In 2014, Michigan Radio launched MI Curious, a public-powered news initiative that invites community members to help choose what stories get assigned. Modeled after WBEZ’s Curious City, MI Curious uses Hearken to a) collect people’s burning questions about Michigan culture, sports, history, and other topics, and b) put the best submissions up for a vote online.
The Arizona Republic / azcentral.com in Phoenix launched The Storytellers Project in 2011 as a series of live storytelling nights. The 90-minute events, emceed by journalists, are now in 21 cities from Fort Collins, Colorado to Nashville, Tennessee. The nights blend the authenticity and discipline of first-person storytelling with the truthfulness, community-building and empowerment of great journalism.
TalkBox is an old pay phone that New York Public Radio (WNYC) retrofitted as a neighborhood listening station. It launched in 2015, one year after Eric Garner died in the chokehold of a NYPD officer on Staten Island, New York. WNYC placed TalkBox inside the St. George Ferry Terminal on Staten Island and invited the community to share thoughts about Garner’s death.
