About

All about the StateImpact project — the mission, the team, progress, productivity and more.

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Recent posts

StateImpact Network News: March 18 – 31

Around The Network

  • WLRN announced that reporter Sammy Mack is joining the StateImpact Florida team.
  • Logan Layden and Joe Wertz of StateImpact Oklahoma led a discussion of water issues March 20 at a community “On Tap” event sponsored by KOSU.
  • The Yale University Center for Environmental Law and Policy invited Susan Phillips of StateImpact Pennsylvania to talk about “emerging issues in shale gas development” as part of its webinar series on public policy.
  • Chris Satullo and members of the web team at WHYY presented a webinar to public media managers highlighting how their NewsWorks site is adapting its strategy to deal with the challenges of a “sideways world.”
  • Terrence Henry had a New York Times byline (print and web) thanks to KUT’s partnership with the Texas Tribune. The article on wastewater disposal wells credited StateImpact Texas.
  • The NPR team doesn’t physically move until April 12, but our mailing address is now officially 1111 North Capitol St. NE, Washington, DC 20002

    • Continue reading →

Filed under: About

StateImpact Network News: March 4 – 17

Just When You Think You Know Everything …

The StateImpact Reporters’ Toolbox site is where we post information to help reporters do their jobs better. And lately, there’s a lot of good new material there:

Continue reading →

Filed under: About, Google Hangouts, stateimpact florida, StateImpact New Hampshire, StateImpact Ohio, Training

StateImpact Network News: February 25 – March 3

Spotlight: What To Do When Event Planners Want You

Susan Phillips gets asked to be on a lot of panel discussions, which is great for getting exposure for StateImpact Pennsylvania and creating dialogue on her topic. But she’s learned that no two events are the same, and asking some basic questions upfront can avoid surprises. Read her Nine Tips For Being a Panelist.

Hanging Out Online With Mose Buchele

Mose Buchele takes part in a Google Hangout organized by Minnesota Public Radio.

Mose Buchele of StateImpact Texas had a two-panel day last Tuesday.

During the day, he participated in a Minnesota Public Radio video discussion related to fracking. The panel was conducted via a Google Hangout. And despite some technical troubles (another one of the panelists had a bad internet connection), the result was a good example of how to use Google’s video conferencing tool to create a work of explanatory journalism.

In the evening, he moderated StateImpact Texas’ second live event in a month. This one brought four state legislators together to discuss ways of managing the effects of Texas’ oil and gas boom. More than 110 people came out to listen to the conversation and participate. “We got really awesome questions from the audience,” Mose said. Terrence Henry worked the mike through the crowd, while sending out snippets of the conversation on Twitter. Terrence filed a radio story related to the event, and audio and video from the event have filled multiple subsequent blog posts. Continue reading →

Filed under: About, Awards, events, Google Hangouts, StateImpact Texas

StateImpact Wins Three International Design Awards

StateImpact won 3 of the 11 awards that NPR received in the Best of Digital Design competition last week from the Society for News Design.

SND recognition is among the highest honor awarded for news design. It’s especially notable since, according to SND, only the New York Times and Washington Post won more awards than NPR. Continue reading →

Filed under: About, Awards, Page Design, StateImpact New Hampshire, StateImpact Pennsylvania, StateImpact Texas

StateImpact Network News: February 11 – 17

Spotlight: Sharing Our Strategies

Chris Swope

The NPR StateImpact team members have been working with the editorial staff at NPR Digital Services in Boston to exchange insights so that all member stations can benefit from what we’re doing. Last fall, we shared Digital Services’ research into the “9 Types of Stories That Cause Engagement,” a how-to for success on Facebook.

StateImpact team members and station leaders — including Chris Swope and John Stefany of NPR, Karen Holp of KGOU, Emily Donahue of KUT and John LaBonia and Dan Grech of WLRN — have shared their insights from the project with other station participants in the Knight Station Leadership Conference sessions. Continue reading →

Filed under: About, Theory, Audio, Digital Services, stateimpact florida

StateImpact Network News: February 4 – 10

Spotlight: Building ‘Core Communities’

GWYNETH ANNE BRONWYNNE JONES / FLICKR

As teachers become more active on Twitter, StateImpact Ohio is working to engage them.

Learn about the shift away from using social media to simply promote content to an “audience” and instead use it to have a two-way dialogue with a “community”: Corralling Your Core Communities.

