LOCAL CONTENT AND SERVICE 2019

WGBH enriches people’s lives through programs and services that educate, inspire, and entertain, fostering citizenship and culture, the joy of learning, and the power of diverse perspectives. wgbh mission statement wgbh local content and service 2019

WGBH serves our local audiences with trusted content and engaging experiences that are rooted in and reflect our region. Through TV and radio broadcasts, online and mobile content, educational activities, screenings, performances and forums in our Brighton and Boston Public Library studios, WGBH fosters citizen participation and community connections.

WGBH operates a variety of public television services: WGBH 2, WGBH 44, WGBH Kids, and Boston Kids & Family TV (an educational service for Boston cable subscribers, in collaboration with the City of Boston); WGBH WORLD and WGBH Create. WGBH 2 and WGBH Kids are also available to YouTube TV subscribers.

WGBH operates three public radio services: 89.7 WGBH, Boston’s Local NPR; 99.5 WCRB Classical Radio Boston; and WCAI, local NPR for the Cape, the Islands and the south coast (90.1, 91.1, 94.3).

We offer six web services—wgbh.org, wgbhnews.org, wgby.org, classical wcrb.org, wgbh.org/jazz247 and capeandislands.org—that provide streaming, podcasts, blogs, news updates and a wide range of program resources.

WGBH’s services offer a mix of national fare and locally originated content designed to serve the specific needs and interests of New England area audiences.

COVER: WGBH hosted Boston Public School students for a year-end Excellence for All event. © Sam Brewer

1 WGBH NEWS

WGBH provides comprehensive news coverage to our community via TV, radio, the web and mobile. We take the approach of connecting the Commonwealth, covering the issues that citizens across the state care about. WGBH is among the fastest-growing local news providers in Greater Boston, drawing on the talent of our 100-person multiplatform newsroom, which garnered five regional Edward R. Murrow Awards in 2019. Earlier this year, we invested in the expansion of our newsrooms to provide more local coverage across our region. We laid plans for a bureau in Worcester that will be equipped with a broadcast studio and technology to stream digital video and provide radio and digital stories for 89.7 FM and the news website.

Our TV affiliate in Springfield, WGBY, joined together with New England Public Radio to form a robust new multiplatform public media organization called New England Public Media (NEPM). Reporting from NEPM will bring greater awareness of western Massachusetts to audiences and policymakers in the Greater Boston region. Through our Woods Hole radio station WCAI, we are sharing important stories from Cape Cod, the Islands and south coast. And we are leading the way on local investigative reporting with our newest colleagues from the New England Center for Investigative Reporting (NECIR) who officially joined the WGBH family in July, ensuring that we will continue to lead the way in hard-hitting, in-depth regional investigations.

Our newsroom offers perspective and analysis across media, allowing WGBH to reach audiences in multiple ways and to take advantage of each platform’s unique storytelling abilities. WGBH’s partnership with The GroundTruth Project, along with our co-productions with The World and The Takeaway from PRX, greatly expand our local news resources.

WGBH’s multimedia approach informed all of its local programming in 2019:

The WGBH newsroom is growing and • 89.7 WGBH offers more than 30 hours every week of original, local expanding coverage across the Commonwealth. programming that brings listeners a wide range of voices and opinions. © Meredith Nierman • Boston Public Radio, our three-hour live midday radio program, hosted by seasoned Boston journalists Jim Braude and Margery Eagan, offers thought-provoking discussions on the day’s news and issues. The show regularly hosts our region’s most influential policymakers, business leaders and cultural mavens. Monthly one-hour, in-studio conversations with Governor Charlie Baker, Boston Mayor Marty

