Molly Messick / StateImpact Idaho

Across the country, the number of workers earning minimum wage was going down. But in Idaho, it was going up.

Going up a lot — 63 percent from 2011 to 2012.

Suddenly, Idaho led the nation in the proportion of workers earning minimum wage. Previously, Idaho sat in the middle of the pack among the states. In just one year, Idaho had fallen from Number 30 to Number 50.

StateImpact Idaho reported this bad news back in February. But reporters Emilie Ritter Saunders and Molly Messick didn’t want to leave the story there. The numbers felt like a symptom of something deeper that had been turning up in their reporting on Idaho’s economy for almost two years. 

So Emilie and Molly set out with a simple question: Why is Idaho falling so far behind on wages so fast? The result is “Bottom Rung,” an insightful series that rolled out online and aired in Idaho over the past two weeks.

Interviews with economists and labor experts helped Emilie and Molly pinpoint the root causes of Idaho’s low-wage problem — and which storylines to chase.

There was the collapse of good-paying jobs in construction and high-tech manufacturing. There was rapid growth in  low-paying jobs at call centers. There was the influx of retirees, mainly from California, creating new demand for service workers at restaurants and retail operations that pay low wages.

State government had a role, too. Idaho has been disinvesting in education. Meanwhile, the governor has been using Idaho’s low wages as a selling point with businesses.

One challenge Molly and Emilie faced in reporting the series was finding workers earning minimum wage who would talk to them. As Molly wrote in her story kicking off the series:

Supervisors at fast food chains and retail establishments turned me down. One worker decided against an interview after his boss threatened his job. Finally, I selected a stretch of road in Boise that’s lined with strip malls, restaurants and gas stations, and started talking to people.

The series struck a chord with listeners and readers.  ”In the two years of StateImpact Idaho’s existence,” Emilie says, “we’ve never had so much feedback from our audience as we’ve had in the last two weeks.” The stories kicked up some interesting conversations — check out Molly’s post on reader and listener comments and this Storify Emilie put together of the chatter on Twitter.

Molly says putting together Bottom Rung was “a good lesson in the great things that can result from taking a hard run at a big issue.” Sadly, it’s also Molly’s last run with StateImpact Idaho — she’s headed off to Central America for a few months to study Spanish. Good luck to Molly on her new adventures. And congrats to both Molly and Emilie on a nice job telling rich human stories about a complicated subject. 

• 
• Source: Cjr
• Via: Columbia Journalism Review

Two years ago, with statehouse bureaus taking huge cuts in a contracting media landscape, National Public Radio designed the StateImpact project to fill the reporting void while experimenting with a new model of local-national public media collaboration. It works like this: NPR member stations joined forces to report on a significant policy issue in their state.

Read more at: www.cjr.org

Becky Lettenberger / NPR

StateImpact Pennsylvania's Susan Phillips

As a reporter covering the energy boom for StateImpact Pennsylvania, Susan Phillips has hung out with the residents of Dimock, a plastic surgeon making house calls in the village of Rae, and even a hitchhiking shale gas poet.

Now, she’s headed up to Cambridge to hang out with academics — and other immensely talented science journalists like her.

Susan was one of 12 journalists chosen for the Knight Science Journalism Fellowship at MIT in 2013-14. That means she’ll get to spend nine months taking classes, attending seminars and going to boot camps with some of the world’s preeminent energy researchers.

Susan is looking forward to immersing herself with so many smart people, and to developing sources who can deepen her reporting on energy and environmental issues in the future.

“One thing about this beat, she says, “is that there’s a plethora of studies and conclusions coming out every other day that contradict each other. It’s hard to know, if you don’t have a science background, what to believe and what not to believe.” Susan says it will be good to find “sources you can trust, and check with in terms of — is this a story or is it not a story? If it’s a story, what should I look for? What questions should I ask about it?”

As a Knight Science Journalism Fellow, Susan will be free of deadlines for almost a year. She’s also required to design her own course of study and take at least one science class per semester at either MIT or Harvard. Susan isn’t yet sure what classes she’ll take, but there’s one thing she knows she wants to get out of it.

“I’m hoping to learn about new energy sources on the horizon,” she says. “On one hand, there’s what the new research is and technologies involved with clean energy. But also, what’s the next fossil fuel development they’ll go after?”

Big congratulations to Susan, who expects to wind down with StateImpact in late July. The fellowship starts in Cambridge in mid-August. She can return to WHYY when the program finishes in May 2014.

