CPB Transparency Report | Nashville Public Radio

As a public media entity, Nashville Public Radio makes every effort to be as transparent as possible in order to comply with The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). Below you will find documents and information related to Nashville Public Radio’s contact, governance, management, finances, meetings and diversity initiatives.

FCC PUBLIC FILE ACCESS INSTRUCTIONS

Nashville Public Radio’s representative to provide assistance for persons with disabilities can be contacted at (615) 760-2903. Nashville Public Radio’s address is: 630 Mainstream Dr., Nashville, TN 37228. The telephone number is (615) 760-2903 and email address is [email protected].

DIRECT LINKS TO NASHVILLE PUBLIC RADIO’S FCC HOSTED PUBLIC FILES ARE:

REPORTS

Contact information for Nashville Public Radio
Nashville Public Radio
630 Mainstream Dr
Nashville, TN 37228
(615) 760-2003

Senior Leadership
Steve Swenson, President and CEO – [email protected] – (615) 760-2002
Rob Sanchez, Chief Operating Officer – [email protected] – (615) 760-2031
Carl Pedersen, VP of Finance and Technology – [email protected] – (615) 760-2003
Kenda Lovecchio, VP of Develpement – [email protected] – (165) 760-2023

Send a message to Nashville Public Radio

Nashville Public Radio’s Board of Directors, Community Advisory Group, and Management Team are listed below, including the meeting schedules and locations.

Nashville Public Radio’s Board of Directors

Officers:
Neil Thorne (Chair)
Byron Trauger (Vice-Chair)
Claire Gulmi (Finance Committee Chair)
Ann Shayne (Governance Committee Chair)
Katy Varney (Advancement Committee Chair)
Steve Swenson (President/CEO)

Directors:
Ann Shayne
Ashlee Davis
Byron Trauger
Caroline Randall Williams
Christopher Barkley
Claire Gulmi
Claudio Mosse
Eric Holt
Fahad Tahir
Jeff Freude
Todd Fryling
Jim Flautt
Johari Matthews
Katy Varney
Melody Fowler-Green
Neil J. Thorne
Sally Williams
Scott Clayton
Steve Swenson
Susan Lanigan
Tracey Royal
Amy Sullivan
Tim Schoettle

Send a message to our board of directors

The Board of Directors meetings are at 8:30 am on the following dates. The meeting location is at Nashville Public Radio, 630 Mainstream Dr., Nashville, TN 37228

February 17, 2015
April 28, 2015
June 16, 2015
August 18, 2015
October 20, 2015
December 15, 2015
February 16, 2016
April 19, 2016
June 21, 2016
August 16, 2016
October 18, 2016
December 21, 2016
February 21, 2017
April 18, 2017
June 20, 2017
August 15, 2017
October 17, 2017
December 19,2017
February 27, 2018
April 24, 2018
June 26, 2018
August 27, 2018
October 30, 2018
December 18, 2018
February 26, 2019
April 4 – Special Closed Board Meeting personnel matters
April 30, 2019
June 25, 2019
August 27, 2019 Meeting Cancelled
October 11, 2019
December 17, 2019
February 25, 2020
May 19, 2020 Video conference call
July 29, 2020 – Closed meeting strategic planning – posted July 23, 2020 video conference call
September 15, 2020 Annual meeting Video Conference call
December 15, 2020 Video Conference call
February 23, 2021
May 25, 2021
September 14, 2021
December 14, 2021
February 22, 2022
May 24, 2022
September 13, 2022
December 13, 2022
February 28, 2023
May 23, 2023
September 12, 2023
December 12, 2023
February 27, 2024
May 23, 2024 4p-5:30p
September 9, 2024 12n-1:30p
December 4, 2024 8:30p-10a
February 26, 2025 4:30p-6:00p
May 21, 2025 8:30a-10:00a
September 8, 2025 8:30a-10:00a
December 8, 2025 4:30a-6:00a

Community Advisory Board
Ricardo Beron
Drew Dunlap
Hillini Feleke
Todd Fryling – chair
Bashir Gure
Lucas Hagerty
Tom Hayden
Eve Hutcherson
William Jenkins
Jessica Johnson
Kristen King
Carol Kirshner
Abey Lissane
Colin Pigott
Mary Ruth Raphael
Javier Solano
Knight Stivender
Caroline Williams

The Community Advisors meetings are on the following dates. The meeting location is at Nashville Public Radio, 630 Mainstream Dr., Nashville, TN 37228 and/or via zoom video conference calls.

February 11, 2015
August 12, 2015
November 11, 2015
February 10, 2016
May 11, 2016
August 17, 2016
November 9, 2017
March 1, 2017
February 28, 2018
June 22, 2018
September 28, 2018
January 17, 2019
April 26, 2019
Jan 16, 2020
April 17, 2020
July 24, 2020 Video Conference call
March 5, 2021
June 6, 2021
November 5, 2021
April 4, 2022
June 10, 2022
January 31, 2023
April 26, 2023
July 26, 2023
October 5, 2023

The Finance Committee meetings at 8:00 am on the following dates.
June 5, 2015 – Investment Performance Conference call
July 22, 2015- Investment Performance Conference call
October 19, 2015 – Investment Performance Conference call
January 19, 2016 – Annual meeting at Amsurg
June 14, 2016 – Investment Performance Conference call
June 16, 2017 – Investment Performance Conference call
July 20, 2017 – Investment Performance Conference call
October 17, 2017 – Investment Performance Conference call
January 18, 2018 – Annual Meeting at Amsurg
April 23, 2018 – Investment Performance Conference call
June 18, 2018 – Investment Performance Conference call
July 31, 2018 – Investment Performance Conference call
October 29, 2018 – Investment Performance Conference call
January 28, 2019 – Annual Meeting at Nashville Public Radio
April 29, 2019 Investment Performance Conference call
July 29, 2019 Investment Performance Conference call
October 28, 2019 Investment Performance Conference call
January 27, 2020 Annual Meeting Video Conference call
May 14, 2020 Investment Performance Conference call
September 14, 2020 Annual Budget Review Video Conference call
October 22, 2020 Audit Draft Review Video Conference call
July 13, 2021 FY2021 year-end investment review
October 13, 2021 Q1 financial and investment review
December 7, 2021 Review Audit with Auditors
January 18, 2022 Q2 financial and investment review
April 19, 2022 Q3 financial and investment review
May 3, 2022 FY23 proposed budget review
May 24, 2022 Present FY23 Budget to Board
July 19, 2022 Q4 financial review
August 2, 2022 year-end Investment review
October 18, 2022 Q1 financial and Investment review
December 6, 2022 Audit Review with auditors
January 24, 2023 Q2 financial and investment review
April 18, 2023 Q3 financial and review
May 9, 2023 FY23 Proposed Budget Review
May 23, 2023 Present FY23 Budget to Board
July 25, 2023 Q4 financial review
Sept 6, 2023 Financial Review
December 1, 2023 Financial Review
January 26, 2024 Financial Review

The Governance Committee meetings at 8:00 am on the following dates.
June 9 , 2015 at Bass, Berry, and Sims 150 3rd Ave S #2800, Nashville, TN 37201.
May 19, 2015 at Bass, Berry, and Sims 150 3rd Ave S #2800, Nashville, TN 37201.
December 2015 at Bass, Berry, and Sims 150 3rd Ave S #2800, Nashville, TN 37201.
May 19, 2016 at Bass, Berry, and Sims 150 3rd Ave S #2800, Nashville, TN 37201.
Committee meetings are now at DVL 700 12th Ave S, Nashville, TN 37203
February 22, 2018 Meet at DVL 700 12th Ave S, Nashville, TN 37203
January 30, 2019 Meet at DVL 700 12th Ave S, Nashville, TN 37203
May 29, 2019 Meet at Nashville Public Radio 630 Mainstream Dr, Nashville, TN 37228
October 22,2019 Meet at Nashville Public Radio 630 Mainstream Dr, Nashville, TN 37228
February 26, 2020 Video Conference call
September 29, 2020 Video Conference call
October 13, 2020 Video Conference call
December 12, 2020 Video Conference call
February 11, 2021 Video Conference Call
December 1, 2021 Create potential new Board member candidate list
February 16 , 2022 Finalize candidate list and committee calling assignments
March 9, 2022 Call candidates to determine interest
April 13, 2022 Finalize list for Board Vote
May 24, 2022 Present slate to Board for Vote
December 6, 2022 Create potential new Board member candidate list
February 14 , 2023 Finalize candidate list and committee calling assignments
April 25, 2023 Finalize list for Board Vote
February 13, 2024 Create potential new Board member candidate list

The Executive Committee Meets Monthly on the 1st Wednesday of each month via Teleconference.
July 27, 2015
February 22, 2016
June 21, 2016
October 17, 2017
March 13, 2018 Meeting via conference call
May 30, 2018 Meeting via conference call
August 7, 2018 Meeting via conference call
September 25, 2018 Meeting via conference call
January 22, 2019 Meeting via conference call
May 28, 2019 Meeting via conference call
November 1, 2019 Meeting via conference call\
August 16, 2021
November 11, 2021
January 12, 2022
April 13, 2022
May 24, 2022
August 17, 2022 September 13, 2022 Board meeting prep
November 16, 2022 December 13, 2022 Board meeting prep
January 11, 2023 February 21, 2023 Board meeting prep
April 12, 2023 May 23, 2023 Board meeting prep – review and approve CEO and staff compensation.
Meets Monthly on the 1st Wednesday of each month

Advancement Committee meetings are on the following dates. The meeting location is at Nashville Public Radio, 630 Mainstream Dr., Nashville, TN
Katy Varney
Byron Trauger
Sally Williams
Scott Clayton
Christopher Barkely

March 15, 2023
June 13, 2023
August 29, 2023
November 11, 2023
April 3, 2024
June 12, 2024
August 7, 2024
October 9, 2024

ANNUAL CPB LOCAL CONTENT AND SERVICES REPORT 2023
From CPB SAS Report 2023 – Filed March 30, 2023
CPB SAS Report

Describe your overall goals and approach to address identified community issues, needs, and interests through your station’s vital local services, such as multiplatform long and short-form content, digital and in-person engagement, education services, community information, partnership support, and other activities, and audiences you reached or new audiences you engaged.

To best serve our community, we had four guiding content principles for 2023On-the ground reporting

Accountability/investigative journalism
Stories that could impact policy discussions and cultural conversations
Stories that reflect and add depth to the experience of diverse communities
Events that would stimulate community conversations around some of the big issues in our community.The work mentioned below captures the major themes that emerged in the hundreds of stories our newsroom produced, aimed at achieving these principles.

Health Desk We’ve had a dedicated healthcare reporter for several years now, and we continued to offer our audience robust coverage in 2023 — around medical research findings, the changing health insurance landscape, Tennessee’s refusal to accept federal funding to expand its Medicaid program, opioid addiction and treatment, and how the pandemic affected the mental health of teens. The broader story of 2023 is of local and national politics shaping our healthcare coverage. When the Dobbs decision overturned Roe v Wade, Tennessee had a trigger law in place to kick in automatically one of the strictest in the country. So, we had coverage of physicians and patients finding themselves in legal gray areas — around what can be considered threatening to the life of a mother, for example. It was also a year in which the state legislature enacted several laws targeting the trans community, including a ban on gender affirming medical treatments for trans youth. We reported on families traveling to other states to receive treatment and the legal efforts to overturn the law.

Criminal Justice Desk Our most high-profile criminal justice coverage of 2023 centered around juvenile courts and detention. In partnership with ProPublica, our criminal justice reporter Paige Pfleger did an investigation into conditions at a juvenile detention center in Knoxville where teens were routinely being kept in isolation as punishment. This built on earlier reporting done by ProPublica and our reporter Meribah Knight on the juvenile court in Rutherford County, Tennessee, where the judge was sending kids into incarceration without legal basis. That reporting led to the podcast The Kids of Rutherford County that we did in partnership with Serial and the New York Times. It rose to the top of the Apple Podcasts chart. We also did investigative work around Tennessee’s gun laws, diving deep into data to uncover failures of our current laws to protect victims of domestic violence. And with a mass shooting at Nashville’s Covenant School last spring, we had a lot of coverage of protests and a legislative special session on public safety that was called by the governor in response to the shooting, a session defined by protests and a lack of action by lawmakers.

