Champions of Curiosity Awards 2020: Best Collaboration Between Organizations
The Champions of Curiosity Awards is Hearken’s annual celebration of community listening, community building, and needs-based service approaches that make the world a better place. Throughout this challenging year, Hearken’s partners pulled through and delivered innovative projects that best served their communities, and we wanted to honor the impressive work they did.
How we picked winners: Our team at Hearken evaluated submissions based on the use of a Hearken service or platform, the creativity of the approach, solution, or offering, and the potential for others to replicate or model it. The winners are Hearken partners who’ve exemplified a commitment to engagement as good business through community-building and listening.
Winner: Listen MKE by WUWM 89.7 (Milwaukee’s NPR), the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Milwaukee PBS and the Milwaukee Public Library
What They Did:
Listen MKE is an ongoing community listening project created by WUWM 89.7 FM — Milwaukee’s NPR, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Milwaukee PBS and the Milwaukee Public Library. Michelle Maternowski, Managing Editor at WUWM, shared her insight, and said the goal of this initiative is to help northside residents get the information they want and need. More specifically, they wanted to understand what’s most important to people who live in these Milwaukee neighborhoods and help fill information gaps. In early 2020, they conducted in-person events and coffee chats and then switched over to a virtual series when the coronavirus quarantine began.
Conversations take place on Facebook Live, and then air on Milwaukee PBS, on WUWM’s Lake Effect program, and are posted on the Journal Sentinel’s website. Previous conversations focused on Juneteenth celebrations, youth protest organizers, visions for Milwaukee’s future, the unrest in Kenosha, information on how to vote, the importance of mentorship. All of the conversations feature people who live and work on Milwaukee’s north side.
Why We Picked Them:
“Listen MKE” showcases how news organizations can combine forces to better serve their communities. The variety of platforms they use and the clarity of their mission to help residents get the information they want and need is a great example of a people-first community listening project.
Key Lessons:
- Understanding a collaborative project’s overall goal — and being able to explain it to your audience clearly — will provide focus and drive results that matter.
- Meet your audience or potential audience where they are (in this case, through Facebook Live conversations).
- Having a flexible approach will help newsrooms adjust to new needs that arise, while still staying true to the mission of the project.
Honorable Mentions:
Curious about what other work is being done in this category?
Check out our partners at the Wichita Community Foundation, who have an extensive list of accomplishments under their belt for only having formally established six months ago. The Wichita Journalism Collaborative, comprised seven media partners and three community partners, is centered around supporting and enhancing quality local journalism, with specific focuses on solutions-based coverage and experimental engagement tactics. The WJC is a grant recipient of the Local Media Project, run by Solutions Journalism Network.
Read about other 2020 winners:
- Best Participation by a Question-asker, Community Member, or Steward
- Best Listening During a Live Event
- Best Use of Creative Visuals or Interactivity
- Most Creative Promotional Strategy
- Best New Hearken Use-case
- Best Use of Community Listening & Response in a Crisis
- Best Overall Service, Offering, Or Outcome
Want to become a Champion of Curiosity? We want that, too! Check out more about what we do and who we work with at wearehearken.com, follow us on Twitter @wearehearken, or sign up for our newsletter, The Hearkening.