See the full list of science journalists chosen for the Knight Science Fellowship this year.

Here’s more background on the fellowship.

And here’s an article from MIT News about it.

Our teams in Florida, Idaho, Indiana and Pennsylvania won a total of seven regional Murrows for their work in 2012.

Here’s the full StateImpact list:

• StateImpact Florida’s “13th Grade” reports, a series on the remedial education crisis, won for investigative reporting in Region 13.
• StateImpact Idaho’s Molly Messick won the best writing award in Region 1 for her piece on the diverging economic fates of loggers and ranchers in rural Idaho.
• StateImpact Idaho won in the hard news reporting category in Region 1 for Emilie Ritter Saunders’ work on Idaho’s doctor shortage.
• StateImpact Indiana’s “Progress Report” won in the news documentary category for Region 7.
• StateImpact Pennsylvania won both of Region 11′s awards in investigative reporting for radio. That includes an award for Scott Detrow’s work on abandoned wells and Susan Phillips’ examination of a rule that requires doctors to keep quiet about what they know about chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing.
• StateImpact Pennsylvania also won in the news series category of Region 11 for several Scott Detrow stories related to the impact of Pennsylvania’s natural gas boom.

Becky Lettenberger / StateImpact

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

Idaho’s legislature adjourned yesterday, giving Boise State Public Radio reporters Molly Messick and Emilie Ritter Saunders and news director Sadie Babits a chance to catch their breath. I’ve been really impressed with StateImpact Idaho’s legislative coverage this year. Here’s four reasons why:

• They started early. Molly and Emilie began sketching out a coverage plan not long after the November election. By early December, they were interviewing key legislative leaders, such as the new House Speaker. That gave them good Q&A content to run during the holidays. It also helped them to develop sources and plugged them into what issues would be coming up during the 2013 session. They rolled all of it and more into this really handy guide to the 2013 legislative session.
• They sought out data. Emilie also conducted a survey of all legislators to find out how the demographics of the legislature compares with the demographics of Idaho. The resulting posts on gender, age, education, religion and occupation were big hits, as was this infographic by StateImpact intern Yan Lu.
• They set priorities. Idaho legislators filed more than 1,600 bills and resolutions. Molly and Emilie set out to “own” just a few of them: Repeal of the “personal property tax” for business (40 blog posts), creating a health insurance exchange (73 posts) and Medicaid expansion (64 posts). When the bills began to fly, they knew exactly what they needed to cover and what to pass on or link out to other reporters’ work. “We prioritized which three or four main ideas we knew we’d follow through on,” Emilie says. “We started to do preview coverage before the bills were even written.”
• They didn’t just follow the debate — they informed it. Take the tax repeal debate. Molly had posted this explainer on the personal property tax well before the issue was being widely discussed in public. She had two excellent radio features laying out what the tax means for businesses who pay it and for counties who receive the revenue. With the NPR StateImpact team, she developed a clever online quiz to explain why the tax is so complicated to administer. And Molly and Emilie created a very popular map that showed which companies stood to gain the most from getting rid of the tax, as well as which counties had the most revenue at stake. At the statehouse, StateImpact Idaho’s numbers were cited by parties on both sides of the issue. “We found in that data that big businesses would gain a lot and small businesses would, on average, see less than $100 returned,” Molly says. “We were informing the debate through data.”

How on earth did they do it, you ask?

Well… Emily wrote the script and added notes throughout, denoting what sorts of visuals she imagined might help illustrate each segment.  Sara then worked her magic and added her own style to turn Emily’s vision into a sleek, clever animation.

Of course, just like any other story, the duo had to go back and forth a couple times, making sure that each slide added value to the overall narrative and that there weren’t redundancies or places where they got too in the weeds on the technical aspects of the story. 

“We had a goofy fun time doing it,” Emily wrote afterwards, “and hoped that we could add a little goofy fun to an otherwise often “flat” topic.”

Want to try this at home, or search for someone in your newsroom who has the skills? Here is Sara’s rundown of how she does it:

I use various tools in Photoshop to create the illustrations, relying particularly heavily on the pen tool and vector masking, which allows me to work in the same way I would in Illustrator, creating scalable vector graphics, with straight lines and Bezier curves. Some elements are traced, some are freehand. The original road image started as a pen-and-paper drawing, which I scanned in and traced in stages, turning it into multiple shape layers; using the pen tool allows me to draw a shape, apply a fill layer to the shape, and retain the vector mask associated with it. That way I retain the ability to change the colors, bounding points, edges, curves, and dimensions of any shape in the image. Pie charts and graphs are done similarly, using the ruler tool to measure angles accurately.

