Localore is a new $2 million national competition produced by the Boston-based Association of Independents in Radio (AIR), with $1 million in funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, to catalyze producer-led innovation teams at local stations. Here at Zeega, this is particularly exciting because we’ll be teaming up with many of the winners as creative technology partners.
On Monday, AIR announced the 10 winners and we could not be more excited! For us, these projects will play a leading role in defining much of what Zeega becomes during this early stage. Our partnership with Localore matches the strategy we’ve envisaged for ourselves from the beginning — we believe firmly that great storytelling and storytellers should drive the design and development process. As opposed to traditional software development that begins with generic specs, we’re committed to building out Zeega’s core features through real projects tied to real producers, communities and users. And importantly, as opposed to just ending up with a bespoke mix of technology experiments after Localore ends, these projects will make a lasting contribution to the tools for public media. There will be a set of content-driven features in Zeega that will be made available for other producers and a set of rigorously documented open-source code that can be further expanded.
THE WINNERS
Jennifer Brandel / WBEZ, Chicago, IL
Curious City: Let’s Get Answers will prompt audience members to pose, rank, and help to answer relevant questions about community and news topics through online and mobile tools. Designed to democratize editorial research and story selection, the project will make the reporting process transparent at every step, and surface key issues for further exploration.
Anayansi Diaz-Cortes / KCRW, Los Angeles, CA
How do immigrants’ ideas of self and place shift in an era of always-on communication? Multiplatform documentary Sonic Trace will explore the relationship of Latin American immigrants to their home communities. Diaz-Cortes will gather stories from both sides of the border, with a focus on three evocative places (“Tres Puntos”) in LA: a church in South Central, Koreatown kitchens where Oaxacan cooks are rising in popularity, and a mobile recording booth in local food trucks.
Julia Drapkin / KVNF, Paonia, CO
iSeeChange is a crowdsourced reporting project that will draw from participants’ everyday observations about shifts in the weather. Inspired by successful “citizen science” projects, Drapkin will elicit photos, quotes and art submitted by local ranchers, coal miners, and others vitally affected by environmental shifts—showcasing debates about climate through a mobile documentary unit, weekly broadcasts, and multimedia explorations of each season.
Ken Eklund / Twin Cites Public Television, Minneapolis, MN
What should today’s high school seniors know before they head out on their own? This question will drive Get Real Ed, a participatory alternate reality game that asks users to provide real-world solutions for the nation’s pressing dropout crisis. The game will revolve around five fictional “OpOuts” led by the strong-willed Edwina, whose interactions with participants will both shape the game’s trajectory and prompt lively dialogue about the state of U.S. education.
Delaney Hall / KUT, Austin, Texas
Beyond Austin’s much-documented music scene lie the “third places” where musicians regularly meet, perform, and commune: front porches, backyards, garages, sidewalks, and churches. Austin Music Map (AMM) is a collaborative documentary and performance series exploring Austin’s diverse sonic subcultures, and offering users a digital map to discover and learn more about such spots. The project will culminate with a celebratory music festival.
Todd Melby / Prairie Public Broadcasting, Fargo, ND
Through embedded reporting from the oil patches and “mancamps” of North Dakota, Black Gold Boom will catalyze discussion about the local and national impacts of the region’s rush to drill. An interactive site featuring multimedia portraits of workers who have streamed to the state and the families they left behind will accompany a related photo exhibit mounted in local businesses. Data-driven reporting and mapping of active oil wells will provide deeper context for individuals’ stories.
Erica Mu / KALW, San Francisco, CA
A roving crowdsourced storytelling project based in the Bay area and Oakland, Pop-Up Radio aims to build connections between these disparate communities through a series of playful events and broadcasts. Mu will gather stories in 2-month cycles around six themes—via a mobile recording booth, online, and in concert with community partners such as schools, youth media programs, libraries and barbershops.
Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar/ WYSO, Yellow Springs, OH
These veteran documentary filmmakers and Dayton residents will produce a participatory documentary, examining how residents of Dayton—one of America’s “fastest dying cities”—are reinventing themselves in a new and unstable economy. Producers will ask residents: “Who was I before the bottom fell out? What happened that changed my life? Who am I becoming, or trying to become now?”
Nikki Silva and Davia Nelson (the Kitchen Sisters) / KQED Radio and Television, San Francisco, CA
Northern California is America’s ground zero for innovation. Two of public media’s most influential native institutions join forces to bring together a young, diverse collaborative team from inside and outside public media to bridge dynamic communities of invention in new ways. They’ll tap the worlds of interactive media, Berkeley School of Information, transmedia documentarians, and young ethnic producers to create THE MAKING OF… an exciting, year-long initiative reflecting the universality of craft across culture, ethnicity, and socioeconomic divides.
Val Wang / WGBH, Boston, MA
Planet Takeout highlights the role that Chinese restaurants play as vital crossroads between cultures in neighborhoods in Boston and beyond. This participatory, multiplatform documentary project aims to break down barriers between the Chinese immigrants running these hyperlocal establishments, and the diverse customers they serve, through mobile storytelling, face-to-face dialogues, and an interactive site documenting the restaurants’ eclectic visual flavor.