Education Desk A Tennessee state law was enacted in 2023 — in response to learning setbacks during COVID — that required third graders to score at a certain level of competency in reading on standardized tests in order to move up to fourth grade. We did a lot of coverage around this, as there was a lot to clarify, and the law affected a lot of families — around 60% of third graders scored below the threshold in initial testing. Most families were able to avoid a repeat of the 3^rd grade by either retaking the test with a higher score, attending mandatory summer school, or signing up for tutoring. We also did a lot of culture war coverage — as local school boards became contentious, first over masks and vaccines and then over books and trans athletes. In higher ed, we’ve been keeping a close eye on a funding fight between Tennessee State University, a public HBCU, and the state government. A federal audit found that the state has been underfunding the land grant university for years, but the state disagrees. In the last half of 2023, a group of state lawmakers started meeting to discuss whether Tennessee should become the first state to reject federal education funding, and we’ve been covering that as well.

Environment Desk We’ve did a lot of reporting in 2023 on the Tennessee Valley Authority, our statewide source of electric power. The TVA has continued to put a lot of resources into developing new fossil fuel power plants as the Biden administration pushes for more renewables. In December of 2023, we covered a severe cold snap that resulted in rolling blackouts in Middle Tennessee. This was due in part to failures at fossil fuel power plants during the extreme cold. Our region was no stranger to extreme weather in 2023, and we covered it through a lens of global climate change and intensifying extremes. We experienced several rounds of destructive tornadoes in the state as well as a prolonged drought. We also did stories on endangered species, city recycling policy, tree canopy degradation, water quality, how the warming climate is changing the state’s growing season and what garden zone we’re in, and the protesting of a natural gas pipeline.

State Government We’ve got a reporter at the Capitol every day of each state legislative session. 2023 was a particularly high-profile session for the state’s governing body. Much of the attention came after the previously mentioned Covenant School Shooting. Three democratic representatives were reprimanded for leading a protest inside the gallery. Two of those lawmakers — both Black — were then kicked out of the legislature. Both were reappointed by their local city councils, and both were reelected in a special election. We did a lot of coverage of the often-tense relationship between state lawmakers and a group of mothers from the Covenant School, who showed up every day holding signs, having press conferences, and pressuring lawmakers to enact gun reforms. The legislature responded, at one point, by banning Capitol spectators from holding signs, a rule that was controversially enforced by the Tennessee Highway Control. (This led to a successful lawsuit from the ACLU.)

Music and Arts Coverage Our Senior Music Writer Jewly Hight did robust reporting from Nashville’s music scene in 2023, with a focus on artists outside of the mainstream of what Nashville is typically known for. There was an emphasis on artists of color and queer artists. Also in 2023, the Tennessee State University marching band won a couple of Grammys, which we were delighted to cover. Jewly did a feature story on the band.

Metro / City Government Our Metro reporter reported from Metro Council meetings and tracked and explained complex city government issues to our audience. This also overlapped with our coverage of state government in 2023 — as tension with between the city and state ramped up through the passage of several state bills that targeted Nashville’s self-governance. For example, the state passed laws giving the state a majority of appointments for Nashville’s airport and sports authorities, which led to ongoing litigation. The tension between city and state was cited in polls as a top issue for voters in the mayoral election we had in 2023, which we covered closely. Our Metro desk also focused closely on affordable housing (Nashville has outpaced most of the country in rising housing costs) and transportation infrastructure.

This Is Nashville Our daily mid-day talk show had its first full year on the air in 2023. It hosted countless conversations with locals on topics important to our city.

The NashVillager We launched an ambitious daily newsletter in 2023, it has a hosted / narrative style that reads like a letter from a friend. Not only does it expose our journalism to a different audience, it aims to spark conversations about what it means to live in Nashville and how we interact with each other.

The Kids of Rutherford County live event We held a sold-out event at a local independent movie theater. Our reporter Meribah Knight, who hosted and produced The Kids of Rutherford County podcast, had a conversation on stage with Madeline Baran, host of In the Dark from The New Yorker.

Describe key initiatives and the variety of partners with whom you collaborated, including other public media outlets, community nonprofits, government agencies, educational institutions, the business community, teachers, and parents, etc. This will illustrate the many ways you’re connected across the community and engaged with other important organizations in the area.

NPR – We’ve been the go-to source for NPR when national news breaks in our region, and our voices are on the national airwaves often.
ProPublica – co-reported with us on criminal justice stories on guns and juvenile detention and helped us develop The Kids of Rutherford County with the New York Times.
Nashville Noticias – WPLN news reporters continue to do biweekly reports in Spanish for the community news outlet, Nashville Noticias. This includes a 45-minute Facebook Live conversation on Wednesdays and a weekly news roundup on Fridays.
Kaiser Health News – we continued to participate in the partnership among KHN, NPR and local member stations.
NPR Music – we have an ongoing relationship for live sessions from our Sonic Cathedral to be included on NPR music’s web site. Many of our featured artists appear on “Song of the Day,” and much of our editorial work is distributed nationally as well.
Do615 – each week we collaborate with the events site for What Where Whens-day, a comprehensive list of performances, theme nights, and general stuff to do in the music scene.

Our music station WNXP produces these special features throughout 2023:

Nashville Artist of the Month – we highlight a local artist each month through their personal playlists, a featured profile, a live performance video, interviews, and tracks. We’re able to provide additional exposure through our relationships with NPR Music, which often features local artists in the national “Song of the Day,” to sister station WPLN, which airs the feature profiles.
Record of the Week – focuses on an album of merit, introducing new songs daily with selected quotes from exclusive artist interviews and culminating in a feature that varies from non-narrated audio postcards to in depth interviews. Local artists often make the cut.
Thematic Static – listener recommendations power this 5-song theme set. The series rotates between fun, thoughtful and timely.
What Where Whens-day – is our weekly arts, culture, and events series to keep listeners aware of what is happening in the area.

What impact did your key initiatives and partnerships have in your community? Describe any known measurable impact, such as increased awareness, learning or understanding about particular issues. Describe indicators of success, such as connecting people to needed resources or strengthening conversational ties across diverse neighborhoods. Did a partner see an increase in requests for related resources? Please include direct feedback from a partner(s) or from a person(s) served.

One obvious answer is that our reporting with ProPublica from 2022 on the juvenile court in Rutherford County was developed into a podcast with Serial and the New York Times. It was number one on the Apple Podcasts charts for several days and go millions of downloads. A live event we held for that podcast was sold out, and a live discussion of juvenile justice.

With the launch of a daily newsletter in 2023, we have been able to extend the reach and impact of our reporting. With over 18,000 subscribers and a roughly 55%, it is opened by around 10,000 Middle Tennesseans each weekday morning.

Please describe any efforts (e.g. programming, production, engagement activities) you have made to investigate and/or meet the needs of minority and other diverse audiences (including, but not limited to, new immigrants, people for whom English is a second language and illiterate adults) during Fiscal Year 2023, and any plans you have made to meet the needs of these audiences during Fiscal Year 2024. If you regularly broadcast in a language other than English, please note the language broadcast.

During the 2020 protests in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, we made a commitment to facilitating understanding and fostering conversation around equity and race. We been intentional about tracking the ethnicity of our sources to ensure that we’re reflecting the breadth of our diverse community and increasing the diversity of our staff to bring greater awareness to our blind spots and the inherent perspectives in our coverage.

In 2023, we provided coverage of issues affecting our region’s diverse immigrant communities; the area’s indigenous history and efforts to celebrate, preserve and protect indigenous cultures; Nashville’s civil rights history and Black culture and the many ways that race and sexual identity have bubbled up into our state and local politics.

On the birthday of Andrew Jackson, we covered a protest at his historic home, organized by Nashville’s indigenous community offering a counter-narrative to Jackson’s legacy. When city planners started mapping plans to build a new NFL stadium and redevelop a large section of downtown Nashville, we hosted a conversation on our local show with indigenous activists calling on city leaders to study and protect indigenous history buried beneath.

When war broke out in the Middle East, we did a feature story where we spoke with three generations from Nashville’s Palestinian community about their perspective on the history of the conflict. We also reported from inside an emotional interfaith conversation on the conflict, pro-Palestine protests and vigils held by Nashville’s Jewish community.

“Alternate Ending” We produced a one-hour radio special in which a reporter explores changes in the historically Black neighborhood she knew as a kid, how the city’s decision to route a major interstate through it undermined it decades ago, and how gentrification is tearing at its fabric today as it begins to bounce back. After the special aired, we held a live discussion event.

The special aired March 21 (plus re-airings) and was accompanied by two community events meant to extend the conversation on how community is built and lost through public policy.The podcast version of the special topped 4,000 downloads.

We also closely covered the racially tinged ousting by the Tennessee legislature of two Black representatives who participated in protests inside the Capitol chambers over gun control.

The legislature also passed laws targeting the state’s LGBTQ community in 2023, including bans on drag performances and gender-affirming healthcare for trans teens. In addition to reporting on these issues and interviewing those affected, we hosted hourlong conversations about them on our daily show.

And we continued our partnership with Nashville Noticias in an effort to bring our news coverage to Spanish-speaking Tennesseans.

Please assess the impact that your CPB funding had on your ability to serve your community. What were you able to do with your grant that you wouldn’t be able to do if you didn’t receive it?

With the financial headwinds facing so many public media news organizations, including ours, CPB funding is arguably more important than ever to our effort to bring robust local news to our community. We have aggressively grown our local newsroom in recent years, making much of the above possible and garnering national recognition and awards.

Financial pressures are currently our biggest challenge as we try to continue to grow our coverage and reach a broader, more diverse audience through multi-platform transformation. Like other stations, our audience is more diffuse than it used to be, as the media landscape fractures and goes online. But we also know that our potential audience is larger than ever, as our region continues to grow quickly.

In addition to direct funding of the station, we also were able to participate in Poynter’s Digital Transformation Project in 2023, which I understand is funded in large part by the CPB. That project led to the launch of our newsletter and is continuing to show results through a station-wide multi-platform mindset and several new projects we have in the works, including a daily local news podcast and a sharp increase in our online coverage.

ANNUAL CPB LOCAL CONTENT AND SERVICES REPORT 2022
From CPB SAS Report 2022 – Filed March 30, 2023

Local Content and Services Report – 2022
CPB SAS Report

Local Content and Services Report – 2022
CPB SAS Report

To best serve our community, we had four content principles for 2022:

On-the ground reporting
Accountability/investigative journalism
Stories that could impact policy discussions and cultural conversations.
Stories that reflect and add depth to the experience of diverse communities

The work mentioned below captures some of the over 1,200 stories aimed at achieving these principles.

Keeping an eye on flooding. The newsroom continued to cover the aftermath of devastating floods in Waverly. We specifically checked in on the only Chinese family in Waverly, whose restaurant was swept away, and a family seeking to rebuild. We also covered the governor’s efforts to relocate schools from the flood plains around the state. Highlights included an intimate look at graduates of Waverly High School, who have come of age amid a time of tragedy.

The Tennessee legislative session: Lawmakers wrapped up a busy legislative session in late April. WPLN’s Blaise Gainey reported on key legislation, including measures dealing with transgender students, public school libraries, sentencing, homelessness and pipeline regulation.

Abortion: WPLN News was a leader in the Southeast in covering the impact of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health. We asked listeners to share their reproductive health experiences, an approach that led to three features, including a national story on a pair of sisters who made different choices on abortion and another national feature that explored the potential consequences of overturning Roe v. Wade for women who experience miscarriages and dangerous pregnancies.

Pipeline spill: WPLN environmental reporter Caroline Eggers broke the story of a pipeline spill in West Tennessee — the second-largest in the state’s history. By scouring public records, she discovered that more than 200,000 gallons of crude oil had spilled from a gash in the Mid-Valley Pipeline in Chester County, information that state regulators had not shared with the public. She has been diligently reporting on the clean-up and the aftermath of the spill, including the possibility that it may have impacted local waterways.

This Is Nashville: Our daily, hourlong show with a focus of including all Nashville communities and voices. Some highlights include a remembrance of Fisk Jubilee Singers director Paul Kwami; and an episode devoted to birth control availability in Tennessee in the wake of the Dobbs decision. Our recurring series ‘Citizen Nashville,’ focuses on rounding up resources for the community. A recent episode was about living with a disability — inspired by community engagement with a source who lives with cerebral palsy and a historic Black church in Hendersonville that started as a rock where enslaved people worshiped.

Health Care Desk COVID-19 continued to demand a focus in 2022. In addition, WPLN News reported on many other health care issues of community importance, from inequities in health care access to hospice care and medical fraud.

