We are seeing it happening more and more these days, public media organizations collaborating to better serve their community like those in
southern California and to develop products to serve other stations like the
Incubation Lab. Now a new collaboration has evolved, stations working together to create and share content like
EconomyStory that helped provide easily digestible coverage around the "wide-ranging issues facing the American economy and their global implications."
Another collaboration is upstate New York's
Innovation Trail - a new project that is designed to give the public news and information they need to bridge technological breakthroughs with the recovery of the area's economy. I caught up with Editor Rachel Ward and asked her to tell us a little more about this exciting
CPB funded project.
What is your role and what do you do with the Innovation Trail?
I’m the editor of the Innovation Trail, so I edit the radio and multimedia work of our reporters across the state. I also edit the content at
InnovationTrail.org, contribute to our
Facebook and
Twitter accounts, and do the morning round-ups that give our users a daily look at what’s happening across the state in our beat. On top of all of that, I’m responsible for overseeing our events, like radio and television shows, implementing special projects like series and investigations, and balancing the needs of our news directors with the mission of the project.
How many people work on the Innovation Trail and what do they do?
There are a ton of people who’ve helped contribute to the success of the Innovation Trail so far. There are five stations that are partners on the project.
WXXI is the hub station, in Rochester, N.Y. The partner stations are
WNED in Buffalo,
WRVO in Oswego/Syracuse,
WSKG in Binghamton, and
WMHT in Albany. But our content also airs frequently on other public media stations in New York, including
North Country Public Radio,
WAMC in Albany, and
WAER in Syracuse.
We have five reporting positions at each of our partner stations and the reporters file a lot of radio reports and some television and web video pieces. For our Albany reporter, that ratio is flipped, since our Albany partner station produces
New York NOW, a weekly statewide public affairs show. The reporters are also responsible for building their beats, blogging regularly at InnovationTrail.org, hosting talk shows at their stations, engaging with our users through social media and outreach, and working with me to develop series.
We also have a managing facilitator who we say is in charge of “everything else” – Juan Vazquez does everything that’s not editorial, from setting up the logistics for trainings, to building our underwriting policies, to designing the graphic parts of our brand. Most importantly, he’s overseeing our sustainability plan, to help us continue as a project.
And then there are all the folks who support the Innovation Trail that aren’t hired by the project directly, but who instead work at our partner stations. There are news directors who feed us leads, give us feedback, and tell us how we can better serve their local communities, underwriting sales folks who are helping us becoming sustainable, public relations people who help promote our work, producers and technicians who help us bring our shows to life, and executives who advocate for our project with funders.