2 Walsh, Attorney General Maura Healey, in addition to appearances by Boston Police Commissioner William Gross, offer citizens an opportunity to directly connect with their elected officials about the issues they care about. • Greater Boston, our signature weeknight TV news program hosted by Jim Braude, continues to provide insight into the stories and newsmakers that matter to our local community. • Emily Rooney and a media-savvy panel of journalists on WGBH television’s Beat the Press review the news of the week every Friday night, holding the media accountable for journalistic lapses and giving credit to local and national news coverage that get it right. • Under the Radar with Callie Crossley focuses on local stories from alternative press outlets and community sources often overlooked by mainstream media. A sample of segments in 2019 include the uptick in hiring of workers with disabilities and its long-term effect on the job market, multiple programs dedicated to Boston’s hotly contested City Council elections, a project by young female researchers uncovering the forgotten women programmers who helped found the field of population genetics, the hidden history of Puerto Ricans serving in the Callie Crossley, winner of the prestigious U.S. armed forces and the conditions faced by Puerto Rican veterans Yankee Quill Award for journalism. © Meredith Nierman today and an ongoing discussion tracking the impact of the #AsianAugust phenomenon (sparked by the blockbuster appeal of recent all-Asian movie casts) on Asian on-screen representation. • The longest-running program on public television focusing on the interests of communities of color, Basic Black, hosted by Callie Crossley, has been at the forefront of emerging social media engagement and broadcast by incorporating a simultaneous Facebook and Twitter stream and discussion with live TV to connect directly with audiences. Basic Black continues to be responsive to current events, providing a platform for local voices on national issues. Topics covered in 2019 included mental health, education equality with the new Boston Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Brenda Cassellius, minority ownership in the emerging cannabis industry, the impact of colorism, the challenges of solving cold cases in communities of color and a look at the 400th anniversary of the first enslaved people to arrive in America. Basic Black, in collaboration with Berklee College of Music, produced an episode featuring three-time Grammy winner and

3 founder and artistic director of the Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice Terri Lyne Carrington, Berklee student Dreion and Grammy-nominated saxophonist and former Beyoncé band member Tia Fuller. • On Open Studio with Jared Bowen, Boston’s only full-time multimedia arts reporter pulls back the curtain on the creative process, with interviews and stories on local, regional and national artists and arts organizations. Highlights of 2019 include the exhibit, “Ancient Nubia Jared Bowen and Dolly Parton. © Meredith Nierman Now” at the Museum of Fine Arts; a tour of Orchard House, the historic home of author Louisa May Alcott; photographer Graciele Iturbide, one of Mexico’s most celebrated living photographers; a view of the rare collection of British painter J.M.W. Turner’s watercolors; and the Peabody Essex Museum’s new 40,000 square-foot wing. Interviews included actor Billy Porter, musician David Byrne, country star Dolly Parton and iconic actress Liv Ullmann. The program continued its in-studio performances with Grammy winner singer- songwriter Paula Cole, actress and singer Alicia Witt and “Concert for One” creator and violist Rayna Yun Chou. Local News Events and Initiatives

In addition to our regular programming, which includes local guests and features on Morning Edition and All Things Considered, a number of special news events and reporting initiatives benefited from our hyperlocal focus in 2019:

• Massachusetts lags behind most of the country when it comes to electing women to public office—that’s what an in-depth report from WGBH News found after spending six months collecting and sorting through the data. • WGBH News produced extensive coverage around the mid-term elections, including an online voter guide for our digital audience. Reporters asked candidates a series of questions and produced a summary of each candidate’s top priorities, background and positions on issues.

Arun Rath, executive editor/host of All Things Considered at WGBH News. © Meredith Nierman

4 • WGBH News reported on the forgotten story of the Reverse Freedom Rides. In 1962, one year after Freedom Riders rode Greyhound buses south in an effort to integrate interstate transit, Southern segregationists decided to retaliate. They tricked impoverished African Americans from the South into boarding buses that dropped them in unsuspecting Northern cities, including Hyannis on Cape Cod, where President John F. Kennedy had a summer home. WGBH News found Betty Williams tells the story of her family’s one of those families and told the story from their perspective, journey north. © Meredith Nierman/WGBH News weaving in newly discovered historical documents and archival tape in a two-part series and digital video documentary. • WGBH News teamed up with a network of PBS stations and examined the patchwork of laws that govern the growth, use and sale of marijuana. During a 30-minute special presentation, we took viewers to California, Arizona, New Jersey and across Massachusetts to assess some of the challenges. • WGBH News produced a four-part series Stressed and Depressed on Campus. The reports focused on the increased levels of anxiety and depression among college students. The series examined the intense pressures surrounding children’s achievement in high school and college, what institutions are doing in response and areas where they still struggle. • One year after dozens of gas explosions rocked the towns of Lawrence, Andover and North Andover, WGBH News wrote and produced the podcast Fire in the Valley, bringing listeners inside the events as they unfolded from different perspectives, including the fire department, residents, business owners and our own newsroom.