Vaccine expansion. As the coronavirus vaccine became more widely accessible this, the next step was exploring who was opting out of it, and why. Health care reporter Blake Farmer reported both on vaccine hesitancy in rural parts of the state and on targeted efforts to reach certain populations, including Muslims during the holiday of Ramadan, Kurdish-Americans after the death of a prominent community member, and soldiers at Fort Campbell. Because of the national interest in this topic, many of these stories aired nationally as well.

COVID-19 special session. The state legislature reconvened for two special sessions this quarter, including one that focused on limiting the government’s ability to implement COVID-19 restrictions. State politics reporter Blaise Gainey and health care reporter Blake Farmer covered the various new laws and their implications in the state, including a series of lawsuits over new rules regarding vaccine mandates.

Health care news beyond COVID-19. The newsroom balanced returning to priorities such as medical debt and the health care infrastructure while also covering the deadly COVID delta surge. This included stories about patient billing lawsuits, ECMO life support, medical marijuana bills, traveling nurses, and an ICU nursing shortage.

Describe key initiatives and the variety of partners with whom you collaborated, including other public media outlets, community nonprofits, government agencies, educational institutions, the business community, teachers and parents, etc. This will illustrate the many ways you’re connected across the community and engaged with other important organizations in the area.

Nashville Noticias – WPLN news reporters continue to do biweekly reports in Spanish for the community news outlet, Nashville Noticias. This includes a 45-minute Facebook Live conversation on Wednesdays and a weekly news roundup on Fridays.

Report For America – funded our first-ever environmental reporting position.

Kaiser Health News – we continue to participate in the partnership among KHN, NPR and local member stations. We also joined the new KHN southern bureau hub in late 2021.

NPR Music – we have an ongoing relationship for live sessions from our Sonic Cathedral to be included on NPR music’s web site. Many of our featured artists appear on “Song of the Day,” and much of our editorial work is distributed nationally as well. For instance, the Slingshot City Scenes series focused on how Nashville arts, music and healthcare sectors have navigated the pandemic.

Investigations: WPLN’s special projects team completed an investigative report that spurred a leadership change at a prominent Tennessee nonprofit. This reporting included numerous sources and public records requests and was completed in partnership with a freelance journalist and another nonprofit newsroom, The Tennessee Lookout, and represents our newsroom’s ambitions to deliver accountability journalism.

Please describe any efforts (e.g. programming, production, engagement activities) you have made to investigate and/or meet the needs of minority and other diverse audiences (including, but not limited to, new immigrants, people for whom English is a second language and illiterate adults) during Fiscal Year 2021, and any plans you have made to meet the needs of these audiences during Fiscal Year 2022. If you regularly broadcast in a language other than English, please note the language broadcast.

In addition to the various reporting mentioned above, here are other highlights of our efforts:

MLK Day on WNXP: The station aired a 12-hour playlist focused exclusively on African American artists, past and present, with hosts giving insight into the critical contributions to American music from artists ranging from Nina Simone to Kendrick Lamar.

WNXP & WPLN cross-over journalism: Our arts reporting partnership between stations provided opportunities for stories about the Tennessee State University’s marching band, an African American wind symphony, music venues reacting to Covid legislation and how one of the city’s only jazz venues faced issues with federal COVID relief.

Please assess the impact that your CPB funding had on your ability to serve your community. What were you able to do with your grant that you wouldn’t be able to do if you didn’t receive it?

CPB funding accounts for 5% of Nashville Public Radio’s operating budget but this money is critical, as it helps the station be more than just an NPR outlet by supporting the production of local programming that reflects the uniqueness of Nashville.

In short, CPB funding allows us to be a distinctively local, Nashville service. This is important, given that more and more information and entertainment choices available to our listeners do not originate from or reflect the community our listeners call their home.

ANNUAL CPB LOCAL CONTENT AND SERVICES REPORT 2021
From CPB SAS Report 2021 – Filed March 30, 2022

Local Content and Services Report – 2021
CPB SAS Report

To best serve our community, we had four guiding content principles for 2021:

On-the ground reporting
Accountability/investigative journalism
Stories that could impact policy discussions and cultural conversations
Stories that reflect and add depth to the experience of diverse communities

The work mentioned below captures some of the nearly 1,300 stories aimed at achieving these principles.

Health Care Desk From the delta variant to the rise of omicron, COVID-19 demanded a steadfast focus in 2021. While covering the pandemic’s ripple effects, WPLN News also strove to track other health care issues of community importance, from inequities in health care access to hospice care and medical fraud.

Vaccine rollout. The big national story with a huge local impact at the beginning of 2021 was the increasing availability of COVID-19 vaccines. Our reporting strived to be a basic source of information on how to access the vaccines, while also holding state and local governments accountable for their commitment to prioritize equity in their rollout. Health care reporter Blake Farmer’s reporting also was relied upon by the national networks as they tried to make sense of how the rollout was different across the country.
Vaccine expansion. As the coronavirus vaccine became more widely accessible this, the next step was exploring who was opting out of it, and why. Health care reporter Blake Farmer reported both on vaccine hesitancy in rural parts of the state and on targeted efforts to reach certain populations, including Muslims during the holiday of Ramadan, Kurdish-Americans after the death of a prominent community member, and soldiers at Fort Campbell. Because of the national interest in this topic, many of these stories aired nationally as well.
COVID-19 special session. The state legislature reconvened for two special sessions this quarter, including one that focused on limiting the government’s ability to implement COVID-19 restrictions. State politics reporter Blaise Gainey and health care reporter Blake Farmer covered the various new laws and their implications in the state, including a series of lawsuits over new rules regarding vaccine mandates.
Health care news beyond COVID-19. The newsroom balanced returning to priorities such as medical debt and the health care infrastructure while also covering the deadly COVID delta surge. This included stories about patient billing lawsuits, ECMO life support, medical marijuana bills, traveling nurses, and an ICU nursing shortage.

WPLN joined the newly established Kaiser Health News southern bureau in late 2021. The station will now work closely with non-radio reporters and editors from around the South to shape stories that will be pushed primarily to non-radio national media outlets.

Criminal Justice Desk We began the year with several follow-up stories on the Christmas Day bombing and questions regarding the Metro Nashville Police Department’s missed opportunities to investigate the man who denotated the bomb, which devastated one of the remaining historic sections of the city’s downtown. We shifted to preparation for the trial of the first Nashville police officer to be charged with murder while on duty. That case ended in a controversial plea deal on the eve of the trial. We covered the ramifications on the family, the potential impact on the political future of the District Attorney, and the promised changes by MNPD in the wake of the charges and sentencing of the officer. Meanwhile, police shootings in 2021 hit their highest number since the department began tracking such incidents nearly two decades ago. We began examining each of the shootings looking for trends and unpacking the way police are trained.

Arts, Music & Culture Desk The creative community in Nashville is a major part of the city’s reputation in the South, and across the country. Early in 2021, WPLN News established a new reporting desk devoted to these areas with the hiring of Paige Pfleger. Her work aims to dive deeper into representations across the arts — we’re asking tough questions about who is left out of the Music City brand, who has a voice and a platform here, and how culture intersects politics, education, religion, and more . This has led to stories ranging from Nashville’s new Black symphony to the influence of religious leaders on people’s decision to get the COVID vaccination to the removal of the Nathan Bedford Forrest monument at the state capitol.

Education Desk This is another newly establish beat, as WPLN added an education reporter, Juliana Kim, in May. COVID’s impact on schools and learning dominated initial coverage from the beat with stories about the resiliency of high school graduates, COVID relief money for schools, the governor’s executive order banning mask mandates, schools districts hesitating to request to go virtual under pressure from legislators, and questions about whether schools were over-quarantining.

Environment Desk Through a partnership with Report For America, WPLN was able to hire our first environmental reporter, Caroline Eggers. The timing could not have been better. Of the 18 billion-dollar weather disasters in 2021, Tennessee experienced six of them. Caroline’s stories have ranged from the future risks of tornadoes, stream restoration efforts to mitigate flooding, and tussles between developers and green space advocates to the growing number of heat advisories, workers safety at TVA coal plants, the end of emission testing for cars, and baby bobcats sighted in an urban park.

Special Projects

Behind The Blue Wall WPLN’s Samantha Max produced this investigation, in partnership with APM Reports, about how law enforcement treat their own. She took a year’s worth of reporting and created an hourlong radio special exploring what’s been described as a toxic culture of misconduct and retaliation within the Metro Nashville Police Department, and the disciplinary system that has allowed that culture to thrive. We will continue to track the impact of this story.
Surging In Silence This series was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center. It examined the effects of domestic and sexual violence in the pandemic in Memphis and Nashville. It included stories about the uptick in clients at sexual assault centers, how advocates and law enforcement feared the impact of a new permit-less gun carry law on violence survivors, and how hair stylists and barbers are learning to spot the signs of domestic abuse.
Three Castles & The Music City In October of 1871, the oldest university in Nashville teetered on the brink of collapse. To survive, Fisk staked its last $40 on a set of field hymns and 10 descendants of American slavery. The singing group carried melodies their families shared in secret from the cotton fields of Middle Tennessee to the crowned heads of Europe. These landmark tours of the Fisk Jubilee Singers rescued a university, pioneered global touring, and brought American music to the world. This one-hour special combined old and new performances, contemporary poetry and the words of the original emissaries to celebrate 150 years of the heralded ensemble.
The Promise Special This hour-long broadcast delved back into history, chronicling the Nashville’s epic 43-year battle over school desegregation and the devastating sacrifices one Black family made in the name of progress and equity. The special served as a completion point for our 2020 podcast, The Promise Season 2. The podcast was honored with a Peabody Award in June.

Black Children Were Jailed For A Crime That Doesn’t Exist. Almost Nothing Happened To The Adults In Charge. This co-reported piece by WPLN’s Meribah Knight and ProPublica’s Ken Armstrong was based on a year-long investigation into the Rutherford County juvenile justice system. The county locked up a staggering 48% of children referred to juvenile court. The state-wide average was 5%. The county’s first and only juvenile court judge had instituted an illegal “filter” system in which children were jailed if deemed a “true threat.” No parameters were ever set for defining “true threat.” This reporting will become a podcast in 2022.

Of Note

The aftermath of the Christmas Day bombing: In January 2021, as the city was reeling from a damaging explosion in downtown Nashville, many people started to ask the question: “How did this happen?” We dug into whether the police made critical errors in preventing the attack and how AT&T’s infrastructure allowed such a massive power outage to happen.
The legislative session: The legislature reconvened in January and started introducing a slew of anti-LGBT legislation, which has become one of the focus areas of our coverage. We connected these proposals to a nationwide effort to reframe the conversation around LGBT rights. We also followed the governor-backed “constitutional carry” measures.
Tornado anniversary package, “The Disaster Year:” In a newsroom-wide effort in March, led by editor Tony Gonzalez, we tracked the physical and psychological rebuilding of the region one year after tornadoes caused widespread damage. (Of course, the year since that disaster has been anything but healing.) The digital package included an interactive map, photos and a dozen stories about Middle Tennessee’s “disaster year.”
Waverly flooding: In August, a massive flood killed almost two dozen people in Humphries County and left hundreds without homes. We sent reporters to cover the scene immediately afterward and have continued to go out there to keep track of the recovery process. WPLN’s Caroline Eggers and Damon Mitchell were the key reporters on this story; Damon also looked into the hesitation that some residents feel about the possibility of rebuilding in a flood-prone part of the county.
COVID-19 special legislative session: The state legislature reconvened for two special sessions this quarter, including one that focused on limiting the government’s ability to implement COVID-19 restrictions. State politics reporter Blaise Gainey and health care reporter Blake Farmer covered the various new laws and their implications in the state, including a series of lawsuits over new rules regarding vaccine mandates.

More natural disasters: Tornadoes ripped through Kentucky and parts of Middle Tennessee in mid-December, sending the newsroom into breaking news mode overnight. Our reporters went to Kingston Springs and southern Kentucky to cover the damage, and afterward, environmental reporter Caroline Eggers started producing enterprise stories about what we know and don’t know about the tornado outbreak.

The rising cost of housing: The newsroom produced many stories on one of the most immediate issues facing many Nashvillians, thanks in part to Metro reporter Ambriehl Crutchfield making housing a focus of her beat. She and others reported stories on rising rent prices, tension and celebrations over new affordable housing, and a mobile home park that was sold to developers.

