Utah Public Radio Receives Grant to Investigate Cache Valley Air Pollution
Utah Public Radio received a Community Engagement grant from the Public Insight Network to produce an investigative report on air pollution in Cache Valley. Funds were awarded to 17 public media newsrooms nationwide in February. UPR was selected based on a project proposal to shift Cache Valley’s air pollution conversation from partisan politics to human health issues.
“There are other communities in the state of Utah that suffer from the pollution concentration that comes from winter inversions, but Cache County usually tops the list,” said UPR reporter Jennifer Pemberton in the grant application. “As a smaller community with a bigger problem, Cache County is under-represented in the coverage of Utah’s air quality problems.”
The grants are intended to help stations generate content, organize events and meet the information needs of their communities through engagement. The funding awarded to UPR will assist the station in organizing events and to conduct an investigative report on local air quality. The report, due in July, will be led by Pemberton and UPR producer Shalayne Smith Needham.
“We are providing these funds in an effort to encourage stations to involve their communities more directly in content and discussion around important local and national issues as well as to encourage more newsrooms to adopt the PIN model of engaging communities in journalistically relevant ways throughout the editorial process,” the grant announcement from the Public Insight Network read.
The Public Insight Network is a platform from American Public Media that connects journalists and citizens to inform news stories and strengthen communities.
Utah Public Radio broadcasts from the main campus of Utah State University in Logan and is a service of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, providing national news and public radio programming as well as local Utah news on a statewide network of translators.
Related link:
USU College of Humanities and Social Sciences
Contact: Jennifer Pemberton, (435) 797-0705, jennifer.pemberton@usu.edu
Contact: Shalayne Smith Needham, (435) 797-0320, Shalayne.needham@usu.edu
Source: Utah Public Radio
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