5 COVERING CAPE COD, THE ISLANDS & SOUTH COAST WCAI, a service of WGBH, gives listeners on Cape Cod, Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard and the south coast their own NPR station—one infused with a unique local sound and sense of place. The station serves the community with original programming that features personalities and topics specific to the region. Partnerships with theCape Cod Times and the area’s weekly papers enrich the station’s robust news reporting.

• The Point with Mindy Todd provides lively and informative discussions each day for local residents. • Our weekly Local News Roundup invites local journalists onto the airwaves each Friday for an hour-long discussion of the top news stories. • 2019 saw the launch of our in-house podcast The Forgetting: Inside the Mind of Alzheimer’s. The twice-monthly podcast is co-hosted by two Sarah Mizes-Tan, right, reports from the waters of Cape Cod. well-respected Alzheimer’s experts, David Shenk and Greg O’Brien. © WGBH Educational Foundation O’Brien was diagnosed in 2009 at age 59 with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. The podcast highlights the friendship of Shenk and O’Brien, while documenting O’Brien’s experience as the disease symptoms become more pronounced. • WCAI’s feature reporting covered topics ranging from the rise in urgent care centers across the region, the proposal to build new bridges onto Cape Cod, the burgeoning offshore wind industry and much more. In addition, in 2019, WCAI produced the following special series: • The Big Blue Bin: Disruptions to international recycling markets have been widely reported, leading many to wonder how well our local recycling is working. Our series examined the four major household recycling streams—cans, glass, paper and plastic—to discover how much of what we toss into the big blue bin is really being recycled and at what cost. • Sober Houses: Sober houses, a key part of the path of addiction recovery, are meant to be a final step in the journey to living independently or returning to family. WCAI’s three-part series examines the pressing need for sober houses, their importance in the addiction-recovery journey and the challenges they can pose for communities.

6 • Pilgrim Nuclear at a Turning Point: Built in 1972 on the shores of Cape Cod Bay, Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station has been the subject of controversy and concern for decades. This three-part series reports on the plant as it heads towards permanent shutdown. WCAI’s ongoing programs highlight and reflect the many dimensions of life and issues in the region:

• Local Food Report looks at the local food scene. • Cape Cod Notebook features essays on nature. • Hidden History focuses on lesser-known historic events, places and people from around Cape Cod, the Islands and the south coast. • The Fishing News looks at who is catching what and where. • This year, in partnership with The GroundTruth Project, we have a reporter at WCAI dedicated to reporting on the human impact on climate change. The Arts

• Ways of Life is a collection of stories about our neighbors who share this place. Each portrait becomes part of the surprising, interwoven tapestry of our lives together. • Poetry Sunday features a different local poet on the air each week. • A partnership with the nonprofit group 20 Summers allows WCAI to record and air Cape-themed events hosted from the historic Hawthorne Art Barn in Provincetown. Nature and Science

• Bird Report highlights bird sightings and seasonal information on breeding and migration. • Looking Skyward covers the latest astronomy news and interesting developments, as well as a wrap-up of what’s currently visible in the night sky. Sports

• And for the quintessential Cape experience, WCAI broadcasts the Cape Cod Baseball League All-Star Game for local fans each July.