WNXP, New Music Discovery
2021 marked the first full year of our new music discovery format, which strives to reflect the depth and diversity of our musical community through arts journalism and host context on daily playlists. The focus of the daily playlists ranges from emerging to established artists with a special emphasis on the artists based in Nashville and the music made here. Diversity, equity and inclusion factor heavily into the musical and editorial choices made on WNXP. Examples include critical conversations with authors like Maureen Mahon and Regina Bradley who speak to the overlooked role of black women in rock or the undervalued impact of Southern culture on hip hop to the practical aspects of working musicians and the factors that impact them like the story of two African American artists explaining how the pandemic has changed their outlook on dealing with implicit bias in the industry.

WNXP established these ongoing features in 2021:

Nashville Artist of the Month – we highlight a local artist each month through their personal playlists, a featured profile, a live performance video, interviews and tracks. We’re able to provide additional exposure through our relationships with NPR Music, which often features local artists in the national “Song of the Day,” to sister station WPLN, which airs the feature profiles.
Record of the Week – focuses on an album of merit, introducing new songs daily with selected quotes from exclusive artist interviews and culminating in a feature that varies from non-narrated audio postcards to in depth interviews. Local artists often make the cut.
Thematic Static – listener recommendations power this 5-song theme set. The series rotates between fun, thoughtful and timely, for instance a dive into music history with “Forgotten Favorites” over Memorial Day, a tribute to Black artists, authors and community voices on Juneteenth and a spotlight on the reemergence of independent music retail after lockdown on Record Store Day.
Culture Club – an interview series that delves deeply into the artist and challenges within the music industry. Examples include a conversation with Daphne Brooks, Author of “Liner Notes on the Revolution.”
Community Beats – a series of produced stories about music creators/innovators in Nashville and Middle Tennessee. Examples include a three-part special focused on the creators of an organization focused on education and community building for the city’s R&B and hip-hop scenes.
In Scene – our weekly collaboration with the Nashville Scene explores all sides of the music community — from venues to audience to artists.
What Where Whens-day – is our weekly arts, culture and events series to keep listeners aware of what is happening in the area.

And this short-run series:

Touching Base – Nashville artists who released music during the pandemic shared their stories in their own voices.

Describe key initiatives and the variety of partners with whom you collaborated, including other public media outlets, community nonprofits, government agencies, educational institutions, the business community, teachers and parents, etc. This will illustrate the many ways you’re connected across the community and engaged with other important organizations in the area.

Report For America – funded our first-ever environmental reporting position.

ProPublica – co-reported with us on a one-year investigation into the Rutherford County juvenile justice system.

APM Reports – partnered with us on editorial, research and data for the Behind The Blue Wall, an investigation into accounts of a toxic culture of misconduct and retaliation with the Metro Police Department. This was part of the public media accountability initiative supported by CPB.

Fisk Jubilee Singers, Curb Records and the National Poetry Foundation – collaborated with us to produce 3 Castles & the Music City, 150 Years of the Fisk Jubilee Singers. The one-air special aired locally and on nine public radio stations across the country.

Kaiser Health News – we continue to participate in the partnership among KHN, NPR and local member stations. We also joined the new KHN southern bureau hub in late 2021.

Nashville Scene – each week the alt-weekly’s music editor, Stephen Trageser discusses the local music scene with WNXP editorial director, Jewly Hight.

Do615 – each week we collaborate with the events site for What Where Whens-day, a comprehensive list of performances, theme nights, and general stuff to do in the music scene.

Our co-reporting with ProPublica to investigate the Rutherford County juvenile justice system — the illegal “filter” system of arrests put in place by the county’s first and only juvenile court judge, Donna Davenport — had the most far-reaching effect of any of our work. After our initial report and a follow-up, members of Congress called for a Department of Justice investigation. Tennessee Democratic lawmakers and members of the Black Caucus called on the state attorney general to investigate and introduced legislation to remove Judge Davenport. The state’s Republican Governor called for a review by the Board of Judicial Conduct. Middle Tennessee State University removed Davenport’s as an adjunct professor. Candidates announced their intention to run against her in the 2022 election — the first time she would have faced opposition in more than 20 years. Early in 2022, she announced her intention to retire. The investigation into the country’s system of arrests and detainment continues.

Please describe any efforts (e.g. programming, production, engagement activities) you have made to investigate and/or meet the needs of minority and other diverse audiences (including, but not limited to, new immigrants, people for whom English is a second language and illiterate adults) during Fiscal Year 2021, and any plans you have made to meet the needs of these audiences during Fiscal Year 2022. If you regularly broadcast in a language other than English, please note the language broadcast.

In addition to the various reporting mentioned above, here are other highlights of our efforts:

Spotlighting art & culture: January brought the opening of the National Museum of African-American Music, a long-awaited institution that’s infusing Black culture into a historically white Lower Broadway. WPLN’s Metro reporter Ambriehl Crutchfield explored the meaning of location in her story about the first Black-owned restaurants to open in the same development, and our partnership with sister station WNXP brought profiles of groundbreaking artists like Joy Olakudan, Yola and Allison Russell. We featured the first Kursish American to win the biennial Tennessee Craft competition and the new mural on Nolensville Pike about the essential role of Nashville’s immigrant construction workers.

Spotlighting health care in immigrant communities: Covid propelled us to several stories about the inequities exposed by the pandemic, including a piece on the plan reach immigrant and non-English speaking Nashvillians to boost vaccination rates. Plus, we delighted in a joy story about how the pandemic changed the game (in a good way) for Nashville parents learning English.

Nashville’s budget and community power: The city’s budget process is often dry and hard to follow, but the past year has brought renewed interest in community input into finances. Metro reporter Ambriehl Crutchfield created a new community engagement platform, Nash In The Know, to solicit questions about the Metro government, and then she created several easy-to-consume explainers for the web and radio on how the process worked. She also looked at the role that race played in this year’s public discussions.

Follow-ups on local racial equity demands: Around the anniversary of George Floyd’s death and the subsequent protests for racial equity, producer Alexis Marshall checked in on a dozen demands that activists made last year to see how much — if any — progress had been made. We also created a Race & Equity category page on our website to allow people to find all our reporting on the topic.

Juneteenth celebration: WNXP presented a day-long tribute to Black artists, authors and community voices. WPLN produced an interactive map displaying more than 45 Juneteenth celebrations across Middle Tennessee.

Please assess the impact that your CPB funding had on your ability to serve your community. What were you able to do with your grant that you wouldn’t be able to do if you didn’t receive it?

CPB funding accounts for just under 7% of Nashville Public Radio’s operating budget but this money is critical, as it helps the station be more than just an NPR outlet by supporting the production of local programming that reflects the uniqueness of Nashville.

ANNUAL CPB LOCAL CONTENT AND SERVICES REPORT 2020
From CPB SAS Report 2020 – Filed February 2021

QUESTION #1
Describe your overall goals and approach to address identified community issues, needs, and interests through your station’s vital local services, such as multiplatform long and short-form content, digital and in-person engagement, education services, community information, partnership support, and other activities, and audiences you reached or new audiences you engaged.

ANSWER QUESTION #1
Health Care Desk
In 2020, COVID-19 clarified and amplified the need for reliable, research-based health care reporting. As the pandemic touched every facet of life, Nashville Public Radio’s health care desk produced impactful pieces on protective gear, contact tracing, racial disparities in testing and care, the effects on elder care, strain on health care providers, clinical vaccine trials and questions of distribution. Over the course of the year, we hosted three one-hour specials:

Coronavirus in Tennessee: What We Know – March 16, 2020

Coronavirus in Tennessee: Education in Isolation – March 23, 2020

Coronavirus in Tennessee: What We’ve Learned About COVID-19 – November 10, 2020

This year Nashville Public Radio became the most productive public radio member station of the Kaiser Health News Network, appearing on national shows and platforms 35 times.

Criminal Justice Desk
Our partnership with Report for America to fund a criminal justice reporter resulted in an ambitious investigation on the use-of-force policies of the Metro Nashville Police Department. We crafted a five-part podcast series, Deadly Force, about the events leading up to a shooting and subsequent murder charge for an on-duty MNPD officer — the first such charge in Nashville history. Meanwhile, we committed substantial resources to covering social justice protests after the killing of George Floyd and to the impact of COVID-19 on the incarcerated. Our work in these areas motivated us to apply and be accepted for Phase 2 of the APM/CPB Public Media Accountability Initiative.

Our Podcasts
While work from home realities played havoc on podcast production, there were three far-reaching series:

The Promise entered its second season by grappling with public education and race. Still centered in the neighborhood which is home to Nashville’s largest public housing complex, The Promise asked an essential question: Why are two elementary schools, located within a mile of each other, almost completely segregated? The series dove deep into the city’s 43-year battle over desegregation and how the neighborhood remains divided over race and economics. The New Yorker once again included The Promise on its “Top Ten” list, and CNN hailed it as one of the “podcasts that helped us get through some of 2020’s toughest conversations.”

Versify devoted its season to the Nashville Freedom Riders of the 1960s. Tennessee Agricultural and Industrial State University, now known as Tennessee State University, expelled 14 students for participating in 1961’s Freedom Summer —activities intent on bringing the right to vote to Black citizens in the South. Forty years later, TSU bestowed honorary degrees on these students. Versify told the powerful personal accounts of four of them and turned their words into poetry.

Finally, our podcast Classically Speaking, which focuses on the people who make brilliant classical music, found its groove in the time of virtual performances by connecting with musicians and composers in a radically altered year. One particularly notable episode drew on the new approach to a famed holiday special, the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from King’s College. The podcast also leaned into questions about race and gender equity.

Special Projects: These efforts reflect the awareness of audience needs and commitment to community relationships:

A Radio Wake for John Prine
John Prine was a legendary songwriter and an inspiration to new generations of music makers. He contracted COVID-19 and died in March. In normal times, he would have had a funeral and memorial service befitting a country/folk music legend, but these weren’t normal times. So, we had a memorial on the radio, talking to fans from around the country, fellow musicians, and engineers. The hour-long tribute broke our internet, with so many people trying to listen live that our servers crashed.

Breaking PointsIn this six-part non-narrated series, we passed the microphone to Black Nashvillians to hear the first time they realized the threat that whiteness and racism creates in their lives and impacts who they might imagine the future. We then took those six stories to craft a half-hour Breaking Points radio special.

Left Without Care – a collaboration with APM Reports, this 3-part series, based on more than a year of reporting, explored a for-profit system of psychiatric facilities for children in Tennessee. It exposed squalid conditions, high staff turnover, violence and little oversight by state agencies which refer children to these centers.

Nashville Noticias – each week one of our Spanish-speaking reporters joins in a Facebook live Q&A about the news of the week. This represents our most significant partnership with community media. It grew out of outreach efforts in 2019.

Student Composer Fellowship – our first cohort of fellows successfully premiered their work, with the help of musicians from the Nashville community. Given social distancing needs, the premieres were virtual, but compelling performances, nonetheless. Our second cohort is currently underway.

Of Note:

Super Tuesday Tornadoes Hours before the polls opened for Super Tuesday voting, Middle Tennessee was struck by several tornadoes, with winds up to EF-4 speed. Our newsroom immediately jumped into action, filing story after story from the front lines of the damage in North Nashville, Germantown, East Nashville, Mt. Juliet and Cookeville. That morning was the first “breaking news level 4” situation — our top tier of crisis coverage — we’ve faced in years, arguably in a decade. And that evening was Super Tuesday, during which we had live, anchored updates throughout the evening.

WNXP – New Music Discovery – in November of 2020, we launched our new music format. WNXP to capture Nashville’s music scene. We champion new voices and curate a music experience that reflects an authentic musical journey based on quality, creativity, and the diversity of our many communities.

Christmas Day Bombing – In a year of traumatic and surreal news coverage, the final week was no different. On Christmas morning, a man set off a bomb in downtown Nashville, killing himself and severely damaging dozens of buildings. That sent the newsroom into breaking news level 4 for the second time in 2020. We covered the unfolding details and strived to be a vital public service with our coverage of public safety and the AT&T outage.

QUESTION #2
Describe key initiatives and the variety of partners with whom you collaborated, including other public media outlets, community nonprofits, government agencies, educational institutions, the business community, teachers and parents, etc. This will illustrate the many ways you’re connected across the community and engaged with other important organizations in the area.

ANSWER FOR QUESTION #2
For this season of Versify, we continued our collaboration with “The Porch,” a Nashville literary nonprofit, and partnered with Choral Arts Link and Intersection (a contemporary ensemble) for the multi-media event “From The Back Of The Bus” at Fisk University in February.

Our APM Reports partnership took on two fronts through the Left Without Care series and several stories about harassment, retaliation, and discrimination within the Metro Nashville Police Department.

Our relationship with Nashville Noticias opened a new audience for Nashville Public Radio content and offered up a model for how to expand into non-traditional communities. It’s also encouraged personal initiatives to increase our bi-lingual capabilities.

