From Question to Story Selection
As noted, over the course of the outreach project, Curious City saw the percentage of questions coming in from predominantly African-American and Latino neighborhoods on the city’s West and South Sides increase considerably. This process fed questions into the editorial system from residents who lacked familiarity with Curious City or WBEZ. As a result, the spectrum of questions was topically more variable given that question-askers had no preconceived idea of what made a “good” Curious City question. One of the challenges of the outreach project was for outreach staff members to quickly explain why they wanted people to frame their curiosities in the form of a question. “I think a lot of people start with statements,” a reporter who solicited questions at a branch library explained. “Like, ‘I’ve seen blah blah blah,’ and then, ‘What’s up with that?’ Basically, ‘I want you to tell me more about this thing.’”15
Gathering questions in-person allowed for some flexibility in such situations. The outreach producer explained how in some instances he would coach people through the process of thinking of a question they had about a topic. One of these sessions resulted in a question from a resident of the Pill Hill neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side: “Why can’t viaducts on the South Side have beautiful murals like the North Side?” The question-asker believed she knew the answer to this question—structural racism and inequitable resource distribution. But while this was acknowledged in the story, the reporter returned to the question-asker in the piece to share his findings, which included some different political and logistical factors. The editor explained the approach:
I think we needed to be really clear with the listeners, that she’s not coming from a vantage point that she doesn’t think she had an answer already. We didn’t think that would be fair to the listener. And it actually helped us in the end because it was useful, because she was able to critique some of the things that we found. In a meaningful way, but not in a mean way. . . . That gave us the space to deliver things that maybe she should rethink, or at least consider in her analysis.16
The story incorporated the question-asker’s perspective, not just in story-selection, but also in reporting. The transparency of the process allowed for both the question-asker to air grievances, and opened an opportunity for the reporter to add nuance to an assumed narrative.
Of course, it was not always possible to get questions from residents within outreach areas. Some residents refused to talk to the outreach producer. Others did not formulate their thoughts as a question. On a field outing in the far northern suburb of Waukegan, the outreach producer met an African-American man at a noisy bus stop. The young man shared some of his family’s experiences, their hardships, and the fact that they now hoped to move away from the Chicago region. The man did not share a question, but the producer noted his comments: “He said things that were really unique. I’ve never heard people say, ‘My family’s been struggling for generations. There’s no future here for African Americans.’”17 The experience gave the producer ideas for possible follow-up stories. Although these did not directly feed into Curious City in this instance, the outreach process did contribute to the larger mission of connecting WBEZ to perspectives it may not encounter otherwise.