Creating the movie in iMovie was quick and easy (compared to using Adobe Premiere, which was really more tool than necessary for this project). iMovie allows you to drag and drop still image files, and easily change the cropping/frame fit and play duration of each frame. Audio is also a drag-and-drop, and after creating the title transition and text sequence, it’s just a matter of dragging the audio file to pin it to the proper start point. Where we use music beds, those work in the same way, with the advanced editor letting you layer audio clips and add/adjust crossfade.

We’d love to see more of this type of storytelling which, of course, depends entirely on finding a collaborator in your newsroom who has the design skills. If any of you manage to hit the jackpot and pull it off, though, please do let us know.

• 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

Reader Favorites For the Past Two Weeks

Most visited stories last week in raw numbers:

1. Oklahoma: Oklahoma Earthquake Was Largest Linked to Injection Wells, New Study Suggests
2. Pennsylvania: Drilling Companies Agree to Settle Fracking Contamination Case for $750,000
3. Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania fracking map
4. Texas: Keystone XL Pipeline
5. Florida: How Florida Lawmakers Would Change High School Graduation Requirements

Most visited content on each site, in order of popularity:

What does that mean? Well, we took the top post from each of your states, according to traffic. We adjusted those figures to reflect each state’s population and then ordered the results.

1. Oklahoma: Oklahoma Earthquake Was Largest Linked to Injection Wells, New Study Suggests
2. Idaho: Supervalu Sale Of Albertsons Stores Expected To Close Thursday
3. Pennsylvania: Drilling Companies Agree to Settle Fracking Contamination Case for $750,000
4. New Hampshire: In N.H., Minimum Wage Earners Need 2.8 Jobs To Afford 2-Bedroom Apartment
5. Indiana: School Vouchers
6. Ohio: Ohio Charter School Serves as Safe Place for Gay Students
7. Florida: Bill Would Delay Next Generation Test Until Schools Have Technology Ready
8. Texas: Keystone XL Pipeline

Traffic Sources

According to Google Analytics:

• 52% Search Engines (top terms for this week: fracking; keystone pipeline; albertsons; tj lane; supervalu)
• 11% Referral (Google, The New York Times, npr.org, The Texas Tribune, Google News —in that order this week — plus station websites and other partners and sites)
• 23% Dark social (emails, listservs, instant messaging, etc.)
• 11% Social media (Facebook, Twitter, Reddit — in that order this week)
• 1% Direct (bookmarks and direct visits to home pages)

Sammy Mack will report for StateImpact Florida from Miami.

Sammy Mack is joining StateImpact Florida as a Miami-based reporter. She’ll collaborate with Tampa-based reporter John O’Connor in continuing the project’s award-winning coverage of education in Florida.

Mack has worked in just about every position in the WLRN-Miami Herald newsroom. She’s been a producer on the shows Topical Currents, the Florida Roundup, Under the Sun, and the Morning Edition newscasts. Most recently, as special projects editor, she oversaw the editorial side of the WLRN.org re-launch.

For two years, she covered public health and health policy from WLRN as part of the grant-funded HealthyState.org project, and her stories have run on air, online, on TV and in the print edition of the Miami Herald. Since 2012, she’s been a fellow with the Kaiser Health News and NPR Health Care Reporting in the States project.

While she is new to the education beat, she is a St. Petersburg native and a product of Florida public schools. She even took the first FCAT.

She’s been honored with Florida AP Broadcaster and SPJ Sunshine State awards. She’s collaborated on projects that have won an Emmy, regional Edward R. Murrow awards, a Wilbur Award and a Dart Award. She was a writing fellow during the 2008 Poynter Summer Fellowship for Young Journalists.

Most importantly, colleagues named her the 2011 Herald Top Chef. Ask her about the pig turducken.

She can be reached at smack@miamiherald.com and on Twitter at @sammymack. Her first day is April 8.

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:

• Promoting Live Events on Social Media: What to do before, during and after a community event.

• 2013 NICAR’s Greatest Hits: A report about all of the cool stuff that was on display at the premier event for news data geeks.
• Reporter Quickstart: A guide to the essentials that StateImpact reporters need to know.

Thanks to Jessica Pupovac for assembling all of this new material.