7 MUSIC

Extending the reach of arts, history and culture is one of WGBH’s unique public services. This month, we celebrated one of our finest milestones: ten years since we acquired 99.5 WCRB Classical Radio Boston, the region’s only source for 24/7 classical music. Of its 168 hours each week, 167 are locally programmed, produced and hosted by WCRB staff in our WGBH studios. WCRB devotes more time than any other station in the country to broadcasts by local arts organizations, with more than 50 full-length broadcasts by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, along with other concerts recorded and produced by WCRB by the Handel and Haydn Society, the New England Conservatory, the Boston’s Children’s Chorus, Rockport Music, the Steinway Society Piano Competition, the Cantata Singers, The Boston Early Music Festival, Boston Baroque, A Far Cry and others.

• WCRB airs In Concert, a weekly program that captures the wealth of

J’Nai Bridges sings at a concert celebrating live music performed in and around Boston. Presented by rotating WCRB’s 10 years with WGBH. WCRB hosts, the series partners with many local musical © Lisa Abitbol organizations that assist in promoting the show. • WCRB online offers listeners three classical streaming channels: BSO Concert, Boston Early Music and Bach. During the winter months, there are also three 24/7 streams of varied holiday music offerings. • This year WCRB launched a new program on air and online called Out of the Box, highlighting new releases that fall somewhere outside of the typical classical genre. The web posts for each episode go in-depth into what makes each album special. Examples include “Violins of Hope,” a recording made with violins rescued from concentration camps during the Holocaust, and Emily Lau’s “Seven Dickinson Songs,” a composer’s setting of Emily Dickinson poetry using modern and ancient instruments. • For the third year, WCRB has partnered with Aeronaut Brewery in Somerville to present The Pindrop Sessions, a classical-ish concert series bringing varied performance groups together in front of audiences that want to experience something new. Approximately half the audience at each monthly event have never been to one of the sessions before, and many are not regular classical concertgoers.

8 Jazz

For more than 40 years, 89.7 WGBH has broadcast Boston’s premiere jazz music program Eric in the Evening on Friday through Sunday evenings from 9pm-midnight. The program is hosted by musicologist and educator Eric Jackson, the “Dean of Boston’s Jazz Scene.”

WGBH digital’s online music station, Jazz 24/7, celebrated its fourth year streaming the best in classic and contemporary jazz. Available anytime on our website at wgbh.org/jazz247 and on 89.7 weekends at midnight, Eric Jackson’s Playlist starts the day, alternating with The Jazz Gallery with Tessil Collins throughout the day.

“Dean of Boston’s Jazz Scene” Our listeners can visit the jazz music section of the WGBH website to Eric Jackson. find in-depth looks at great artists, live interviews and performance © WGBH/Anthony Tieneli webcasts from the WGBH studios.

April is Jazz Appreciation Month, and this year we celebrated the occasion with a live Eric in the Afternoon webcast each Wednesday of the month from our Boston Public Library studio. The shows featured library staff discussing jazz titles, local authors and performances by Yoko Miwa, Mixcla, Laszlo Gardony and the great Ron Carter.

The filmJazz Along the Charles, produced by Tessil Collins, was screened in our Yawkey Theater in September. This film captures the Celebrity Series of Boston’s day-long festival of local jazz ensembles along the Charles River Esplanade. Each ensemble interpreted the same curated list of Boston-related tunes, creating one collective concert that celebrated the city’s vibrant jazz community.

Our dedication to making jazz available in our community includes programs such as the monthly broadcast Live from Scullers. This partnership with the region’s famous local jazz club, along with our broadcast of NPR’s Jazz Night in America, brings the magic of live performances to our local listeners.

We continue to support the region’s jazz music programs, concerts and conversations through relationships with Cambridge Jazz Festival, Celebrity Series of Boston, Harvard University’s Office of the Arts and Berklee College of Music and others.

