WNIN- FM, Outstanding News Operation
In 2017, the lack of election coverage prompted WNIN staff to provide a wider variety of high quality news content for our listeners, web and social media users. Throughout last year, WNIN-FM continued adding to, and refining our video news gathering and social media distribution. That effort was particularly evident during breaking news situations as you will see through some of the links provided.
Our continued growth was aided by three content grants that provided funding for a year-long investigation, better health coverage and ground-breaking bilingual content. In 2017, our bilingual podcast ¿Qué Pasa Midwest? was named among the initial cohort of stations to develop content for PRX’s Project Catapult. Samantha Horton began contributing as WNIN’s reporter for Side Effects Public Media health coverage.
Steve Burger received funding from the Fund for Investigative Journalism to help with an investigation into the impact of a psychologist’s confession of falsifying a mental exam in a criminal court case. That reporting uncovered more than ten thousand criminal and Social Security disability claims cases that were tainted by the crime, and prompted action at the highest levels of the Indiana court system.
WNIN-FM has a staff of five full-time employees to host programming, operate the station and produce local news. To say the least, the projects listed above stretched our capacity, processes and practices. But we learned and we grew professionally. The difference is evident in this entry.
2017 was also a busy year in Evansville. There are several significant breaking news events that we couldn’t even include in our entry. Yet through all the challenges (including a station move to a new location in October) WNIN-FM kept our listeners informed and our community well served.
WNIN entry rundown:
00-2:21 Breaking news coverage of a police shooting in the middle of downtown Evansville. This report took place within three hours of the incident. We also created a Twitter Moment to aggregate the coverage that day, along with the video at the top of the story shot and edited by multi-media journalist Paola Marizan.
2:22-13:11 WNIN investigation of the impact of a psychologist’s confession of falsifying a mental exam in a criminal court case. The first segment is one of four features produced, with an update on the result of our reporting. The second segment is excerpts of a WNIN-produced documentary revealing the jaw-dropping extent of the psychologist’s Social Security disability claims work.
13:12-16:01 Emotionally charged, WNIN-moderated forum on Advanced Care Directives that spell out a person’s wishes for end of life care.
16:02-19:08 An exceprt of ¿Qué Pasa Midwest?, our bilingual podcast and broadcast content, with host Paola Marizan.
19:09-25:46 General News coverage. Of course we want to showcase our big content projects, but it is the day in and day out local news coverage that provides a critical service to our community. It’s not all serious, such as the solar eclipse bowling ball story. There’s also an example of what we call “Day Out” coverage where we take the station out to the community for reporting on an important topic like the ribbon cutting for a new convention center hotel. What we think you’ll notice most of all is the human side of these otherwise mundane local stories that make the stories more interesting.
25:47-29:49 Newscast. We chose one that was delivered in the wake of another breaking news event, a police chase that ended with members of a family dead in a car crash.