Above you can find the audio that makes up the submission for this category. Below you will see time codes to denote where you will hear which stories in the audio, with links to the original stories posted online, and descriptions of the station's work. You will hear short beeps to denote the separation between pieces.
(00:00-5:05) - Trump Boosts Hawley in Parade of Missouri Republican Figures
http://www.kbia.org/post/trump-boosts-hawley-parade-missouri-republican-figures#stream/0
President Donald J. Trump’s midterm campaign visit at the Columbia Regional Airport 5 days before the election was marked by the presence of numerous local and state-level GOP politicians, all appearing to boost Senate hopeful Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley’s campaign in its final days. (Note: the last three minutes of this broadcast, which included a report from a rally in downtown Columbia, was edited off for the sake of time)
(5:06-8:40) Dr. George Smith Accepts His Nobel Prize in Stockholm
http://www.kbia.org/post/dr-george-smith-accepts-his-nobel-prize-stockholm#stream/0
In 2018, Professor Emeritus at the University of Missouri Dr. George Smith was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. It was the first ever Nobel Price for work conducted at the University. To cover this once-in-a-lifetime event, KBIA Digital Content Director Nathan Lawrence led a team of three reporters covering the story from on the ground in Stockholm. The team was there for a full week and produced numerous stories for on air and online. We ran stories every day on KBIA, and also aired Dr. Smith’s official Nobel lecture (which each Laureate is required to deliver in order to receive their prize) in its entirety. Reporters also produced this video for KBIA in Stockholm: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=594233181012989
(8:41 - 12:12) Soon-To-Be Mothers in Missouri’s Bootheel Scramble to Find Care After Hospital Announces Closure
Taja Welton is ready for her daughter to be born. She’s moved into a bigger house, one with room for a nursery. She has a closet full of pink, Minnie Mouse-themed baby clothes. Her baby bag is packed right down to the outfit she plans to bring her baby home in that reads, “The Princess Has Arrived.”
“I can’t wait to put it on her,” Welton smiles. The princess even has a name: Macen.
The only thing Welton doesn’t have in her 37th week of pregnancy is a doctor to deliver her baby. The surprise announcement on April 30 that the hospital here in Kennett, Missouri is closing has left this rural part of southeast Missouri without an OB-GYN. That’s left expectant mothers like Welton scrambling to change their birth plans at the last minute, a dangerous proposition in an area with the worst birth outcomes in the state and one of the highest infant mortality rates in the country. (Note: the anchor intro and the part of the end of the story were edited off for the sake of time)
(12:13-16:34) Mike Parson Sworn in as Governor After Greitens Resignation
This is a short clip of a 15 minute broadcast of KBIA’s team reporting as the lead-in to the live broadcast of the swearing in of Governor Mike Parson. As you will hear, this was a breaking news story, as Parson was becoming Governor due to the resignation of Governor Eric Greitens. This local broadcast continued, with 5 reporters in total coming on the air to report different segments of the story.
(16:35-20:35) Legacy of Missing Lloyd Gaines, 1938 Supreme Court Plaintiff, Still Haunts Higher Education
No one knows what happened to Lloyd Lionel Gaines. He was last seen in Chicago on March 19, 1939. Three months before he went missing, on Dec. 12, 1938, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in his favor in a case against the University of Missouri School of Law. The court said the school violated the constitution when it rejected Gaines' application because he was black. Wednesday marks the 80th anniversary of the ruling. Experts say his case could have done what Brown v. Board of Education did in 1954, and it would have been done 15 years earlier.
But Gaines disappeared before it could happen. Eighty years later, MU — and many other schools are across the country — are still struggling to confront the history of racism on their campuses. (Note: only the first half of the story is included for the sake of time. The second half examined the lasting impact of Gaines’ story in higher education and beyond.)
