egunfemi are

30  Break Form: Making Stories With and For the People

 consulting with Storefront for Community Design — a Richmond-based
organization — on a grant-funded project they’re calling Storefront Studio.
The project gives youth and community members in Richmond’s Highland
Park neighborhood greater access and exposure to public media and public
history. The program, Libby said, will offer workshops on podcast production,
archival research, community arts projects, and more, and will involve the
construction of a story booth.
How you can identify and cultivate green shoots:

•• Closely track kernels of progress, help others recognize them,
and advocate for support. Be an evangelist for the most promising
developments and kernels of progress from the project you want to sustain,
and describe how they can be cultivated in a feasible way. Figure out what
it will take to sustain a green shoot and how it can fit into your current
responsibilities and workflow. Then, have a candid conversation with
your boss. Before the incubation phase of Finding America ended, WUOT’s
Powell gave thought to how he could help TruckBeat continue to thrive.
He talked with WUOT executive director Regina Dean about his desire
to keep the project going and received her support to spend 25 percent of
his time sustaining TruckBeat and its Tenn Words sister project. Although
Powell recently left the station, WUOT is beginning to pinpoint specific
opportunities to take the truck out into the community and learn more
about the attitudes, concerns, and beliefs of East Tennesseans.
•• Connect the dots between the work and the mission. Every green shoot
has to tie back to the question: If this blossoms, how will it enhance our
mission? Being open to experimental projects such as Localore is key,
Powell said. There’s always the risk that they’ll eat up too many resources
without yielding a strong return. But sometimes it’s a risk worth taking if
it fits the culture and mission of the organization. “Worst-case scenario is
that this won’t get us one more listener, or raise one more dollar. But the
reason we’re doing it is because it's part of our mission.,” Powell explained.
“The community engagement philosophy is becoming a much bigger part
of the culture of WUOT, and I don’t want to see that die on the vine.”

the descendent of a prominent Creek
family. Herrera picked all the stops and
interviewed the tour guides, who shared
stories of cultural significance. A forthcoming podcast based on their stories
and the overall tour will be released this
fall. Herrera collaborated with a local
organization, Tulsa Hub, which sponsored the event, designed the tour route,
and provided bikes (for a small donation)
for those who needed them.
5.  Tap into community social
spaces to reach new listeners.
Invite people to step on stage and share
their stories at a place that is familiar,
fun-filled, and inviting. Homefront:
Fort Drum had success with this at a
local drive-in theater, where military
families helped shed a new light on the
Army’s most deployed base. For many
attendees, this was their first exposure to
public media. The audience, said NCPR’s
Sommerstein, was “full of different
faces. It was a different socioeconomic
profile; it was not the typical public radio
profile. This was definitely a cohort
that didn’t know about us or wasn’t
regularly listening to us.” In Baltimore,
The Rise of Charm City’s Stacia Brown
organized a party in a part of town that
public media typically doesn’t reach, and
gave people a chance to celebrate their
community. Her skate party at Shake
and Bake Family Fun Center — a West
Baltimore institution that’s been around
for more than 30 years — attracted
people who might not otherwise come
together to celebrate, Brown said: “Some
listeners have expressed to us that their
minds have been changed about visiting
places they had previously prejudged,
like Shake and Bake. We’re reinforcing
community pride.”

Break Form: Making Stories With and For the People  31

 “
Identifying and sustaining
a “green shoot” of innovation
Central to the pact between AIR, its
lead producers, and station partners
was to create something that would
endure beyond the incubation phase
of the work. Being intentional at the
start is essential if you want to avoid
a “one-off” experiment. The other key
component is to be laser focused on
what’s working along the way, feed
those things, stitch them into the
larger structure or operation, follow
where they take you.
1.  Know what’s working and
what’s not.
Focus on what is life-giving about a
project, and put your energy there. Make
a list of the strongest aspects of the
project, the resources they took, and the
impact and/or reach they had. If you’re
working with a newsroom, think about
how and whether they align with its
goals, strategy, and mission. This is a
good thinking exercise that will help you
make a stronger case for sustaining it.
2.  Identify pockets of continuity.
To sustain a project, you don’t have to
necessarily continue it in its entirety.
As an alternative and perhaps more
practical approach, determine which
aspects of it were the strongest and
most successful and consider how you
will continue cultivating them. This
may mean sustaining a relationship,
or continuing to have a presence at a
particular location in the community.
Ask yourself questions such as: What
will it take? What would success look
like? And what’s reasonable, given our
capacity as an organization?

It’s important that we collaborate with noninstitutional people who
are doing what they think is going to resonate without any sense
of obligation to repeat an old mold. It’s completely critical that we
continue to test ideas and look outside our current portfolio because
in 10 years the portfolio we have now will not exist in the same way.