9 Celtic

For more than three decades, 89.7 WGBH has reached deep into New England’s sizable Celtic and folk communities with the weekly music program A Celtic Sojourn, hosted by Brian O’Donovan. Born and raised in West Cork, Ireland, O’Donovan shares his passion for traditional and contemporary forms of Celtic music and has created multiple This year, A Christmas Celtic Sojourn offered a signature events staged in theatres around New England. A Christmas sensory-friendly show. © Vic Dvorak Celtic Sojourn each December plays to more than 12,000 people. Its equivalent in March, A St. Patrick’s Day Celtic Sojourn, has expanded to six shows in five cities. This year we added a special show for audience members with sensory-input challenges. Popularity of the Burren Backroom Series continues to grow, with concerts in the intimate 100-seat venue taking place every Wednesday and regularly on Sunday afternoons. This year marked the launch of a new, cross-genre collaborative festival Exploring Celtic Roots and Branches in partnership with Rockport Music on the North Shore. WGBH Learning Tours continue to expand with local residents traveling with WGBH hosts to Ireland, Scotland, and Galicia in Northern Spain.

Front Row Boston

Since 2014, our Emmy-winning music series Front Row Boston has been recording exceptional performances at Boston’s best venues. In 2016, they began producing stripped-down sessions with emerging and nationally recognized acts in our acoustically pristine Fraser Performance Studio, as well as intimate performances with extraordinary artists and audiences comprised of WGBH members. In 2019, the team captured shows at House of Blues Boston, Brighton Music Hall and Paradise Rock Club and brought more than 20 artists to WGBH, including Of Monsters and Men, Chadwick Stokes, Molly Tuttle, Black Pumas and Billy Bragg.

Brooklyn Rider played at WGBH as part of the Front Row Boston series. © Sam Brewer

10 EDUCATION & EDUCATIONAL ENGAGEMENT

WGBH Education leverages our many award-winning brands and key strategic partners to bring educational content and engagement to students and educators, parents, librarians and youth leaders throughout the communities we serve.

Highlights from 2019 include:

• WGBH Education provided much-needed books and educational Using WGBH learning materials, parents and materials to children and families in target communities throughout children learn together. © Mollie Levin the Commonwealth through the Books+ in Massachusetts initiative. In 2019, we established a new collaboration with a network of maternal/child health organizations, reaching at-risk families from vulnerable communities throughout eastern Massachusetts with books and learning toys for new mothers and their newborns. In addition, we deepened our relationship with Countdown to Kindergarten programs in four communities, where we provided books and activities to pre-K students. Finally, we joined community-based organizations in urban neighborhoods in Boston, Holyoke and Worcester celebrating Earth Day throughout the month of April by enhancing family programming with STEM-themed children’s books and related activities from WGBH’s PEEP and the Big Wide World and Plum Landing. In total, WGBH and our partners reached more than 10,000 at-risk children and families with some 12,000 new children’s books, fun activities and educational toys for them to take home and keep. • We welcomed hundreds of students for our tenth season of High School Quiz Show (HSQS), our award-winning single- elimination academic team competition for high school students in Massachusetts. Endorsed by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and the Massachusetts PTA, HSQS rewards the academic achievements of local high school students who compete as teams, answering questions correlated to Boston Latin School celebrates its 2019 win on state curriculum guidelines in literature, history, science, math, civics, High School Quiz Show. © Elizabeth Friar current events and general knowledge. Teams were cheered on by enthusiastic studio audiences, which totaled more than 1,255 for the season and included families, friends, teachers and several costumed school mascots. The season also saw the first Boston Public Schools contestant—Boston Latin School—win HSQS.

