Why I Joined Civil: ecoWURD
For the past 15 years, WURD, the only African American-owned talk radio station in Philadelphia, has covered the tough issues that are most relevant to Philadelphia’s Black community. Late last year, a group of WURD journalists started a Civil newsroom called ecoWURD, which has been hyper-focused on examining Philadelphia at the intersection of race, income and the environment.
Part of our mission at Civil is to help you support newsrooms in underrepresented communities across the world. We asked three reporters at ecoWURD, Sarah Lomax-Reese, Charles Ellison and Martin Pratt, about what they’ve learned and found challenging in the course of shedding more light on how environmental issues affect Philadelphia’s Black community. Their answers are below.
1) Has there been overlap between the listener audience at WURD and the reader audience at ecoWURD? Do you think having a presence on the radio and in digital print gives you a unique advantage in how you connect with and understand your audience?
The two platforms complement and engage one another through both deliberate cross-pollination and natural engagement with both broadcast and audio content. Listeners are well aware of the magazine through radio-driven items such as the weekly ecoWURD segment, and occasional interviews with writers. Conversely, readers of the magazine, including advocates in the environmental justice space, are compelled to interact with the broadcast elements. What we’re proving is the organically beneficial relationship between written and spoken word.
2) Tell us about your first few months running ecoWURD. How has it been? How do you balance your time between WURD and ecoWURD? Can you highlight 1–2 especially memorable stories and how they came about?
It’s been exciting and challenging. We’ve had to, for the better, pivot to a broader pool of experts, writers and contributors. And running both platforms is much like running two major magazines at once; we’ve learned to use our built-in advantage as a broadcast outlet through continued integration of content. Interviews on WURD programming provide a wealth of intelligence that informs and develops ecoWURD. Articles on ecoWURD inform programming decisions for radio segments. We’ve had compelling conversations on pieces such as “Are Philly Schools Ready For Climate Change?” which stemmed from audience outrage over the fact that Philadelphia public schools started the school year before Labor Day for the first time, but had to let students out early for the first two weeks due to record heat and no air conditioning in most schools. Another piece, “Philly’s Lead Crisis is Larger Than Flint’s,” put a spotlight on how troubling the lead poisoning situation in Philadelphia is, even though it hasn’t made national news.
3) How do you identify stories you want to tell?
The advantage of being a talk radio station is having a built-in, loyal audience that can offer broader perspective and ideas for future conversations. It’s a combination of traditional news and intelligence gathering. But we also look at issues that are of great relevance to Philadelphia’s Black community and we determine how those issues have environmental aspects or angles to them.
4) What has the biggest challenge been? What advice would you share for other newsrooms in a similar predicament?
The biggest challenge has probably been the search for solid, consistent writers. How we solved that is by transitioning away from an in-house “staff writer” model to a broader freelance model that allows us to tap into a larger pool of talent and experts. We’d recommend that and also conducting outreach to experts, organizations and advocates who are focused on the subject matter your publication reports on.
5) ecoWURD focuses on the environmental challenges that disproportionately affect communities of color in Philadelphia. What can you say for journalism in underrepresented communities — and how can readers support newsrooms in these areas?
Historically underrepresented communities have a trust issue with so-called “mainstream” news sources — and for good reason, considering those outlets’ traditional treatment and abuse of those populations. This is why these populations deserve platforms designed for them, managed by them and speaking directly to them. This is also important for other populations, including dominant white populations and communities, who need to learn more about the communities they co-exist with. Readers support outlets or news projects they trust. We believe readers can support newsrooms like these through interactive engagement on all levels — through sharing, through exposure to multimedia content and through interacting with the news organizations — like ours — at live events. Readers must be treated as partners.
Monetary support (from a variety of private, public and reader sources) can serve as a way to support newsrooms in underrepresented areas. ecoWURD is exploring ways that people can provide monetary support through tipping or membership, but these are options we are exploring in the future. Additionally, we are launching a series of events in Philadelphia and actively searching for partners or organizations and other entities that can underwrite these activities.
6) Are there other cities with newsrooms doing similar work or offering complementary coverage? If so, have you found any opportunities for collaboration?
We have not — in fact, we’re told by leading advocates in the environmental justice space that we’re the only Black-owned media outlet that’s doing this at the moment. We haven’t yet collaborated with a newsroom of similar construct or size, but our Managing Editor has discussed or shared ecoWURD content on other Black-owned or oriented talk radio stations in cities like Chicago and Washington, D.C. This sort of activity has led us to explore partnership opportunities.
In addition, advocates in the environmental justice space and other organizations are starting to reach out to us with a desire to partner. One major partner is Broke in Philly, a media collaborative based in Philadelphia that coordinates special projects with numerous outlets in the region.
7) Why did you join Civil?
Civil’s commitment to community-based journalism aligned with our commitment to and years of action as a community/grassroots-driven media outlet. That intrigued and inspired us, and we felt this partnership could offer us the kind of insight and resources we needed to create something fresh and impactful!
To join newsrooms like ecoWURD in the Civil community, learn how to launch a Civil Newsroom here.