And if that’s not enough, here are some other learning opportunities:

• March 19: Power Searching for Business Journalists: Webinar with Google research scientist Dan Russell.

• April 4 and June 19: Breaking Local Stories with Economic Data, with USA Today’s Paul Overberg: Washington, April 4 and San Antonio, June 19.
• April 12: Uncovering the Best Local Business Stories: Fayetteville, Ark., with UNC Professor Chris Roush.

Accountability Reporting Recognized

Words that we always love to see together: investigative reporting, award, StateImpact. This time

SARAH GONZALEZ / STATEIMPACT FLORIDA

A chalkboard shows the work of a college developmental math course. The class covers arithmetic and pre-Algebra.

it’s John O’Connor and Sarah Gonzalez of StateImpact Florida, recognized for their 13th Grade project on remedial education. Their collaboration with the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting won second prize in the broadcast investigative reporting category of the 2012 National Awards for Education Reporting.

The judges noted their “great use of the classroom sound and student perspective” as part of a deep exploration of the issue. “It would have been very easy to stop with just the one story on the problem, but to highlight the ripple effect of the problem was fascinating.” Another judge complimented how their “very good job of balancing research with narrative” kept listeners engaged. “As a non-Florida resident, I was able to follow the series easily and become engrossed in the topic.”

This is the second investigative reporting award that the StateImpact Florida team has won from the Education Writers Association. Last year, the team was recognized for its “No Choice” project along with being named best education blog.

We also found it that Ida Lieszkovszky and Molly Bloom of StateImpact Ohio are finalists for an investigative reporting award from the Ohio APME for their “Locked Away” project. We’ll know in May whether they’ve won first or second place. They’re nominated for two other awards as well. 

Around the Network

• Emily Corwin of StateImpact New Hampshire crafted a map that allows residents to identify roads in the state that are in need of maintenance. Users can upload photos and write a description of the problem.
• StateImpact Ohio, which is already engaged in the weekly #ohedchat on Twitter, is helping to organize a education Tweetup in June.
• The NPR team is starting to pack up in preparation for next month’s move to the new building on North Capitol St. Team members are now “create ready.” Next up: training on the new phone system.

Fun With Google Hangouts

The DC team worked from home recently because NPR was shut down due to the “snowquester” blizzard. This gave the team to practice its Google Hangout skills, including the “effects” feature:

Reader Favorites For the Past Two Weeks

Most visited stories last week in raw numbers:

1. Ohio: Strongsville Teachers Strike
2. Texas: Keystone XL Pipeline
3. Pennsylvania: How Much Water Does It Take to Frack a Well?
4. Texas: Retired NASA Scientists Enter Climate Change Fray
5. Ohio: 2011-12 Ohio School District Report Cards and Ranking

Most visited content on each site, in order of popularity:

What does that mean? Well, we took the top post from each of your states, according to traffic. We adjusted those figures to reflect each state’s population and then ordered the results.

1. Idaho: Boise’s Housing Bust Leaves Unlikely Victims In A Neighborhood That Saw The Worst
2. Ohio: Strongsville Teachers Strike
3. New Hampshire: Renewable Energy Entrepreneur Talks Benefits, Challenges Of Going Green In N.H.
4. Oklahoma: Interactive Map: The Cost of Water in Oklahoma
5. Pennsylvania: How Much Water Does It Take to Frack a Well?
6. Texas: Keystone XL Pipeline
7. Indiana: Education Overhaul 101: How The Common Core Relates To Other Big Ideas Sweeping Indiana Schools
8. Florida: Bill Would Delay Next Generation Test Until Schools Have Technology Ready

Traffic Sources

According to Google Analytics:

• 54% Search Engines (top terms for this week: strongsville teacher strike; fracking; keystone pipeline; state impact indiana; state impact pa)
• 12% Referral (Google, The New York Times, npr.org, The Texas Tribune, Google News —in that order this week — plus station websites and other partners and sites)
• 22% Dark social (emails, listservs, instant messaging, etc.)
• 10% Social media (Facebook, Twitter, Reddit — in that order this week)
• 1% Direct (bookmarks and direct visits to home pages)

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.

Unlike the last StateImpact Texas event, which was held in a bar, this one was held in a university auditorium. While Mose says he preferred the bar — “younger people show up, and it’s more relaxed” — he says changing up the venue was a good idea. “We attracted an audience that would not have come to the bar,” Mose says. “Some people hear you’re doing something at a bar and automatically shut down. We attracted a different crowd, which might have had something to do with the caliber of the questions.”