The Nashville Ballet, the Nashville Opera, and various musicians from the Middle Tennessee helped us create content for quarantine times (Listen With Me, Take A Minute, Shakespeare To Music), as adults and children went searching online for compelling ways to spend their time in isolation.

Though the pandemic kept us from gathering in person, we still held news briefings. In three Zoom-based briefings open all, we discussed voting rights, the risks of schooling in the year of COVID, and the criminal justice system in Nashville.

QUESTION #3
What impact did your key initiatives and partnerships have in your community? Describe any known measurable impact, such as increased awareness, learning or understanding about particular issues. Describe indicators of success, such as connecting people to needed resources or strengthening conversational ties across diverse neighborhoods. Did a partner see an increase in requests for related resources? Please include direct feedback from a partner(s) or from a person(s) served.

ANSWER TO QUESTION #3
The release The Promise season 2 resulted in the Metro Public Schools system assigning a “book study course” based on the podcast for its faculty. Neighborhood groups, high school classes, churches, and even a public policy class at Vanderbilt University have all used shared-listening events of the podcast series to inspire action — from writing op-eds to fostering discussions on race to designing school desegregation plans. Substantial anonymous donations were made to the Warner Elementary PTO. Local restaurants offered meals and donors stepped up to contribute to teachers at the school. In fact, educators of ten the ones sharing the word about the podcast. Here’s a note sent by a Metro Schools principal to the principal at Warner: “This past year has been crazy. The spring and summer afforded me time that I’ve never had and during that time I listened to “The Promise” about life at Cayce. I just finished “The Promise II” this afternoon after our i-nservice. This is my 21^st year in metro. It’s very hard for me to describe the work we do to those who don’t do it. I think “The Promise” shines a light on the that. The work you’re doing at Warner is inspiring. I’ve actually started recommending this podcast to teacher I interview so they can get an understanding of the city’s history and the challenges our kids and families face. The final episode was a “bucket filler” for sure and a great way to go into winter break. Thank you for that and Merry Christmas!”

QUESTION #4
Please describe any efforts (e.g. programming, production, engagement activities) you have made to investigate and/or meet the needs of minority and other diverse audiences (including, but not limited to, new immigrants, people for whom English is a second language and illiterate adults) during Fiscal Year 2016, and any plans you have made to meet the needs of these audiences during Fiscal Year 2017. If you regularly broadcast in a language other than English, please note the language broadcast.

ANSWER TO QUESTION #4
We covered Meharry Medical College’s in-person efforts to overcome historic barriers to Black patients participating in vaccine trials. Reported as part of our partnership with Kaiser Health Network, the story was picked up in both regional publications, like the Atlanta Journal Constitution, and trade sites like FiercePharma.

Our story on Metro Nashville’s struggles to address COVID clusters in immigrant communities pushed the city to hire more Spanish-speaking contact tracers, and the city made sure to keep all of them on, even after downsizing when contact tracing efforts began to ebb.

Our stories on domestic workers came from comments on live hits with Nashville Noticias. We also connected with sources for our Belmont Presidential Debate watch party through this partnership and learned of a woman whose son is incarcerated and has cancer for a story about COVID-19 response in Tennessee prisons.

And finally, Breaking Points was an intentional effort to hear directly from Black Nashvilians. We plan to take this experience and build upon it.

QUESTION #5
Please assess the impact that your CPB funding had on your ability to serve your community. What were you able to do with your grant that you wouldn’t be able to do if you didn’t receive it?

ANSWER TO QUESTION #5
In short, CPB funding allows us to be a distinctively local, Nashville service. This is important, given that more and more information and entertainment choices available to our listeners do not originate from or reflect the community our listeners call their home.

ANNUAL CPB LOCAL CONTENT AND SERVICES REPORT 2019
From CPB SAS Report 2019 – Filed February 2020

ANSWER TO QUESTION #1
Health Care Desk Nashville Public Radio’s health care desk addresses one of the most critical of all community needs: ready access to affordable, effective health care that ensure positive health outcomes. Our health reports run nearly every day on our flagship news station. WPLN’s Health Care Reporter Blake Farmer produced a series this year on the limitations of the growing hospice system in America. Its stories were picked up by NPR and Marketplace. As members of the Kaiser Health News Network, we are partnering with other Kaiser public stations to coordinate coverage.

Criminal Justice Desk This year, Nashville Public Radio partnered with Report For America to hire a criminal justice reporter who could focus on issues like incarceration, police reform and capital punishment. We ran nearly 200 stories about criminal justice in 2019, including several that broke news or helped change policies.

Mayoral Election Coverage We devoted our focus on the mayoral election to what the voters needed — not what the candidates wanted us to follow. Rather than spending too much time trailing the candidates on campaign stops, we fact-checked their websites, solicited questions from the community to ask the candidates, and produced a one-hour radio special leading up to the runoff election that pressed the two finalists on their stances.

Our Podcasts allow us to address community issues, needs and interests and deliver in-depth, long form storytelling and analysis as well as shorter pieces for our airwaves. Because of this, we have invested heavily in the platform. Our various podcasts are described below, with an emphasis on community needs and issues.

The Promise is a limited-run series life in public housing, located in the middle of a city on the rise. Reported from the James Cayce Homes, these are stories of a neighborhood in flux, and the growing divide threatening its very existence. “The Promise” was listed in TIME as one of top podcasts of 2019.

In Curious Nashville, our reporters answer listener questions about our city and region. Listeners get to decide which question we should investigate and answer in our next podcast episode. We also answer some questions in shorter form, on the radio and online.

Movers & Thinkers is a podcast about why people do what they do. Our host, WPLN News Director Emily Siner, probes the minds of some of the most interesting innovators in Nashville and discuss their motivations, passions and challenges.

Versifyis a collaboration between WPLN and The Porch, a Nashville literary nonprofit. Versify is a show where someone tells a story, and in a matter of minutes, that story becomes a poem. Each episode guides listeners through this journey. It can surprise or make you cry — and proves that everyone’s life is worthy of poetry.

The Tri-Star State breaks down what’s happening in Tennessee politics each week, with statehouse reporter Sergio Martínez-Beltrán. Tri-Star State is offered free of charge to other public stations in Tennessee and Southern Kentucky.

Finally, our podcast Classically Speaking focuses on the people who make brilliant classical music. Beside telling compelling stories, this podcast gives us additional opportunities to collaborate with the local music institutions who support and present music.

Student Composer Fellowship In 2019, WFCL instituted our first-ever Student Composer Fellowship to invest in the next generation of classical musicians. After soliciting applications from middle- and high-school students in our listening area, four teenagers were chosen. Throughout the 2019-20 school year, they are getting private lessons and mentorship from professional composers and opportunities to attend rehearsals and performances of area professional music ensembles. The students are writing choral and chamber music which will be performed and broadcast on WFCL by professional musicians in June 2020.

Local Composer’s Month While WFCL has for several years placed a priority on sharing music from our community, in 2019 we went another step and designated July as Local Composer’s Month. For a month, we used all of WFCL’s platforms (broadcast, website, social media) to highlight the work of composers living and working in Middle Tennessee. Our weekly live performance show, Live in Studio C, was dedicated entirely to performances and interviews with local composers, recordings of music by composers from our community aired each locally-hosted hour, our Classically Speaking podcast released episodes interviewing composers based here, and profiles of Middle Tennessee composers were shared online, with highlights included on the air.

QUESITON #2
Describe key initiatives and the variety of partners with whom you collaborated, including other public media outlets, community nonprofits, government agencies, educational institutions, the business community, teachers and parents, etc. This will illustrate the many ways you’re connected across the community and engaged with other important organizations in the area.

ANSWER TO QUESTION #2
A continued partnership with “The Porch,” a Nashville literary nonprofit, provides an opportunity for us to engage with minority audiences and educational institutions.

In reporting health care stories, we collaborate with the Nashville Health Care Council and several local law practices and other firms who serve health industry clients. These informal partners help guide us to important stories but have no editorial control.

In 2019, Meribah Knight, producer of The Promise podcast, appeared before more than two dozen groups, service clubs and classrooms, taking the policy lessons of The Promise to a broader audience.

For the 200^th anniversary of groundbreaking musician Clara Schumann’s birth, WFCL collaborated with faculty and students from Belmont University and Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music, as well as the Nashville Concerto Orchestra, to mount a two-week festival of Schumann’s music. The festival included two concert events, two live broadcasts of local musicians performing her music, and programming material on our air throughout the two-week festival.

Nashville Public Radio also launched a “listening tour” in 2019, partnering with local nonprofits and community groups to bring our staffers to different parts of the region. We engaged with listeners in Cookeville, in Nashville’s Kurdish community, and in the immigrant corridor of South Nashville.

Beyond that, members of our newsroom participated in 20 speaking engagements, teaching opportunities or other outreach initiatives.

QUESTON #3
What impact did your key initiatives and partnerships have in your community? Describe any known measurable impact, such as increased awareness, learning or understanding about particular issues. Describe indicators of success, such as connecting people to needed resources or strengthening conversational ties across diverse neighborhoods. Did a partner see an increase in requests for related resources? Please include direct feedback from a partner(s) or from a person(s) served.

ANSWER TO QUESTION #3
We know from listener feedback that our hospice care series had a considerable impact and sparked conversation around a difficult, often taboo, topic. We also saw our criminal justice stories being cited in conversations by city leaders. These examples show the power of having reporters and resources dedicated to covering certain beats.

Through our listening tour, our newsroom was able to solicit story ideas and better understand communities that we have not, historically, covered thoroughly. Those moments of engagement were very valuable for strengthening conversations between underserved communities and the media.

ANSWER TO QUESTION #4
We investigated an initiative within the Nashville district attorney’s office that sought to overturn wrongful convictions. While the intentions were good — serving justice fairly — we discovered that the initiative had not even officially investigated a single case. As a result of our story, the DA’s office changed the structure of this initiative and agreed to re-open its first case.

Some of our listening tour stops built stronger connections with minority communities. For example, when Kurds took to the streets to protest the U.S. removal of troops from Kurdish areas in Iraq, we were able to cover it more deeply because we got advanced warning and had already established connections with people in the community.

In booking WFCL’s weekly classical performance show, we made a concerted effort to include a range of music and musicians that is as diverse as our art music community. We placed a priority on including music faculty from our city’s two historically black universities, whose output has not always been fully integrated into the larger classical community in Nashville. Including the music of groups who have not historically been valued in classical music was an important part of crafting our daily music playlists on WFCL. We took the opportunity to emphasize their contributions during times such as Black History Month, the International Day of the Woman, and Local Composer’s Month.

ANSWER TO QUESTION #5
CPB funding accounts for just under 7% of Nashville Public Radio’s operating budget but this money is critical, as it helps the station be more than just an NPR outlet by supporting the production of local programming that reflects the uniqueness of Nashville.

ANNUAL CPB LOCAL CONTENT AND SERVICES REPORT 2018
From CPB SAS Report 2018 – Filed February 2019

Question #1
Describe your overall goals and approach to address identified community issues, needs, and interests through your station’s vital local services, such as multi-platform long and short-form content, digital and in-person engagement, education services, community information, partnership support, and other activities, and audiences you reached or new audiences you engaged.

Answer for Question #1

Health Care Desk Nashville Public Radio’s health care desk addresses one of the most critical of all community needs: ready access to affordable, effective health care that ensure positive health outcomes. Our health reports run nearly every day on our flagship news station. WPLN’s Health Care Reporter Blake Farmer produced a series this year on the limitations of the growing hospice system in America. Its stories were picked up by NPR and Marketplace. As members of the Kaiser Health News Network, we are partnering with other Kaiser public stations to coordinate coverage.

Versify is a collaboration between WPLN and The Porch, a Nashville literary nonprofit. Versify is a show where someone tells a story, and in a matter of minutes, that story becomes a poem. Each episode guides listeners through this journey. It can surprise or make you cry — and proves that everyone’s life is worthy of poetry.

Student Composer Fellowship
In 2019, WFCL instituted our first-ever Student Composer Fellowship to invest in the next generation of classical musicians. After soliciting applications from middle- and high-school students in our listening area, four teenagers were chosen. Throughout the 2019-20 school year, they are getting private lessons and mentorship from professional composers and opportunities to attend rehearsals and performances of area professional music ensembles. The students are writing choral and chamber music which will be performed and broadcast on WFCL by professional musicians in June 2020.

