To find out more about The Ohio Newsroom’s mission, Jerry Kenney spoke with its Managing Editor, Clare Roth.
Clare Roth: These stations in Ohio, the public radio stations in Ohio have collaborated together for years, but it was always relatively informal. They did start the Statehouse News Bureau. You hear Karen Kasler and Jo Ingles on WYSO's air. But a few years ago, they decided it's time for us to really put our efforts together and go even farther and they made The Ohio Newsroom, and they hired me as the first managing editor.
And so, the Ohio newsroom is both a collaboration of WYSO and a lot of other public radio stations around the state, sharing content, editing one another, helping that news journalism be even better, but it's also the formation of my team, which is original new journalism that has never been heard before. So, that is what we do. We both help that collaboration between the stations, and we make news journalism of our own.
Jerry Kenney: Which benefits listeners, not just each of the stations involved.
Roth: Exactly, yes. Because listeners not only get better journalism from WYSO and all of these other stations they get to hear from that they wouldn't otherwise, but they get journalism from parts of the state that you just don't hear from often. WYSO's journalists are amazing. You are very, very lucky to have the people that you have on your team, but they cannot really get all that much past Yellow Springs and Dayton. They're just so busy covering those metros. So, what we do is we go beyond the suburbs into the rural areas of the state, the news deserts that you just don't hear from often and then listeners are getting so many more stories from around Ohio.
Kenney: There is obviously a lot of local focus for our reporters but there are events happening in other parts of the state that apply to us as well. And so, this collaboration makes it easier to get at some of those stories.
Roth: Exactly. A lot of the issues that happen in Dayton are happening all across Ohio. For instance, Alejandro Figueroa did a story for us. He partnered up with a reporter in Cleveland to see how school lunch waivers expiring would have an impact on hungry children around the state. And that's not a story that's only happening in one metro. It's happening everywhere.
And sometimes we'll bring you stories that frankly have nothing to do with Dayton but are so interesting that you'll want to hear them. Otherwise, I'm thinking about, you know, a statewide boom in beekeeping or the last washboard factory in America, which is in Logan, Ohio, and more near the Hocking Hills. These are great stories that will absolutely benefit listeners, even if they have nothing to do with those listeners lives.
Kenney: So, let's talk a little bit about what listeners will hear. We're debuting a daily feature from The Ohio Newsroom beginning on Monday.
Roth: Yes, it's called Today from The Ohio Newsroom. It airs in the morning and the evening during drive time, and it's a four minute or so segment where we take you around the state to introduce you to news and neighbors that you wouldn't have heard of otherwise. My team is myself, Erin Gottsacker and Kendall Crawford, and they especially have been driven in the entire state to bring stories on all sorts of issues. So, we have stories about a person who is trying to turn coal into a home building material.
We have stories about, you know, closures of churches across the state and what that means for communities and for Christianity. We have stories about mental health initiatives that are focusing in on barbershops because historically Black Americans have been underserved in the mental health space. So, stories of all stripes from all over the state and you'll hear them every single day on WYSO.
Kenney: Where can people get more information on this collaboration and the bigger picture?
Roth: If you missed the stories in the morning or the afternoon, you can always find them on WYSO's a website. They'll be on the front page every day. You can also go to Statenews.org and find more information about The Ohio Newsroom and our mission and maybe give us some ideas, too, of what you'd like us to cover because we are trying to cover Ohio in all of its complexity.
Kenney: I know our reporters are very excited to participate in this project. Clare Roth is managing editor of The Ohio Newsroom. Thanks for your time.
Roth: Thank you so much.