(20:36-24:25) ‘One of My Biggest Worries is that I’m Not Going to Get to Say Goodbye Because You Can’t Hear Me’
In KBIA’s Missouri Health Talks, inspired by StoryCorps, the content of the pieces is conversations between people in our community who already know each other. They may be a mother and daughter, a doctor and their patient, or a person with a disability and an advocate. Aside from an intro and tag, a reporter is not present in the story, and the subjects discuss their stories about health issues, most often access to health care. This content plays well on the air, but when considering how to feature the content online, KBIA decided to create this completely new interface that would deliver the stories in the most optimal ways. Each story has a visual component, and is manually sorted and tagged in a way that allows for each navigation and discovery of other stories a user may be interested in based on topic or geographical area. The project also aspires to reach rural areas across the state, so a mapping feature has also been created as a primary element of the presentation. KBIA Digital Content Director Nathan Lawrence designed and built this interface himself. These stories have consistently been among the most viewed and shared since the creation of this project.
(24:28-28:09) Blackkklansman Author Ron Stallworth Speaks About Ku Klux Klan Investigation
Columbia College hosted a conversation with Ron Stallworth, author of The Black Klansman on Aug 30. The memoir recalls Stallworth, a former African-American detective, and his infiltration of the Ku Klux Klan in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Stallworth spoke with KBIA about his memoir’s film adaptation Blackkklansman. The film was directed by Spike Lee and featured John David Washington as Ron Stallworth. Stallworth also discussed how important the investigation was to him and how he was able to stop violent acts within his hometown.
(28:10 – 33:22) The Obvious Question: Can You Even Have Sex?
http://www.kbia.org/post/can-you-even-have-sex#stream/0
In 2018 KBIA launched "The Obvious Question," a podcast that focuses on the realities of living with a disability, but goes beyond the simple, obvious questions. The podcast focuses on the actual ways that disability impacts a life – things like love, sex and dating, fashion and the complexities of friendship. It seeks to educate and enlighten listeners through a combination of personal anecdote and journalistic interviews.
The podcast is produced primarily as a podcast. While some segments air on KBIA, its primary audience is online and mobile audiences. On air, of course, we bleep out the curse words (which are not very common in the show as a whole, but are present in this clip).
The show is helmed by 21-year-old Madison Lawson, who is a journalism student at the University of Missouri, as well as co-host/producer Rebecca Smith and producer Aaron Hay, who are both KBIA employees.
Lawson, who has two rare forms of muscular dystrophy, has limited lung function and uses a power wheelchair, draws on her personal experiences to inform the reporting within "The Obvious Question." She speaks to topics that will raise the audience’s awareness of disability – some in simple ways and some in profound ones. The podcast has been profiled in Teen Vogue and by local news outlets. (Note: This is just the first 5 minutes of the first episode of the podcast, editied for time).
(33:33-36:12) Special Report: Have We Backed Ourselves Into a Corner with Pesticides?
http://www.kbia.org/post/special-report-have-we-backed-ourselves-corner-pesticides#stream/0
Pesticide drift during the 2017 growing was historic -- about 3.6 million acres of soybeans were damaged by the weed killer dicamba. The Environmental Protection Agency and several states have slapped on stricter guidelines for the 2018 growing season, but enough damage has been done that stakeholders across the industry are worried that we've forced farmers into a cycle of always needing a stronger chemical to combat weeds that have grown resistant to what's already on shelves. It's gotten so bad that one farmer has been murdered and lines have been drawn in rural communities across the U.S. (Note: This is just the first 3 minutes of a 23-minute long special report, editied for time).
(36:13-39:59) The True/False Podcast: Rejoice
http://www.kbia.org/post/rejoice#stream/0
The True/False Podcast is a true collaboration with the renown True/False Film Fest in Columbia, MO. Programmers from the festival interview filmmakers about the art and craft of documentary filmmaking, while producers at KBIA handle pre and post-production. In 2018 the podcast featured interviews with numerous Oscar-nominated directors. One of the directors in this episode, RaMell Ross, is nominated for an Oscar in 2019. The podcast is produced primarily as a podcast. While some segments air on KBIA, its primary audience is online and mobile audiences. (Note: This is just the first 3 minutes of a 24-minute long episode, editied for time).
(40:00-42:48) Morning Newscast for May 30, 2018
http://www.kbia.org/post/morning-newscast-may-30-2018#stream/0
The contest description also asked that we include evidence of digital-based content. Here are a few examples:
Access Missouri:
KBIA news director Ryan Famuliner is the founder and creator of Access Missouri. Famuliner collaborated with the MU Informatics Institute and the MU political science department to create the site originally, and the most recent development has been exclusively been done by KBIA Digital Content Director Nathan Lawrence.