Local Composer’s Month
While WFCL has for several years placed a priority on sharing music from our community, in 2019 we went another step and designated July as Local Composer’s Month. For a month, we used all of WFCL’s platforms (broadcast, website, social media) to highlight the work of composers living and working in Middle Tennessee. Our weekly live performance show, Live in Studio C, was dedicated entirely to performances and interviews with local composers, recordings of music by composers from our community aired each locally-hosted hour, our Classically Speaking podcast released episodes interviewing composers based here, and profiles of Middle Tennessee composers were shared online, with highlights included on the air.

Question #2
Describe key initiatives and the variety of partners with whom you collaborated, including other public media outlets, community nonprofits, government agencies, educational institutions, the business community, teachers and parents, etc. This will illustrate the many ways you’re connected across the community and engaged with other important organizations in the area.

Answer for Question #2
A continued partnership with “The Porch,” a Nashville literary nonprofit, provides an opportunity for us to engage with minority audiences and educational institutions.

In 2019, Meribah Knight, producer of The Promise podcast, appeared before more than two dozen groups, service clubs and classrooms, taking the policy lessons of The Promise to a broader audience.

Beyond that, members of our newsroom participated in 20 speaking engagements, teaching opportunities or other outreach initiatives.

Question #3
What impact did your key initiatives and partnerships have in your community? Describe any known measurable impact, such as increased awareness, learning or understanding about particular issues. Describe indicators of success, such as connecting people to needed resources or strengthening conversational ties across diverse neighborhoods. Did a partner see an increase in requests for related resources? Please include direct feedback from a partner(s) or from a person(s) served.

Answer to Question #3
We know from listener feedback that our hospice care series had a considerable impact and sparked conversation around a difficult, often taboo, topic. We also saw our criminal justice stories being cited in conversations by city leaders. These examples show the power of having reporters and resources dedicated to covering certain beats.

Question #4
Please describe any efforts (e.g. programming, production, engagement activities) you have made to investigate and/or meet the needs of minority and other diverse audiences (including, but not limited to, new immigrants, people for whom English is a second language and illiterate adults) during Fiscal Year 2016, and any plans you have made to meet the needs of these audiences during Fiscal Year 2017. If you regularly broadcast in a language other than English, please note the language broadcast.

Answer to Question #4
We investigated an initiative within the Nashville district attorney’s office that sought to overturn wrongful convictions. While the intentions were good — serving justice fairly — we discovered that the initiative had not even officially investigated a single case. As a result of our story, the DA’s office changed the structure of this initiative and agreed to re-open its first case.

Question #5
Please assess the impact that your CPB funding had on your ability to serve your community. What were you able to do with your grant that you wouldn’t be able to do if you didn’t receive it?

Answer to Question #5
CPB funding accounts for just under 7% of Nashville Public Radio’s operating budget but this money is critical, as it helps the station be more than just an NPR outlet by supporting the production of local programming that reflects the uniqueness of Nashville.

DIVERSITY PROGRAM
Nashville Public Radio strives to ascertain that its staff, board of directors and community advisory board are reflective of the diverse population it serves. Additionally, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s (CPB) Diversity Eligibility Criteria require public media organizations to adopt formal goals for diversity and to report annually on steps taken to work toward those goals. These actions are required for all stations receiving Community Service Grant funds (CSG).

To that end, Nashville Public Radio has set the following diversity goals:

To recruit and retain a diverse workforce that is representative of our service area. • To provide equal opportunity in employment.

To educate our management and staff annually in best practices for maintaining an inclusive and diverse environment for all persons.

To seek candidates for Nashville Public Radio’s Community Advisory Board that represent the geographically and demographically diverse composition of the many communities we serve.

Seek diverse candidates for our Board of Directors through the Nominating Committee process.

To assist in developing a more diverse future workforce with professional skills in the broadcasting/media industry by recruiting diverse candidates for Nashville Public Radio internship opportunities and/or by participating in minority or other diversity job fairs.

Review with the station’s governing board those practices that are designed to fulfill Nashville Public Radio’s commitment to diversity and to meet the applicable FCC guidelines

In addition, Nashville Public Radio shall undertake one of the following initiatives on an annual basis:

Include individuals representing diverse groups in internships or work-study programs designed to provide meaningful professional level experience in order to reflect the diversity of the communities they serve and further public broadcasting’s commitment to education;

Include qualified diverse candidates in any slate of candidates for elected governing boards that the Nashville Public Radio controls;

Implement a diversity training program for members of the organization’s governing board of directors on an annual basis;

Participate in minority or other diversity job fairs; or

Implement formal diversity training programs for management and appropriate staff.

In addition to these goals Nashville Public Radio will interview at least one qualified diversity candidate for each senior leadership position hired. The term senior leadership position includes: CEO, COO, CFO, Chief Content Officer, General Manager, and other equivalent positions.

Diversity Results for April 1, 2022 to March 31, 2023

Establishment of Internship Program:

Two student interns worked in the WPLN News department during this year’s internship program.

Training Programs for Station Personnel:

Station leadership staff participated in a two day session on team building focusing on organizational and individual advancement. Two organization executives received executive coaching during the time-period of this report. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion training was provided for all supervisors.

Nashville Public Radio Reports Community Engagement

Several staffers were instrumental in creating the inaugural Nashville Journalists of Color Mixer on June 11, 2022, bringing together dozens of journalists for networking and a panel discussion. Alexis Marshall continues to spearhead a partnership with Nashville Noticias, a weekly live appearance on the Nashville Spanish‐language news program.

Direct Recruiting:

Nashville Public Radio has increased the use of direct recruitment proactively attracting diverse individuals. LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and other Social Media outlets are used to identify potential candidates. Efforts are made to reach out directly and encourage diverse applicants to apply for openings.

NASHVILLE PUBLIC RADIO COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT 2022

This note collects examples of newsroom community outreach and engagement from 2022.
Community Outreach
In 2022, Nashville Public Radio newsroom staffers participated in more than 30 community outreach events. These include speaking to several high school and college journalism classes, moderating multiple talks and panels, and presenting to a diverse array of community groups.

Highlight: Alexis Marshall continues to spearhead a weekly live appearance on Nashville Noticias, a popular Spanish‐language news program. Alexis and Paige Pfleger, with support from Rachel Iacovone,
also curate a weekly news roundup for Noticias. This partnership is coming up on its 3‐year birthday!

Highlight: Our journalists have spoken to multiple high school groups, including in their classrooms and by hosting at our station. Templeton Academy, in particular, was pursuing a rigorous news literacy curriculum and was highly engaged before and after their visit. The newsroom hosted two “Winterim” interns for 3 weeks in January 2022 — Hallie Graham and Pia Strang — as part of an intensive job shadowing program, and saw each produce professional‐caliber
work. Our news team worked with two collegiate interns, Jackie Llanos and Tori Hoover.

Highlight: Several staffers were instrumental in creating the inaugural Nashville Journalists of Color Mixer on June 11, 2022, bringing together dozens of journalists for networking and a panel discussion.
Community engagement journalism Our journalists often work from a mindset that centers the community, taking cues from the needs and questions of residents to try to make journalism that truly serves. Much of this work is boosted by our use of Hearken software, which we use to create digital callouts and to organize
community submissions. Citizen Nashville: One of Nashville Public Radio’s most massive listener‐powered wins has been the launch of our hourlong daily show “This Is Nashville” — and specifically the launch of its recurring “Citizen Nashville” episodes and segments. These are are civic‐minded and
listener‐question‐driven shows built around answering questions submitted through Hearken. There have been more than two dozen segments since March 2021, often sorting out complicated subjects like navigating disability benefits, finding mental health services, and understanding the city budget, along with discussions of affordable housing, sidewalk allocations, and monkeypox. In addition to the proactive, solutions‐oriented on‐air discussions, these stories live on with informative web posts. They’ve also pushed the entire news
staff to think more often about news‐you‐can‐use service journalism.
In receiving an accolade from Hearken, the company wrote:
For those not steeped in how newsrooms work, this is different from how many journalists are taught to think! The question of “what’s new and interesting” can often come before “what’s most useful and needed for the people we’re trying to serve.” Citizen Nashville is taking the latter approach,
and it’s making a big difference.

Curious Nashville: This project is wholly based on questions submitted from our audiences. Since 2016, we’ve received more than 1,000 questions, leading to more than 100 stories and two dozen podcast episodes.
In 2022, we completed another dozen stories — most of which resulted in “multi‐platform” presentations, meaning on radio, on web, on This Is Nashville, and in our Curious Nashville podcast feed.
This project is also one of our leading ways of coaching up new contributors and early‐career journalists, including high school intern Hallie Graham, contributor Tasha Lemley, contributor Laura Dean, contributor Miguel Detilier, and intern‐turned‐part‐timer‐turned‐full‐time producer Cindy Abrams.

This Is Nashville
Community engagement is baked into the entire ethos of our daily show. Community advisors helped shape the show before it launched, audience feedback — praise and critique — gets highlighted in
the weekly @ Us segment on Thursdays, “Citizen Nashville” segments occur often, and the team uses Hearken and other social media channels to be in dialogue with the community.

Highlight: As of September, when the show was 6 months old, the show had heard from more than 700 people on air. That’s not to overlook the countless people we’ve pre‐interviewed on background in preparation for each episode, and the people we’ve interviewed through our community engagement.
Highlight: At the six‐month mark, the show took a week to reflect on priorities, brainstorm nw show topics, and spend time out in the community with you getting new ideas. From Cannon County to Gallatin to Murfreesboro to Lebanon, the team really got around!

Name Title Date Description
LaTonya Turner ME News Editor 3/3/2022 Austin Peay Univ. Women in Media panel

Steve Haruch Senior Producer 3/31/2022 political science class at Belmont
University

Alexis Marshall Producer/Reporter 4/6/2022 Hispanic Family Foundation
Annual Breakfast

LaTonya Turner ME News Editor 4/6/2022 Hispanic Family
Foundation Annual Breakfast

Damon Mitchell Enterprise Reporter 4/13/2022 Spoke to Hillsboro HS class

Juliana Kim, Chas Sisk, Emily Siner 4/15/2022 Gave a tour to Greater Nashville
Chinese Association

Newsroom folks 4/18/2022 Led housing listening session with community

Tony Gonzalez Special Projects Editor 5/26/2022 Spoke to Google employees aboutpodcasting

Juliana Kim, Rachel Iacovone, LaTonVarious 6/11/2022 Nashville Journalists
of Color Mixer

Khalil Ekulona Host 6/19/2022 Opened the Juneteenth ceremony at Fort
Negley

Meribah Knight Special Projects Producer 6/22/2022 Spoke to Sherrard Roe law firm about DEI issues in Nashville

Ambriehl Crutchfield Metro Reporter 6/26/2022 Talked to high school girls about journalism

Tony Gonzalez Special Projects Editor 6/28/2022 Spoke to Gannett interns, via Chips
Quinn, about story pitches Steve Haruch Senior Producer 7/8/2022 Inside
Politics with Pat Nolan
Khalil Ekulona Host 7/9/2022 Moderated TN Writers|TN Stories at State
Museum
Andrea Tudhope Executive Producer 7/29/2022 Presented to America Amplified on
creating a new daily show Steve Haruch Senior Producer 8/13/2022 Moderated TN
Writers|TN Stories at State Museum

Andrea Tudhope Executive Producer 8/15/2022 Presented to PBS/NPR stations in
Florida on creating a new daily

Blake Farmer Health Care Reporter 9/30/2022
Moderated a public health session at THA annual meeting

Alexis Marshall Education Reporter ONGOING Gives weekly live hits on Nashville
Noticias

Paige Pfleger, Jackie Llanos ONGOING Gives weekly news roundups on Nashville
Noticias

Tony Gonzalez, Paige Pfleger Special Projects Editor; Cri 8/18/2022 26 Templeton Academy students tour station + news literacy co Andrea Tudhope, Steve Haruch, Khalil Ekulona

8/15/2022 Florida Public Media Professional Development Summit

Paige Pfleger Criminal Justice Reporter 9/13/2022 Belmont University podcasting
class Tony Gonzalez Special Projects Editor 10/6/2022 Hillsdale College radio
journalism class

LaTonya Turner ME News Editor 10/20/2022 Scenic America Sympositum/Jefferson Street Placemaking panel

Steve Haruch Senior Producer 10/22/2022 Chris Crofton
moderator at Southern Festival of Books

Caroline Eggers Environmental Reporter 10/27/2022 Met with high school teacher for her RFA community project.

