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Abstract
Curious City, a series produced by WBEZ Chicago Public Media, invites listeners to participate in the reporting process. Using the Hearken digital engagement platform, listeners ask and then vote on questions that are turned into radio stories. Over a year, Curious City attempted to engage residents of Chicago areas that traditionally had few public radio listeners, mostly stigmatized African-American and Latinx neighborhoods, to participate via face-to-face outreach, outreach via community partners, or social media marketing. Using a communication infrastructure theory framework, this study draws from observations and 25 interviews with journalists, participating audience members, residents of targeted outreach areas, and partner organizations to examine best practices to combine digital and offline strategies, and the importance of pre- and post-broadcast engagement. The study also reflects on journalistic norms and approaches to participatory media, local news “storytelling networks,” and relations between public media and marginalized publics.
Acknowledgements
The project would not have been possible without the generous participation of WBEZ’s Curious City project and Hearken, and the journalists, listeners and community members who participated in interviews.
Notes
1. For background on gun violence during the period of this study: http://urbanlabs.uchicago.edu/projects/gun-violence-in-chicago-2016.
2. Apart from Curious City’s editor, and the founder of Hearken, the names of all other interview participants have been omitted or changed.
3. Curious City’s announcement of foundation funding: http://wbezcuriouscity.tumblr.com/post/140362287302/how-can-curious-city-diversify-the-pool-of-people.
4. All WBEZ outreach, and project programming, was in English. However, over the course of the project, one community partner began designing outreach materials in English and Spanish. Future research would do well to include Spanish language interviews to offer a more inclusive understanding of attitudes towards media and representation among publics within the geographic broadcast range.
5. The author worked as a producer for a different and unrelated WBEZ program from 1999 to 2008, prior to the existence of Curious City. While WBEZ co-operated and provided access for this study, the author has received no financial or other support from them or the foundation which funded their outreach initiative.
6. While Curious City was a local media actor in the storytelling network, being broadcast on WBEZ meant they accessed the city and region in a way that smaller hyperlocal and ethnic media did not.
9. The Listening Post in New Orleans has used public signs to crowdsource story ideas and to connect with residents: https://medium.com/local-voices-global-change/listening-is-a-revolutionary-act-part-2-bead20954108#.bcp7nrma6.
10. See for example Sacramento’s Capital Public Radio’s efforts to use community coordinating councils to engage people on issues related to a documentary series: http://www.capradio.org/media/6434963/From%20Storytelling%20To%20Solutions.pdf.