Listening to audio is a captivating and intimate experience. But podcasting and radio, as they are now, are mostly passive, one-way experiences. What if you could talk back to a podcast or radio story, and it could talk back to you?
Over the past several months, Illinois Humanities’ Audience Engagement Fellows have been developing projects focused on fostering dialogue and collaboration between journalists and the people they cover. They shared their work at the People-Powered Publishing Conference last November, and they’re returning to Chicago this spring for two special installments of City Bureau’s Public Newsroom.
Join us for a special session of City Bureau’s Public Newsroom series with Illinois Humanities Engagement Fellow Jordan Wirfs-Brock, creator of Reciprocal Podcasting. In this hands-on workshop, we’ll practice ways to make audio storytelling more immersive and interactive, leading to deeper community engagement and two-way communication.
We’ll look at some examples of enhanced interactivity on widespread and emerging platforms. Then, we’ll roll up our sleeves and workshop how we can turn existing audio stories into interactive masterpieces. If you have an audio story you’ve produced, please bring it. If not, we’ll have some examples for you to work with. Whether you work with audio in your day-to-day-life, are new and curious about the medium, or are simple an enthusiastic listener, this session will give you new ideas about how you can approach storytelling in a more immersive way.
Jordan Wirfs-Brock is a data journalist who covers energy issues for the public media collaboration Inside Energy. She enjoys using animation, graphics and podcasting to tell complex stories in approachable ways. Through the Illinois Humanities Audience Engagement Fellowship, she has been exploring how to build enhanced interactivity into audio storytelling.
About the Public Newsroom series
Once a week, City Bureau turns its Woodlawn office into an open space where journalists and the public can gather to discuss local issues, share resources and knowledge and learn to report and investigate stories in partnership with the South Side Weekly and Build Coffee. They bring in guest speakers and host workshops on things like how to use the Freedom of Information Act to obtain government records, how to find and analyze public data and how to tell your own audio/video stories-in addition to hands-on presentations, we explore issues ranging from narratives in media to culture + art and any number of ideas relevant to Chicago and the nation at-large.
For working journalists, the Public Newsroom is a place to find and shape stories in direct conversation with readers. For the public, the newsroom is a front-row seat into how journalism gets made, and a chance to impact the way your community is covered in the media.
If you require a sign interpreter or any other arrangements to fully participate in this program, please contact info@ilhumanities.org at least 72 hours in advance of the event.