Meribah Knight Special Projects Producer 11/1/2022 Vanderbilt
University Communications class

Meribah Knight Special Projects Producer 11/2/2022 Marquette University class

Meribah Knight Special Projects Producer 11/3/2022 Leadership Nashville

Paige Pfleger, Jackie Llanos Criminal Justice Reporter 11/7/2022 Center for Advanced Studies and the Arts (Michigan)

Paige Pfleger, Jackie Llanos Criminal Justice Reporter 11/16/2022 Zoom with incarcerated graduate students Northwest Correctio

Tony Gonzalez Special Projects Editor 12/13/2022 Nashville History Club talk re: Curious Nashville

Tony Gonzalez Special Projects Editor 1/5/2023 Gordon Jewish Community Center senior citizens lunch

Chas Sisk Interim News Director
1/6/2023 League of Women Voters lunchtime talk

Jewly Hight Senior Music Writer
1/21/2023 Country Soul Songbook Summit moderator

Chas Sisk Interim News Director 2/2/2023 Affordable Housing panel at West End Synagogue

Blaise Gainey Political Reporter
2/4/2022 Talked about his beat to the Nashville Bar Association

Chas SiskInterim News Director 2/7/2023 Religious Communicators Council

Diversity Results for April 1, 2021 to March 31, 2022

Supplemental Outreach Initiatives used during this period from April 1, 2021 to March 31, 2022

Establishment of Internship Program:

One student intern worked in the WPLN News department, and an intern worked in the Marketing Department during this year’s internship program.

Training Programs for Station Personnel:

Station leadership staff participated in two-sessions focused on team building, organizational and individual advancement. Four sessions spaced throughout the year were focused on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion training for all staff.

Direct Recruiting:

Community Outreach:

Events or Programs with Educational Institutions relating to Broadcast Careers:

2021-10-26	Special Projects Producer	Speaking to panel Student Voice Journalism Fellowship	Classroom Outreach
2021-11-09	Arts Reporter	Speaking to a class at University of Michigan	Classroom Outreach
2021-11-18	Editor	Speaking to Wright Graduate University class	Classroom Outreach
2022-01-31	Editor	Created winterim curriculum for two Harpeth Hall students	Classroom Outreach
2022-02-01	News Director, Editor, Arts Reporter	Speaking to TSU Meter class	Classroom Outreach
2022-02-01	Producer	Spoke and presented clips to Demetria’s audio storytelling class at Lipscomb	Classroom Outreach
2022-02-09	News Director, Producer	Speaking to Overton HS ESL class	Classroom Outreach
2022-02-10	Education Reporter	Speaking to MTSU reporting class	Classroom Outreach
2022-02-11	Metro Reporter	Speaking to Hillsboro HS journalism class	Classroom Outreach
2022-02-17	Health Care Reporter	Speaking to Vanderbilt PhD students about science journalism	Classroom Outreach
2022-02-21	Special Projects Producer	Speaking to Belmont University Class	Classroom Outreach
2022-02-22	Special Projects Producer	Speaking to Vanderbilt Peabody class	Classroom Outreach
2022-02-25	Criminal Justice Reporter	Speaking to Vanderbilt Policing in America class	Classroom Outreach
2022-03-01	Criminal Justice Reporter	Speaking to MTSU reporting class	Classroom Outreach
2022-03-02	Health Care Reporter	Speaking to University of Georgia class	Classroom Outreach
2022-03-03	Health Care Reporter, Enterprise Reporter	Speaking to Hillsboro HS journalism class	Classroom Outreach
2022-03-03	Editor	Speaking on Women Empowerment Panel at Austin Peay State University	Classroom Outreach
2022-03-15	Political Reporter	Speaking to MTSU reporting class	Classroom Outreach

Event participation involving Community Leaders where WPLN staff presents Public Radio’s mission and the organization’s work:

2021-04-01	Criminal Justice Reporter	Weekly interview on Nashville Noticias	Community Outreach
2021-04-13	Enterprise Reporter	Moderating panel on Black maternal health disparities at Homeland Heart Birth & Wellness Collective	Community Outreach
2021-04-19	Special Projects Producer	Presenting on The Promise to Alignment Nashville and related nonprofits	Community Outreach
2021-04-26	Editor	Moderating panel on crime survivors with You Have The Power	Community Outreach
2021-05-06	Health Care Reporter	Presenting to the Centennial Club on WPLN	Community Outreach
2021-05-17	Enterprise Reporter	Speaking on investigative reporting panel at IRE	Community Outreach
2021-06-01	Metro Reporter	Speaking on panel at NABJ	Community Outreach
2021-06-30	Morning Host	Interviewing author at Parnassus Books	Community Outreach
2021-07-28	Education Reporter	Speaking at NYU’s Urban Journalism Workshop graduation	Community Outreach
2021-08-27	Education Reporter	Moderating panel on burnout at AAJA	Community Outreach
2021-09-09	Special Projects Producer	Speaking on panel about education by NPEF	Community Outreach
2021-09-09	WNXP Staff	Speaking to a group organized by Hastings Architecture	Community Outreach
2021-09-24	Arts Reporter	Moderating Belmont panel on diversity in music industry	Community Outreach
2021-10-09	Special Projects Producer	Interviewed on MSNBC’s American Voices	Community Outreach
2021-10-11	Special Projects Producer	Interviewed on MSNBC’s The Reidout	Community Outreach
2021-10-11	Special Projects Producer	Interviewed on Black News Channel	Community Outreach
2021-10-12	Special Projects Producer	Interviewed on PBS Newshour	Community Outreach
2021-10-12	Special Projects Producer	Interviewed on The Takeaway	Community Outreach
2021-10-13	Special Projects Producer	Interviewed on Crooked Media’s What A Day	Community Outreach
2021-10-16	Special Projects Producer	Interviewed on MSNBC’s Al Sharpton	Community Outreach
2021-10-20	Health Care Reporter	Moderating panel for NPT	Community Outreach
2021-10-23	Metro Reporter	Speaking on a panel about racism, history and feminism at Nashville Public Library	Community Outreach
2021-10-25	Special Projects Producer	Interviewed on Vox’s Today Explained	Community Outreach
2021-11-04	Special Projects Producer	Speaking on a media panel at Leadership Nashville	Community Outreach
2021-11-15	Criminal Justice Reporter	Interviewed on TLDL podcast	Community Outreach
2021-12-07	Special Projects Producer	Interviewed on Sophia Bush’s podcast	Community Outreach
2022-02-24	Host	Panel discussion on Black voices in media	Community Outreach
2022-02-28	Editor	Speaking at Motlow State’s African American Read-In	Community Outreach
2022-03-03	Political Reporter	Interviewed on West Virginia Public Broadcasting show	Community Outreach
2022-03-09	Executive Producer	Speaking on Nashville Podcasters panel	Community Outreach
2022-03-13	Host	Part of panel discussion on Nashville	Community Outreach
2022-03-17	Producer	Speaking to an intro-level journalism class at MTSU about trust in the media	Community Outreach

Diversity Results for April 1, 2020 to March 31, 2021
Establishment of Internship Program:

Supplemental Outreach Initiatives used during this period from April 1, 2020 to March 31, 2021

Establishment of Internship Program:

Two student interns worked in the WPLN News department during this year’s internship program.

Training Programs for Station Personnel:

The Nashville Public Radio Emerging Voices Fellowship was funded for a 4^th year:

A diverse reporter was hired for the Nashville Public Radio Emerging Voices Fellowship position in August 2020.

Direct Recruiting:

Community Outreach:

Events or Programs with Educational Institutions relating to Broadcast Careers:

4-15-20 Music Host speaks to Riversity City College music students

4-29-20 Criminal Justice reporter moderates panel on Nashville Community Bail Fund

6-21-20 Classical Music Host presents at the New Music Gathering Conference

6-23-20 Government reporter and News Director presented to EdTrust Student group

11-6-20 Senior Reporter/Special Projects Producer speaks to Vanderbilt about the Promise

Event participation involving Community Leaders where WPLN staff presents Public Radio’s mission and the organization’s work:

5-27-20 Healthcare reporter speaks on Newsy

6-30-20 Reporter/Host speaks on VPM Podcast

8-24-20 Healthcare reporter presents to the West End Civic Club

10-26-20 Senior Reporter speaks to Nashville Rotary
11-12-20 WPLN News Director speaks to the UIUC SPJ group

Diversity Results for April 1, 2019 to March 31, 2020
Establishment of Internship Program:
Three student interns worked in the News department during the summer one intern from the Chips Quinn Scholars Program for Diversity.

Training Programs for Station Personnel:
Marketing and development training for the general manager and development director at the PMDMC conference. Membership training for three membership staff at PRDMC conference The music director and station manager attended a music conference on best practices in music presentation and programming for classical music stations. The content director and a news reporter attended a training meeting in on podcasting and best practices.

The Nashville Public Radio Diversity Fellowship Program was funded for the second year and was re-named the Emerging Voices Fellowship:
Hired the second Fellow for the Emerging Voices Fellowship program in August 2019.

Direct Recruiting:
Nashville Public Radio has increased its use of direct recruitment as a way to proactively attract diversity to the station. This primarily includes the use of LinkedIn to identify potential candidates affiliated with diverse associations and reaching out to them directly and encouraging them to apply for openings.

Community Outreach:
Events or Programs with Educational Institutions relating to Broadcast Careers:
03-11-19 WPLN HealthCare Reporter hosts Lipscomb Academy WPLN visit
03-22-19 WPLN HealthCare Reporter hosts student for job shadow
03-25-19 WPLN Public Housing Reporter speaks at Lipscomb University class
04-01-19 WPLN Reporter speaks to UT policy class
05-08-19 WPLN Reporter helps Explore school students create a podcast
07-22-19 Highschool student shadows at WPLN for the day
09-06-19 WPLN Public Housing Reporter speaks to a Stratford High Podcasting class
09-25-19 WPLN Public Housing Reporter speaks via Skype to a Northwester Journalism class
10-09-19 WPLN ATC Host speaks to an MTSU Media class
10-25-19 WPLN Public Housing Reporter speaks at Belmont University event
11-13-19 WPLN News Editor Speaks to Vanderbilt University Media Class about public broadcasting
01-11-20 WPLN reporter speaks to a Stratford STEM about podcasting

Event participation involving Community Leaders where WPLN staff presents Public Radio’s mission and the organization’s work:
05-16-19 WPLN Reporters speak to McMinnville Rotary
08-06-19 WPLN HealthCare Reporter speaks to the AG’s office regarding his role in health care reporting
11-07-19 WPLN HealthCare Reporter moderates’ panel at Interfaith Ministries
11-07-19 WPLN Reporter and News Director speaks at Leadership Nashville conference
02-19-20 WPLN HealthCare Reporter moderates’ panel on gun violence at the Jewish Temple

Diversity Results for April 1, 2018 to March 31, 2019
Supplemental Outreach Initiatives during this period

Establishment of Internship Program:
Three student interns worked in the News department during the summer

Community Outreach:
Events or Programs with Educational Institutions relating to Broadcast Careers:
2-22-2019 HealthCare reports speaks to Lipscomb University graduate class
3-27-2018 News Directors skypes with MTSU reporting class
4-04-2018 News Editor meets with YMCA Youth in government
4-19-2018 Versify producer speaks to Vanderbilt students about podcasting
6-07-2018 News Editor speaks to Father Ryan HS group
7-11-18 Podcast producers speak to students from Martha O’Bryan children’s summer program
8-16-2018 HealthCare reporter speaks to and give tour to Vanderbilt Media Students
10-10-2018 HealthCare reporter shadows Brentwood HS student
10-28-18 News director speaks to Vanderbilt Students Communications students about internship
11-08-2018 News Host speaks to TSU radio class
11-14-2018 News Director speaks to UT communications admins
2-01-2019 News Director speaks at TN State University Research Development Conference
2-12-2019 HealthCare reporter speaks a KIPP Academy career Day
2-14-2019 HeathCare reporter teaches podcasting class at Renaissance HS
2-15-2019 HealthCare reporter shadows TSU student
12-07-2018 News Director speaks to MTSU reporting class

Event participation involving Community Leaders where WPLN staff presents Public Radio’s mission and the organization’s work:
2-04-2019 Emerging Voices reporter interviewed on TVA utilities Podcast
2-06-2019 HealthCare Report speaks to Dyer County Leadership
4-16-2018 HealthCare reporter moderates anesthesiologist panel
4-16-2018 HealthCare reporter moderates Vanderbilt Medical School panel
4-21-2018 News reporter speaks at Craft Content Nashville conference
5-08-2018 News reporter gives keynote address at Neighborhood Resource Council
6-06-2018 HealthCare reporter speaks to Acklen Church
7-31-2018 News reporter speaks to Nashville Econ club
11-02-2018 News reporter moderates Leadership panel
11-06-2018 News reporter moderates Distributed Health conference panel
11-08-2019 News reporter moderates Artia Solutions conference panel

Diversity Results for April 1, 2017 to March 31, 2018

Supplemental Outreach Initiatives during this period were the following:

Establishment of Internship Program:
Two student interns worked in the News department during the summer one intern from the Chips Quinn Scholars Program for Diversity. The two student interns were Vanderbilt University Students.