Around the Network

  • What’s the difference between a heifer at a county fair and a box of Girl Scout cookies? StateImpact Idaho has the answer, proving once again that policy can be fun and interesting.
  • Molly Bloom of StateImpact Ohio talks about seclusion room policy on a podcast of the Student Press Law Center.
  • Emilie Ritter Saunders tells the blog “I Want Her Job” about working with people “who are innovative, smart and driven”: “My job with StateImpact Idaho is focused largely on digital reporting, but my background is in traditional broadcast. So, in the last 18 months, I’ve had to learn an entirely new set of skills and learn ways to apply traditional storytelling on a digital platform. That wouldn’t have happened without the pushing and teaching from my colleagues across NPR’s StateImpact network.”
  • Jessica Pupovac and Chris Swope got to explore Concord, N.H., last week as guests of New Hampshire Public Radio. They spent the better part of two days planning stories with the StateImpact New Hampshire team and training reporters Amanda Loder and Emily Corwin.   
StateImpact training at New Hampshire Public Radio

Chris Swope, NPR

Reporters Amanda Loder and Emily Corwin, and News Director Sarah Ashworth, get Excel tips from Data and Digital Coordinator Jessica Pupovac.

Skill Sharpening

Jessica Pupovac and Yan Lu have created lots of great new offerings in the StateImpact Toolbox:

Filed under: About, StateImpact Pennsylvania

StateImpact Network News: January 28 – February 3

Spotlight

What do earthquakes in Oklahoma and Texas have in common with new teaching standards in Florida, Indiana and Ohio? They’re both topics about which people are looking for reliable information on their own timetables, not ours. Read our ideas for delivering News When People Need It.

Around the Network

  • Molly Messick and StateImpact Idaho, with help from Danny DeBelius at NPR, produced an interactive quiz to help taxpayers understand the ins and outs of the state’s complicated “business personal property tax.”
  • Molly Bloom and Ida Lieszkovszky of StateImpact Ohio used our new ScribbleLive platform to live-blog the long-awaited announcement by Ohio Gov. John Kasich outlining how he believes schools should be financed. Continue reading →
Filed under: About

Network News: January 21 – 27

States Collaborate to Explain New Education Standards

Florida, Indiana and Ohio are among the 45 states that are implementing new national standards for K-12 academics, a process that will require new curricula, textbooks and tests. So, the “Common Core” was a natural topic for the StateImpact education states to focus on for 2013. And just as the standards themselves are a national-state partnership, our project’s six education reporters are collaborating with each other and the team at NPR to explain how the new policies will affect students, parents and educators.

Their first joint project is called “Core Questions,” an effort to engage these groups in our coverage by inviting them to send us their questions about the Common Core. The reporters have created Core Questions topic pages on StateImpact Florida, StateImpact Indiana and StateImpact Ohio, and are inviting questions through their sites’ Facebook pages and Twitter feeds. They’ll share the work of answering some questions to avoid duplicating effort. Continue reading →

Filed under: About, analytics, Education Coverage, network news

Network News: January 14 – 20

WHYY hosts StateImpact community event

WHYY StateImpact event

Jennifer Wheeler/WHYY

Chris Satullo takes questions from the audience at the WHYY StateImpact event with Susan Phillips and Scott Detrow.

About 150 people attended a program last Tuesday at WHYY in Philadelphia on StateImpact Pennsylvania’s reporting on natural gas drilling.

Reporters Scott Detrow and Susan Phillips played audio clips from some of their best stories and discussed what they learned while working on them. They also discussed the challenges of covering this beat, such as the difficulty in getting information from gas drillers and state regulators. The program was moderated by Chris Satullo, WHYY’s executive director of news and civic dialogue. He started with an overview of the StateImpact program and its mission, and then kept the program moving with questions from the audience. A reception for about 30 station donors was held just before the StateImpact event.

Continue reading →

Filed under: About, network news, Pennsylvania

Network News: January 7 – 13

Sunlight Shines on State Spending in Idaho

Becky Lettenberger / StateImpact

Emilie Ritter Saunders, Molly Messick and Sadie Babits of StateImpact Idaho.

Over the past year, the StateImpact Idaho team has worked tirelessly to shine a light on their state’s lack of transparency surrounding tax credits for businesses in their state.

But they were a bit forlorn last summer after rolling out a series of reports on the lack of transparency in the state. Reporter Molly Messick covered a scathing report by PIRG that gave the state an F on transparency. Emilie Ritter Saunders followed that up with a similar national assessment and a well-reported series on  just how much tax incentive information was kept under wraps.

The stories didn’t garner huge traffic bumps or lead to much public outcry. Continue reading →

Filed under: About, Idaho, network news