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Image via WAMU/DCist

On May 10, Alexya Brown tweeted ([link removed]) … a request.

“fear factor forreal: i'm eating cicadas during a live event this week for@DCist ([link removed]) . but first, i need to find them. if you have cicadas in your yard and wouldn't mind me plucking a few, dm pls.”

She got a few direct messages and, after a trip to a friend’s house, collected several plastic baggies of bugs that she cleaned, put into the freezer and, eventually, consumed.

In May, WAMU/DCist held a virtual event that offered the community and the newsroom a break from a bruising news cycle, and “Cicadas: What’s the buzz?” ([link removed]) had it all — science, trivia, music, food — timed for the hatching of periodical cicadas ([link removed]) . (A cold snap slowed the bugs down, which is why Brown, Brown, an engagement producer for Washington D.C.’s public radio station and online news site, had to put out the call looking for early hatchers in time for the event.)

“Pardon the bug pun, but we were all quite literally swarming around how we lean into this,” said Kelsey Proud, managing editor of audience at WAMU. “This is public media gold.”

The bugs, 17 years in the making, hit a sweet spot for the newsroom, she said, with the intersection of curiosity, science and community.

Environment reporter Jacob Fenston hadn’t been thinking about those bugs for 17 years, but in 2017, he wrote about them when some cicadas hatched early, possibly due to climate change.

“I sort of had 2021 circled on my calendar since then,” he said.

In March, Fenston started on the cicada beat ([link removed]) , and his reporting was a natural fit for a community event, which builds off coverage and reflects what the community is talking about, Brown said.

The team planned the cicada event, and then kept adding features to it — a trivia break, a musical performance by a bug rapper ([link removed]) and a cooking segment with a local chef.

In all, it was an hour and 38 minutes of cicadas ([link removed]) .

Nearly 1,200 people registered for the virtual event, said Yanlin Zhang, WAMU event coordinator, and 536 attended live. The event was free and attendees could donate (the suggested amount was, you guessed it, $17.) It brought in $1,538 from 74 donors, Zhang said.

But the goal wasn’t revenue, Proud said, but rather to show that the newsroom is part of the community.

“This is a little bit of joy,” she said. “This is a little bit of something other than a very challenging time that people have been experiencing.”
By the way, Fenston liked the cicada spring roll. With the mushrooms in the dish, he said, it was hard to taste the bug (which I will now use as a legitimate reason for not liking mushrooms).
Brown liked them, too.

“It was quite pleasant."

Alexya Brown, right, cooked with cicadas during a live event. (Screenshot, YouTube)
From our Sponsor:
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While you’re here:
* The Tulsa World put together a special section ([link removed]) on the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre.
* Free Press wrote about how local media fueled the massacre ([link removed]) .
* Previously, Poynter published a piece on the role newspapers across the country played in racial violence ([link removed]) .
* And if you haven’t yet, check out this interactive ([link removed]) from The New York Times to better understand the Black lives and businesses a white mob violently ended 100 years ago.

* Check out INN’s 2020 Impact Report ([link removed]) : “Yes, there’s a crisis in media. And yes, nonprofit news is bucking the trends. Ninety-three percent of news startups under the INN umbrella make it through their first five years and continue to grow, a rate of success that would be the envy of venture capitalists. In a little over a decade, our membership has grown tenfold, from 27 to more than 300 news outlets. With 2,500 journalists spanning the country, the INN network now provides reporting on a scale similar to National Public Radio and its member stations.”
* Follow API’s new Ideas to Action series ([link removed]) .
* Washington Post Opinions has launched Voices Across America ([link removed]) .
* Twitter is launching a new local weather service ([link removed]) .
* Poynter is a partner for this Local That Works webinar series ([link removed]) , which next week will be focusing on WFAE’s inclusion strategy. Join us at 2 p.m. ET on June 8.
* The Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder, the state’s oldest Black-owned newspaper, has put its archives online ([link removed]) .
* API highlighted three paths for local news sustainability ([link removed]) .
* Check out LMC and GNI’s digital advertising revenue playbook ([link removed]) .
* Read Steve Waldman for Poynter on why local news should be included in the infrastructure bill ([link removed]) .
* Read about the story that didn’t get covered in wine country ([link removed]) , until a reporter went to another newsroom.
* KSLA in Shreveport produced an hourlong documentary on mental health and first responders that led to a change among police ([link removed]) .
* More than 15 journalism trade groups and unions signed this open letter opposing an amendment to a California bill ([link removed]) that would protect journalists from being arrested while covering protests. “This amendment may actually restrict existing press freedoms rather than expand them, turning this bill on its head and into something that hurts the very people it was written to help.”
* Sending condolences to the Charlotte Observer newsroom, which lost two staff members recently, photographer David T. Foster III ([link removed]) and sports reporter Scott Fowler ([link removed]) .
* And in my obits newsletter this week for the Tampa Bay Times, I wrote about humor columnist Stephanie Hayes, the journalist who started the feature obits tradition ([link removed]) at the paper and what it taught her about reporting.

That’s it for me, I’m currently planning a less-frantic-reporter-summer and hope that whatever your plans are, they include some downtime,

Kristen
Kristen Hare
Editor, Locally
The Poynter Institute
@kristenhare ([link removed])

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