Besides playing diverse music that reflects the taste of all of Milwaukee, The non-profit, non-commercial 88Nine RadioMilwaukee focuses on telling the story of Milwaukee and the issues that concern Milwaukeeans. 88Nine RadioMilwaukee addresses these issuses and stories on-air through of a varitey of campaigns such as Make Milwaukee which focused on arts and culture scene in Milwaukee, The Neighborhood Project which tells the story of communitiy organizing in four neighborhoods that reflect the city’s increasing diversity and our newest campaign “The First Summer Of The Rest Of Your Life” which tells the story of 6 graduates of the Class of 2009 that have benefited from organizations that target at risk youth.
All of these campaigns and their relative stories air on the station throughout the day in between songs; however we wanted a way that these stories to be accessible to a wider audience. 88Nine created the Unified Milwaukee Blog which hosts all of the stories from the various campaigns.
Our latest campaign is our most personal and intimate to date. “The First Summer of The Rest of Your Life” purprose is to spend time with six at-risk Milwaukee youth, and learn how they navigate this tricky time in their life. We chose six Milwaukee teens, once considered at-risk, all of them now 2009 high school grads with college plans in the Fall. Each was nominated for participation in the series by a Milwaukee organization that works with at-risk Milwaukee youth. 88Nine not only wanted to tell the stories of these youth but to highlight the organizations that helps these youths and others and to provide opportunities for the people of Milwaukee to get involved and volunteer for these organization. The best way to do this is through our Unified Milwaukee blog, our station’s Facebook page, podcast subscriptions and our Twitter feeds. We utilized our RSS feed to push our content to Twitter and Facebook page. We also started to post the audio pieces on Facebook page utilizing the Facebook music player. Plus we provided resources on our Unified Milwaukee blog for listeners to get involved.
Social Media helped our previous campaign, The Neighborhood Project reach a Milwaukee audience that might not ever heard of our station. Once people on twitter and Facebook saw stories that related to their cities, they went to check out the different audio pieces on the different neighborhoods on the Unified Milwaukee blog which help them learn more about our station.
Here is a quote from one of our fans from our Facebook page in regards to our Neighborhood Project.
“TNP is by far my favorite segment on radio today and maybe for the last 20 years or more!!! It’s brilliantly done to feel like I’m sitting at a cafe talking to people and getting their stories and I am riveted to my radio listening to stories sometimes having a driveway moment even when I’m hearing a story for the 4th or 5th time. You should be winning awards for this stuff! Thank you for taking on this project, I have even been teary eyed with love for the city I have called my home nearly my entire life and am learning so much about because of your excellent work!
Filed under: Community
