News outlets battling audience tune-out when they report on climate change and other hard-to-hear-about subjects might find an inspired approach for engagement in After Water, an innovative series by WBEZ Chicago Public Radio. 

The series featured science-based journalism, fiction by local storytellers and a live event for the public headlined by scientists, policy experts and fiction writers. It was, as WBEZ Producer Shannon Heffernan says “a cycle of journalism feeding art feeding conversation.” A result of that, she adds, is that the series “had a ripple effect. … This was getting beyond our normal news community and getting into places that we usually don’t get to go.”

The "mashup of science, art and journalism about the future of the Great Lakes” began with questions about the state of water nationwide.

 “We decided, for various reasons, because of climate change, because of the drought in the southwest, that it would be a good time to come back to water and do a series of stories,” says Sally Eisele, Managing Editor of Public Affairs for WBEZ.

The newsroom pulled together a brain trust consisting of web editor Tim Akimoff, and Metro Desk Editor Cate Cahan, to strategize.  They started by commissioning a series of stories from Ohio-based freelancer Lewis Wallace. Then assigned a producer, April Van Buren, who worked full-time researching Wallace’s stories, which were specifically about lake water levels, climate change and algae bloom in Lake Erie.

Because Eisele had previously worked at KQED in San Francisco, she knew about the station’s extensive drought coverage, and that from time to time the question would arise whether water could be diverted to the West Coast from the Great Lakes.

“Even though we have a compact that protects us at the moment, and the technology is really not there, nor is it economically feasible to think about diverting water from the Great Lakes to the West, the question still comes up whenever they're in a severe drought. … At what point could the drought starved population-rich areas of the country try to get our water?” Eisele says.

Imagine 100 years into the future

The team’s idea was to invite dystopian writers to imagine 100 years into the future and write short stories. These became podcast and broadcast elements that were shared extensively on the station’s Website, AfterWater SoundCloud, AfterWater Tumblr and other social channels.

The After Water team reached out to the Live Lit community and spent time reading short fiction to find writers whose work was a good fit. This curation was important, because WBEZ wanted the stories to be rooted in scientific research and connected to strong sources in the Great Lakes. In many cases, the writers were paired with scientists or policy experts so their conversations could inform the writing. In total, WBEZ commissioned 10 fiction stories. Five were aired on local news shows. Eight were released as a podcast. Two stories will soon be released into the podcast stream.

 “We wanted to have a lot of racial diversity and age diversity and geographical diversity within the Great Lakes region,” Heffernan says. “The (fiction writers) had the open door to call us (the journalist team) any time they wanted while they were writing the stories. So we'd get a call that was like, "Wait, can you explain the Great Lakes compact again?”

WBEZ also commissioned a piece from a San Francisco journalist discussing how California was mining ground water in response to its drought. The idea was to provide context demonstrating water issues in the “have-not” areas of the country compared with the “haves” like the Great Lakes.

"Haves" vs. "have nots" of water

“We wanted to help lay the ground work through the journalism for the stories that we got from the writers,” says Eisele.

In addition, producer Van Buren developed source lists that included scientists, who the station then featured as guests on its mid-day shows.

Prior to posting any journalism or fiction, the team posted research.

“We wanted to make the process of creating this transparent because we wanted to invite the writers in to see what we were finding. When we came across a fantastic report or a fantastic article, we posted that on our Tumblr, and it was a way to engage the audience before the series even launched,” says Heffernan.

Although the fiction was dystopian, the journalism included a focus on solutions.

“We made sure our conversations in our journalism did some of the heavy lifting there,” says Eisele. “Community engagement is a big piece of it, so that it's not just about reporting out, ‘Oh, how terrible this is.’ It's about opening doors that look for solutions and making the community feel as though they can be part of it.”

After Water began as part of the WBEZ’s Front and Center series, funded by the Joyce Foundation, which examines issues of interest to the Great Lakes region. At its finish, the series comprised 16 journalistic pieces and five fiction stories that were broadcast.

Five fiction pieces were rolled out prior to a live event at the Mayne Stage, a small renovated theatre on Chicago’s North side. It took two event coordinators to secure the space and run the event. On the day, scientists and authors were on stage. And two staff members from WBEZ were masters of ceremony.

“We opened it up to conversation with the audience,” says Eisele. “The response was just phenomenal. It verified, first of all, the community concern about water and climate change and the future. And also our need to commit to continued coverage of this issue which we've done and which we continue to do.”

Community interest was also measured by Web traffic to the WBEZ site, the social sites as well as volume of comments. Heffernan says the SoundCloud list for the series got more listens than anything else WBEZ has done this year.

Managing Editor Eisele says that station would consider this approach with other topics.

“We may come back to this concept because we thought it was creative and successful. We're now seeing it being picked up in other areas around the country,” Eisele says. She adds, “What we were trying to do with this project is to create a sense of accountability, a sense that this is not hopeless. That if you engage and think about these issues and understand that you, as an individual, have some accountability in seeking solutions, then the future could be quite different, and we felt this series we did that.”

“A third of the story needs to be about the problem, so you don’t pull punches. You tell people exactly how bad it is. A third of it should be solutions because people need to know that we do have ways to think about approaching the problems,” Heffernan says. “Then a third just needs to be wonder, right? Science is amazing. Science is fascinating. Nature is interesting. I think that's something we really have going for us on this beat is, if you engage people in the fun stuff, they're more interested when you come to them with a heavier policy story.”

In addition, Managing Editor Eisele says After Water helped the WBEZ staff break down some silos between reporters, events and the Web, requiring as it did, cross-team cooperation among everyone from reporters, producers to freelancers to digital to events.