11 • With the support of a Ready To Learn grant from the U.S. Department of Education to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, WGBH continued to reach new immigrant families with young children in collaboration with partners such as Boston Public Schools Adult Learning Program, Boston Public Library, English for New Bostonians and Tech Goes Home. Together, we hosted summer activities, STEM camps for early elementary-age students, introduced families to coding with Scratch Jr., and promoted reading through the distribution of new children’s books, including Ada Twist, Scientist and Iggy Peck, Architect. Through these programs, dozens of families over four years have received in-depth services. • Over the past year, WGBH Education worked with partners such as the Boston Area Girls STEM Collaborative, Worcester Polytechnic Institute and Girls Inc., to promote engineering, invention and environmental sustainability among young people in Massachusetts using Design Squad Global Inventing Green. WGBH worked with more than 200 middle school students on a variety of environmental challenges including designing sneakers using reusable materials, building a prototype of a wind power station and building a machine that can use wind energy to accomplish a task, such as lifting a weight or spinning a pencil to make a drawing. • WGBH was media partner and presenter for two major STEM events, Worcester Polytechnic Institute’s TouchTomorrow Science Festival, attended by 9,000, and the Massachusetts STEM Summit, attended by more than 2,000. As partners at these events, we presented WGBH-produced STEM resources and hands-on activities to children and their parents and teachers. • WGBH Education supported Boston Public Schools (BPS) by producing a website of curated PBS LearningMedia resources to support Capstone projects for students in grades 3-5 who participate in BPS’s Excellence for All program, a cohort of elementary schools Families and guests admire student projects serving the most underserved populations in the district. Members of at a Boston Public Schools year-end event at WGBH. the WGBH Education department also volunteered in schools to help © Sam Brewer students with their projects. We also hosted the students’ Capstone Project Showcase at WGBH, featuring 80 students with their teachers. The event was attended by several Boston Public Schools educators, city officials and area education nonprofits and community members.

12 • The WGBH Education team hosted and participated in several professional learning events for BPS educators and librarians. We also planned and facilitated a science and design–thinking training at Brighton High School as part of all-staff professional development at the beginning of the school year and worked with BPS high school math students to create videos explaining methodology. In addition, we supported the Brighton High School School-Community Partners Program and participated in a panel on one of their STEM career events. • Five state and regional education conferences featured WGBH presentations, exhibits and keynote speakers, reaching more than 5,000 educators with in-person and in-booth presentations about our resources and programs: NERC (Northeast Regional Council for the Social Studies), MSLA (Massachusetts School Librarians Association), MassCUE (Massachusetts Computer Using Educators), the MassCUE/MSLA “Better Together” joint conference and MATSOL (Massachusetts Association of Teachers of Speakers of Other Languages). • Our Massachusetts Educator Ambassadors program entered its second year, with the goal of increasing partnerships with teachers to help spread the word about WGBH-produced resources and to create a teacher community to advise us on teacher programs and training. Sixteen teachers from across the state and a cross-section of grades and disciplines were selected for the program. Their combined efforts in webinars, conference presentations and other professional development events reached more than 2,900 Massachusetts educators. These and other Massachusetts educators also participated in numerous PBS LearningMedia product development efforts, including the NASA-funded Bringing the Universe to America’s Classrooms, and FRONTLINE and American Experience resources. We also filmed professional development videos in Worcester. • WGBH held 26 in-person and virtual educator trainings or presentations, in collaboration with various partners and touching on a broad range of WGBH-produced resources. Two afterschool professional development events on media literacy were held in collaboration with MassCUE and MSLA. In-person trainings were held in various school districts, and a special event was held at the Louisa

13 May Alcott house in Concord featuring classroom resources developed from MASTERPIECE: Little Women. Our webinars for Massachusetts educators included one that offered resources for supporting project-based learning with digital resources. In total, our Massachusetts educator events reached more than 3,300 teachers. In addition, many Massachusetts teachers also attended other WGBH national webinars and presentations. • WGBH Education staff participated in the BuildBoston’s BUILDFest Pitch Challenge, which celebrates the culmination of a year of hard work by Boston Public Schools’ ninth-grade students on their entrepreneurship projects. • WGBH Education hosted eight college and graduate students as interns or researchers who helped us carry out our work across multiple functions while they learned about educational technology, public media, child/youth development, production, marketing, content development, leadership and social impact. In addition, we hosted four high school interns from partner station WGBY (now NEPM) for a day of career exploration and learning about children’s media and educational content development. Finally, we hosted our first Sarah Lawrence Lightfoot Summer Fellow, a college-level position focused on diversity, equity and impact.

14 IN OUR STUDIOS

WGBH Events

A 30-by-45 foot LED screen alongside WGBH Studios signals the spirit and content of public media for some half-million passersby each week, with one theme a day showcased through photography or slow-moving images. This digital mural also mirrors the vibrancy of our region: images reflecting events and issues in our community and nation are displayed, drawing attention to the cultural richness of Boston and New England and to what’s on the minds of those in the neighborhoods we serve.