10. Shake up the status quo by expanding use of independent producers
and freelancers.

AIR has led the charge to strengthen ties between independent producers
and public media stations. In 2006, prior to taking leadership of AIR, Schardt
commissioned a benchmark study, Mapping Public Radio’s Independent
Landscape. One key finding was that “only 2 percent of the public radio
content stream comes from freelance independents, primarily in the form of
short news features and commentaries. A number of leaders in the producer
community attribute the low volume, in part, to their failure to effectively
communicate the value of independent work to the system. These producers
hear a clarion call for producers frustrated by misperceptions to do a better
job of communicating the value of independently produced work.” The
study also informed Schardt’s design of AIR’s indie-producer-led innovation
productions first launched in 2010 (Makers Quest 2.0) and the subsequent
Localore productions in 2012–13 and 2015–16.
In the years since the study was published, there is a greater openness to
“outside talent” and greater recognition that there are a lot of creative
producers inside of day-to-day operations who are steering newsrooms in
new directions. This has a lot to do with awareness that the public media
system has a problem that needs solving. From a capacity standpoint,
stations are often short-staffed and can benefit from outside producers
who aren’t on staff but can deliver stories economically. From an innovation
standpoint, outside producers are not necessarily bound to the station’s
cultural and operational constraints. They have more freedom to
experiment, and can help lead outside-the-box thinking. (They are
“independent” for a reason!)
In some cases, the relationship between Finding America’s inside collaborators
and lead producers was hard to navigate. Some station staff, for instance, said
they had difficulty figuring out how to strike the right balance in decisionmaking with their outside producer over an extended period. Some station
collaborators said they had to find ways to coach and manage the producers,
introduce them to the station, and support them with events all in addition
to their full-time jobs. They said at other times they didn’t feel as though
they had much control over whom the lead producers chose as partners. The
majority of station collaborators, however, said they greatly benefitted from

32  Break Form: Making Stories With and For the People

 the producers’ work and that it gave them new ideas about how to approach
stories with and for communities. An internal field survey that AIR compiled
shows that more than 90 percent of stations and producers considered their
relationships successful.
Tips for striking a good inside/outside producer balance:

•• View independent producers as leaders and innovators. They have the
capacity to experiment in ways that newsrooms staff — constrained by
the day to day — may not be able to. They often seek stories that don’t
fall within the confines of a traditional storytelling beat. Because of this,
their work can deepen and expand a newsroom’s storytelling efforts. With
Localore and scores of new innovation projects flourishing at the stations
and networks, the industry is headed in an exciting direction.
•• Be open-minded about messy experimentation. Shifting your perspective
on outside talent can open opportunity. WAMU’s McDaniel said the
station’s involvement in Finding America was a critical experiment that
generated new ways of thinking about local storytelling. “I think it’s a
really, really important space for stations to get the chance to do the messy
experimentation or participate in the messy experimentation that is going
to shed light on what we should be doing next,” McDaniel said. “We are by
necessity slaves to our business model, and that means the vast majority
of our staff on a daily basis is focusing on what we do now and how we
have supported the model of what we do now. It’s important that we
collaborate with noninstitutional people who are doing what they think
is going to resonate without any sense of obligation to repeat an old mold.
It’s completely critical that we continue to test ideas and look outside our
current portfolio because in 10 years the portfolio we have now will not
exist in the same way.”

3.  Expect predictable excuses.
It’s easy to say: “We can only keep this
project going if we hire someone to
work on it.” It’s harder to seek creative
alternatives to sustainability. Figure
out how the green shoots align with the
work you’re already doing so that you
can more easily incorporate them into
your workload without feeling pressured
to add more items to your already busy
to-do list.
4.  Determine what success looks
like. Find an organized way of
executing your project.
Once you’ve identified the green shoots
you want to cultivate — and how you’ll
do it — create a growth chart with
corresponding goals. What does success
look like, and how will you measure it
over time? After six months, for instance,
what will have changed as a result of the
cultivation? Having the answers to these
questions will help you make a stronger
case for continuing the project.
5.  Communicate, communicate,
communicate.
Create a plan to hold yourself and
your newsroom accountable. Have
monthly check-ins with your manager
or community collaborators to assess
what’s working (and what’s not working)
and to troubleshoot potential challenges.
Invite other colleagues into the dialogue
and ask for suggestions, ideas, and
feedback. Identifying and sustaining
green shoots is an iterative process that
takes time, buy-in, and commitment.
When done well, the cultivation of these
green shoots can create a newsroom
culture of innovation — one that paves
the way for enduring change.

Break Form: Making Stories With and For the People  33

 Photo Credits

Page 6, Meredith Turk (Homefront: Fort Drum)
Page 7, Betsy O’Donovan (Public Media Lab)
Page 8, Allison Herrera (Invisible Nations)
Page 9, Meredith Turk (Homefront: Fort Drum)
Page 10, Joanie Tobin (Baltimore: The Rise of Charm City)
Page 14, Joanie Tobin (Frontier Of Change)
Page 14, Natalie Robles (Storymakers)
Page 18, Gina Yu (The Junction)
Page 19, Kelley Libby (Unmonumental)
Page 20, Jess Mador (TruckBeat)
Page 21, Steve Mencher (Beyond Belief)
Page 21, Mona Yeh (What's the Flux?: Commuter Dispatches)
Page 22, Miguel Martinez (Every Zip Philadelphia)
Page 23, Titus Wamai (Precious Lives: Before the Gunshots)
Page 24, Cheryl Gerber (Unprisoned: Stories From the System)
Page 25, Meredith Turk (Homefront: Fort Drum)
Page 26, Steve Mencher (Beyond Belief)
Page 29, Julie Luchetta (Dímelo: Stories Of the Southwest)
Page 30, Kelley Libby (Unmonumental)

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now underway

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drive-in movies,
stories under the stars

   
  
 
 
  

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