Training Programs for Station Personnel:
Marketing and development training for the general manager and development director at the PMDMC conference. Membership training for three membership staff at PRDMC conference. Membership department training on new membership database January 22 – 26, 2018. The music director and station manager attended a music conference on best practices in music presentation and programming for classical music stations. The content director and a news reporter attended a training meeting in on podcasting and best practices.

Established The Nashville Public Radio Diversity Fellowship Program:
Installed the first Fellow of the Diversity Fellowship program in August 2017.

Community Outreach:

Events or Programs with Educational Institutions relating to Broadcast Careers:
April 1, 2017 — WPLN State House Reporter speaks to Youth in Government group
April 9, 2017 — WPLN Enterprise Reporter talks to Lipscomb civics class
April 18, 2017 — WPLN Growth and Development Reporter talks to Medill journalism class
April 21, 2017 — WPLN News Director talks to TSU class
June 7, 2017 — WPLN HealthCare Reporter hosts KIPP students for three days
June 23, 2017 — WPLN Growth and Development Reporter interviewed for MTSU class project
August 22, 2017 — WPLN HealthCare Reporter hosts Vanderbilt media immersion students
September 20, 2017 — WPLN HealthCare Reporter hosts USN student Daniel Jacobs
September 20, 2017 — WPLN State House Reporter teaches at TSU three sections
October 30, 2017 — WPLN State House Reporter speaks to MTSU class of journalists for Maria DeVarenne
November 16, 2017 — WPLN Enterprise Reporter talks to Vanderbilt’s Osher school
February 1, 2018 — WPLN Enterprise Reporter to Cumberland River Compact
February 22, 2018 — WPLN Enterprise Reporter to Vanderbilt’s Osher school
February 26, 2018 — WPLN Growth and Development Reporter Skypes with Medill journalism class
March 2, 2018 — WPLN HealthCare Reporter hosts Lipscomb Academy station visit
March 13, 2018 — WPLN Growth and Development Reporter Skypes with MTSU advanced reporting class
March 22, 2018 — WPLN News Director talks to MTSU class 3-22-18

Event participation involving Community Leaders where WPLN staff presents Public Radio’s mission and the organization’s work:
April 23, 2017 — WPLN Enterprise Reporter presents the Podcast Versify at Global Education Center
April 25, 2017 — WPLN News Director live reading for NSA and Southern Word
August 14, 2017 — WPLN HealthCare Reporter speaks to VA conference
September 9, 2017 — WPLN HealthCare Reporter moderates panel at Religion Newswriters Association
September 13, 2017 — WPLN Host/Reporter speaks to Center for Nonprofit Management
November 3, 2017 — WPLN State House Reporter participates in investigative journalist panel for Leadership Nashville
November 3, 2017 — WPLN HealthCare Reporter participates in media panel for Leadership Nashville
December 7, 2017 — WPLN Host/Reporter speaks on WXNA Radio
January 1, 2018 — WPLN News Director participates at Lipscomb University radio show

Diversity Results 2016

Supplemental outreach initiatives during this period were as follows:

Establishment of Internship Program:
Four student interns worked in the News department during the summer. One student from the University High School in Nashville, one Student from Boston College, one student from Vanderbilt University and one student from Lipscomb University.

Training Programs for Station Personnel:
Marketing and development training for the general manager and development director at the PRDMC conference. Membership training for newly hired membership manager. Controller attended PMBA conference in Washington DC which included training related to HR and business and accounting job specific related seminars.

Station management training and review of EEO:
On March 9, 2016 a review of EEO standards and practices was conducted with station senior management.

Events or Programs with Educational Institutions relating to Broadcast Careers:
4/13/15 – Emily Siner speaks to Broadcast Journalism class at Travecca Nazarene University
8/14/15 – Blake & Anita give a station tour and speak to a group from Vanderbilt Student Communications about radio journalism
9/17/15- Emily Siner spoke to the freshman photojournalism class at the University of Illinois and spoke to a newsroom leadership class for student editors and Illini media at the University of Illinois
9/18/15– Emily Siner makes presentation on podcasting at the Illinois Journalism Educator Association Conference – approximately 100 high school students in attendance
10/13/15 – Emily Siner discusses podcasting with students at Hume-Fogg High School
10/15/15 – Tony Gonzales & Emily Siner present at the Tennessee High School Press Association
10/16/15 – Blake Farmer participated in a panel discussion for students at Abilene Christian University about “finding your first job.”|
11/10/15 – Blake Farmer spoke to the MediaMasters class at Lipscomb University
12/30/15 – Blake Farmer provides job shadowing experience for high school student Sydney Glisson
1/11-28/16 – WPLN newsroom participates in Winterim for Harpeth Hall junior Emily
2/16/16 – Via skype, Emily Siner lectures about podcasts and journalism to students at the Campus Middle School For Girls in Urbana, Ill.
2/26/16 – Tony Gonzalez lead training team at workshop for the Online News Association
2/27/16 – Tony Gonzalez teachers a journalism class for the Nashville writing collected, The Porch

Event participation involving Community Leaders where WPLN staff presents Public Radio’s mission and the organization’s work:
4/22/15 – Blake Farmer moderates a Mayoral Candidates Land & Water Forum organized by various Middle Tennessee environmental groups
6/17/15 – Nina Cardona participates in a panel discussion for Metro Arts Commission October event
6/22/15 – Blake Farmer moderates a panel on Nashville architecture at the Parthenon.
6/25/15 – Chas Sisk speaks to the McMinnville Rotary Club
8/7/15 – Blake Farmer speaks to the League of Women Voters about results of August 6^th Metro Elections
8/20/15 – Blake Farmer moderates a run-off candidate forum for At-large Metro Council, organized by the Belmont-Hillsboro Neighbors, Inc.
9/10/15– Anita speaks to non-profit leaders at the Center for Non-profit Management about how to work with the media
9/26/15 – Tony Gonzalez served as a judge for the Neighborhood Resource Center’s 3^rd Annual Neighborhood Celebration
9/29/15 – Blake Farmer discusses possible changes to Tennessee’s Open Records law on WTVF’s Morningline
11/5/15 – Tony Gonzalez participated in panel discussion for Leadership Nashville about new ways of story telling
11/5/15 – Anita Bugg and Mack Linebaugh talk about today’s changing media landscape to a group called Life Long Learners at The Temple
1/15/16 – Chas Sisk appears on Inside Politics on WTVF-TV
3/2/16 – Emily Siner & Chas Sisk talk about news coverage with staff and attorneys at Bass, Berry and Sims law firm

Diversity Results 2015

Establishment of Internship Program:

Three student interns worked in the News department during the summer. One student from Coffee County Tennessee high school, one Indiana University, and one from Rollins College.

Station management training and review of EEO:
On January 7, 2015 a review of EEO standards and practices with department heads

Events or Programs with Educational Institutions relating to Broadcast Careers:
The Audio Production Class from Trevecca University toured the Nashville Public Radio studios on September 19, 2014 and participated in a presentation and question and answer session with the organizations technical manager, production manager and news director.The Vanderbilt University Media Immersion Program University toured the Nashville Public Radio studios on August 18, 2014 and participated in a presentation and question and answer session with the organizations technical manager and news director.

Diversity Results 2014

Establishment of Internship Program:

Three student interns worked in the News department during the summer. Two were from the Vanderbilt Student Media Intern program, and one from the University of the South

Student Mentoring and Job Shadowing
A student from Harpeth Hall spent “Winterim”, three 40-hour weeks, January 6 to 24, in the Nashville Public Radio Newsroom researching, interviewing, writing, and producing stories. Three students from the University School job shadowed in the Newsroom on February 28^nd. .

Station management training on EEO:
On March 28, a review of EEO standards and practices with department heads

Events or Programs with Educational Institutions relating to Broadcast Careers:
The News Director guest lectured to journalism students at Tennessee State University on November 26^th One February the News Director conducted an advanced workshop for radio news students at Tennessee State University

Events with Community Organization regarding Broadcast Careers:
Program director was a panelist at the Tennessee State University music on radio workshop on February 27, 2014.

OPEN MEETING NOTICES
Notices were broadcast on WNPX, WPLN-FM and WPLN-AM on the following dates
01/25/15
02/22/15
03/22/15
04/19/15
06/14/15
07/19/15
08/16/15
09/20/15
10/4/15
10/11/15
Dec 18, 19, 20, 2015 WPLN-AM & FM
Feb 26, 27, 28, 2016 WPLN-AM & FM
Mar 4,5,6, 2016 WPLN-AM & FM
June 24,25,26, 2016 WPLN-AM & FM
July 1,2,3, 2016 WPLN-AM & FM
July 22,23,24 2016 WPLN-AM
July 1,2,3,29,30,31 2016 WPLN-FM
Nov 25,26,27 2016 WPLN-AM
Dec 2,3,4, 2016 WPLN-FM
Jan 20,21,22 2017 WPLN-AM
March 3,4,5, 2017 WPLN-FM
April 21,22,23, 2017 WPLN-AM
June 2,3,4, 2017 WPLN-FM
July 21,22,23, 2017 WPLN-AM
July 28,29,30, 2017 WPLN-FM
Aug 13,14,15, 2017 WPLN-AM
October 13,14,15, 2017 WPLN-AM
December 29,30,31, 2017 WPLN-FM
February 23,24,25, 2018 WPLN-FM
March 30, 31 and April 1, 2018 WPLN-AM
June 29, 30 and July 1 and July 15, 2018 WPLN AM
June 29, 30 and July 1 and 8, 2018 WPLN-FM
August 3,4 and 5 2018 WPLN FM
Sept 28, 29, 30 2018 WPLN AM
December 28, 29, 30 2018 WPLN-AM
December 28,29,30 2018 WPLN-FM
March 22,23,24 2019 WPLN-AM
March 22,23,24 2019 WPLN-FM
July 12,13,14 2019 WPLN-FM
August 16,17,18 2019 WPLN-AM
October 15,16,17 2019 WPLN AM
December 27, 28,29 2019 WPLN FM
January 17, 18, 19 2020 WPLN-AM
January 24, 25,26 2020 WPLN-FM
January 5,6,7 2020 WFCL
May 27,28,29 2020 WFCL
May 22, 23,24, 2020 WPLN-AM
June 26, 27, 28 2020 WPLN-FM
July 24, 25, 26 2020 WPLN FM
August 26, 27, 28 2020 WFCL
August 7, 8, 9, 2020 WPLN-AM
October 4, 5, 6, 2020 WPLN-FM
December 20, 23, 26, 27 2020 WFCL
Dec 18, 19, 20 2020 WPLN-FM
Jan 6, 7, 8, 2021 WFCL
Jan 29, 30, 31 WPLN-AM
Feb 26, 27, 28 2021 WPLN AM
Feb 12,13,14 2021 WFCL
Mar 5, 6,7 2021 WPLN AM
April 16,17, 18 2021 WFCL
April 30, May 1, 2, 2021 WPLN AM
June 11, 12, 13 2021 WPLN AM
July 23, 24, 25 2021 WPLN AM
Aug 10, 11, 12 2021 WPLN AM
Sept 10, 11, 12 2021 WPLN AM
Nov 26, 27, 28 2021 WPLN AM
Dec 31 Jan 1, 2, 2022 WFCL
April 8, 9, 10, 2022 WPLN AM
May 27, 28, 29, 2022 WNPX
June 3, 4, 5, 2022 WPLN-FM
July 8, 9, 10 WNXP 22, 23, 24 WPLN AM 15,16, 17 WPLN-FM
October 5, 6, 7 WPLN AM
November 25, 26 27 WNXP
December 2, 3, 4 WPLN
January 13.14.15 2023 WNXP, January 27,28,29 2023
May 12, 13 14, 2023 WNXP, WPLN-AM, WPLN
June 4, 5, 19 2023 WPLN

The Board of Directors meetings are at 8:30 am on the following dates. The meeting location is at Nashville Public Radio, 630 Mainstream Dr., Nashville, TN 37228

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