In Missouri, there is a significant amount of information about the state legislature that is almost completely unsearchable on state government sites, because of the way it is stored – almost exclusively on .pdfs as daily journals. Before this project, getting comprehensive information on basic legislative action - a legislator’s voting records, attendance, bill sponsorship information, etc. - required hours of research spent poring through these documents.
There is significant need for awareness of the flow of money in Missouri state politics, and for the press and public to serve as watchdogs. This project opens up that information, creating a whole new level of transparency to the public. It also provides profile pages for group and individual donors, letting users track Missouri’s political donations by influencer instead of just by gift, something that normally requires extensive manual labor.
This allows KBIA to inform Missourians in ways that would never be possible in the traditional audio medium. Numbers are terrible for radio stories, and there’s almost no opportunity for self-driven discovery in our traditional medium. This project allows audience members to ask their own questions of the data and find their own answers. The project also seeks to inform the reporting of other news outlets in the state. Numerous television and radio stations and newspapers have formally incorporated Access Missouri into their election coverage by embedding the site as a whole on their website, or by pulling specific data into their coverage using the “embed” function you will see on many of the pages if you navigate through the site.
Development of the Access Missouri continues, and developers have been sharing information with reporters interested in launching similar projects in other states. We have received grant support for this project from multiple entities, including the Knight Foundation Prototype Fund and the Reynolds Journalism Institute. The site had a significant re-launch in 2018, and there will be many features added in the future as well, including effectiveness ratings and ideology scores for legislators, neural network-based bill labeling and categorization, automated news writing tools and other advanced analysis tools.
Life on the Spectrum:
https://apps.kbia.fm/2018-july-autism-caregivers/
Facing a Ticking Clock, Missourians Seek to Preserve Black History:
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=2024116944547639
Where they Stand: What Missouri Lawmakers are Saying about Governor Eric Greitens:
The scandals and investigations surrounding Governor Eric Greitens eventually led to his resignation in 2018, but it took many months for everything to unravel. In April, KBIA partnered with the Columbia Missourian to create a database logging all of the public stances state officials had taken on Greitens. KBIA Digital Content Director Nathan Lawrence managed the project and also built the tool that displayed the results on a chart embeddable on our website.
Audiograms:
https://twitter.com/Becky_A_Smith/status/1004826331186651137
In 2016 KBIA’s Nathan Lawrence created what is now called an “audiogram,” animated waveforms that accompany short audio files so they can be shared on Twitter and Facebook. The solution to creating these that we pioneered uses After Effects expressions and scripts, and has been adopted by scores of other news outlets across the country. We continue to use these and improve them; the example linked here is a audiogram customized to the Missouri Health Talks project.
Podcastle:
https://casts.kbia.fm/obvious-question/
https://github.com/KBIAnews/PodCastle
The tool that displays The Obvious Question is a unique tool built by KBIA’s Nathan Lawrence. He wanted to create an interface that was less cluttered and complicated than our website, but also allowed for more content (like photos or videos) than third party podcast distributor pages (iTunes, Stitcher, etc). He calls the tool “Podcastle,” and has developed it as an open-source project, wanting to share his work with any others that can utilize it. There is also a link above that shows you the GitHub page for this tool.
Helping Other Stations:
KBIA open sources a great deal of its original news development work for other radio stations and news outlets to adapt. This list is not exhaustive, but some examples of KBIA’s open source projects that have been used by other stations or news outlets include:
- iFramer, a tool that lets users manage and post non-iframe embed codes where script tags are not allowed.
- Velour, a LESS-based CSS framework and mixin set designed to extend Twitter’s Bootstrap CSS framework with simple and tasteful animations.
- Musher, a tool that takes stories out of the NPR API and adapts them to the formats that Amazon and Apple want them in
- Audioboop, a React-based audio player
Other Interesting Facts
- The Access Missouri “skill” for Amazon Echo was one of the first 1,000 available in its store.
- KBIA’s contributions to open source serverless infrastructure projects like Zappa and AWS Lambda Toolkit have helped dozens of other news outlets deploy modern web solutions.