Awards Season Starts With Good News From Texas

StateImpact Texas reports great news from the Texas Associated Press Broadcasters 2012-2013 Radio Contest. The team members at KUT in Austin and KUHF in Houston were responsible for five awards among Texas’ large-market radio stations:

• Reporter (first place): Mose Buchele (KUT)
• Reporter (second place): Dave Fehling (KUHF)
• Continuing coverage: Texas drought (KUT)
• Feature (light): No, Vampire Bats are Not in Texas — Yet (Mose Buchele, KUT)
• Online/special content: Dried Out: Confronting The Texas Drought (Terrence Henry/Staff, KUT)

And multimedia projects by three of our states won awards in the Society of News Design’s Best of Digital Design contest, a competition that attracted hundreds of entries from around the world.

Training For Us And You

Jessica Pupovac, Yan Lu and Danny DeBelius attended the Computer-Assisted Reporting (#NICAR13) conference in Louisville, Kentucky, last week. The event drew more than 600 people from all over the world — about 50 percent more than last year — proving once again just how much of a premium editors are putting on data-wrangling. They are still in the process of sifting through their troves of notes, PowerPoints and links to bring you a curated list of the most useful take-aways. For now, though, here are a couple highlights:

• Data-Driven Stories from launch to presentation (blog post and summary from NICAR, slides from the presenters)
• Getting Acquainted with the New Fusion Tables

Watch for more goodies in the days and weeks to come!

And here’s a free online training that you can participate in now: Branding for Journalists: You Being You … Online: March 5, with Reynolds Center Digital Director Robin J. Phillips.

Around The Network This Week

• WFYI in Indianapolis has asked Kyle Stokes of StateImpact Indiana to interview Indiana state superintendent Glenda Ritz on Wednesday at an event at the Indianapolis central library. Ritz has been in the headlines a lot lately, navigating a political minefield at the same time as she’s trying to find a way to score wins for a constituency that thinks education policy is headed in the wrong direction. The event will focus on how she plans to achieve this over the next 3 years and 10 months — and what lessons she’s learned in her short seven weeks on the job..
• Joe Wertz and Logan Layden of StateImpact Oklahoma released their hour-long radio show on water issues facing Oklahoma. It’s been getting good traffic and the head of the Oklahoma Water Resources Board also tweeted that he was listening to it, complete with links. The team has also had several emails praising the work.
• New StateImpact Pennsylvania reporter Marie Cusick spent two days in Washington last week to get oriented with the NPR project team. She’s already been quiet busy on the Pennsylvania energy beat.
• Outoing StateImpact Florida reporter Sarah Gonzalez stopped by the DC office to say goodbye enroute to her new assignment at WNYC’s New Jersey Public Radio. Cupcakes were shared and a few tears shed.

Reader Favorites Last Week

Most visited stories last week in raw numbers:

1. Texas: Keystone XL Pipeline
2. Oklahoma: Troubled Water: A Deep Dive Into Oklahoma’s Most Precious Resource
3. Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania fracking map
4. Ohio: 2011-12 Ohio School District Report Cards
5. Ohio: School Report Cards

Most visited content on each site, in order of popularity:

What does that mean? Well, we took the top post from each of your states, according to traffic. We adjusted those figures to reflect each state’s population and then ordered the results.

1. Oklahoma: Troubled Water: A Deep Dive Into Oklahoma’s Most Precious Resource
2. New Hampshire: A New Push For Commuter Rail
3. Idaho: Idaho Leads The Nation In Minimum Wage Workers
4. Indiana: Some Communities Could Lose Head Start Programs If Automatic Federal Cuts Kick In
5. Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania fracking map
6. Ohio: 2011-12 Ohio School District Report Cards
7. Texas: Keystone XL Pipeline
8. Florida: Three Questions About Federal Budget Cuts For Head Start

Traffic Sources

According to Google Analytics:

• 59% Search Engines (top terms for this week: keystone pipeline; fracking; state impact indiana; is bigfoot real; third grade guarantee)
• 10% Referral (Google, The Texas Tribune, npr.org, Google News, PA environment digest —in that order this week — plus station websites and other partners and sites)
• 21% Dark social (emails, listservs, instant messaging, etc.)
• 7% Social media (Facebook, Twitter, Reddit — in that order this week)
• 2% Direct (bookmarks and direct visits to home pages)