A new photo appears every day on WGBH’s digital mural. © City of Boston WGBH Events

In 2019, WGBH welcomed almost 100,000 people to our events and tours.

• Member engagement events: 20,837 guests

• Facility rental and community events (34): 8,088 guests

• Other Events (Sing That Thing, High School Quiz Show, Ralph Lowell Society events, Food & Wine Festival, Innovation IdeaLab): 4,868 guests

• Public tours of the studios: 2,300 guests

• Celtic events (St. Patrick’s and Christmas): 21,500 guests

• Landmark Orchestra summer series: 42,102 guests

15 • In a celebration of Asian Pacific American culture event, WGBH honored the first-ever Asian American US Cabinet Secretary, Norman Mineta, featured in the PBS documentary, Norman Mineta and his Legacy: An American Story. A reception and a display in honor of the 150th anniversary of the Transcontinental Railroad and Wah Lum Kung Fu and Tai Chi Academy performances followed the formal presentation in Yawkey Theater. We had 240 guests on site to experience this important annual event. Additional participants of the formal program included Boston City Councilor Michelle Wu, Bunker Hill Community College President Pam Eddinger, UMass Political Science Prof. Paul Watanabe and Henry L. Stimson Professor at Harvard Law School Mark Wu. Community partners participating in the reception include NAACP Boston, Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center, Asian American Commission and Chinese Historical Society of New England. • In July 2019, WGBH hosted a series of community screenings for a few hundred guests in our Yawkey Theater of a new WGBH– produced PBS Kids series Molly of Denali before its national debut. Molly of Denali is an animated action-adventure comedy, the first nationally distributed children’s show to feature an Alaska Native as the lead character. The screenings were free and open to the public. In addition, we included a special sensory-friendly sneak preview screening of Molly of Denali with special features to accommodate people with sensory-input challenges. A Stage for Diverse Voices

• WORLD Channel’s Stories from the Stage launched its third season, with its invitation into the intimate facets of multicultural storytellers’ lives. This year, ten stories were also featured as part of an exhibition on immigrant experiences at Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art. The full array of WORLD’s original content introduces us to emerging and master documentary filmmakers who offer a diversity of voices, telling stories not heard elsewhere. • This past July, our annual WGBH FunFest: A Day of Ice Cream

Stories from the Stage discovers and showcases expanded. Thousands of guests attended the annual fun-filled local storytellers. community event featuring all-you-can-eat ice cream, interactive © Patricia Alvarado Núñez activities, face painting, carnival games and roving PBS characters. This year, we extended the event into our studios, provided sensory-friendly activities and included places where guests could enjoy a quiet space or a self-directed space to read, relax or color.

16 • NOVA Science Studio, a pilot program for Boston students, empowers them to develop the skills to tell engaging stories about science through text journalism and short-form video. The program, focused on engaging young women and students of color, culminated in a celebration in June hosted at WGBH Studios where participants showcased their finished projects. • WGBH hosted An Evening with Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Participants gather to celebrate participation in NOVA Science Studio. This distinguished Harvard scholar and host of the PBS series Finding © Meredith Nierman Your Roots, launched a new season of his acclaimed public TV series. Gates sat down with WGBH TV and Radio Host Callie Crossley in front of a sold-out audience in our Yawkey Theater to discuss DNA analysis and its valuable role in uncovering Americans’ unknown ancestral stories. This event gave us the opportunity to reach new local audiences and organizations: Race and Gender in Science and Medicine, Society of Black Engineers, NE Historic Genealogical Society, Broad Institute, Mass Biotech, Center for Human Genetics and Frequency Therapeutics. • WGBH had a full house for the premiere screening of FRONTLINE’s For Sama, before its national PBS broadcast debut, in our Yawkey Theater. The film, which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 2019, chronicles Waad al-Kateab’s experience of love, motherhood and survival during the Syrian conflict. The screening was followed by a panel discussion with FRONTLINE Executive Producer Raney Aronson-Rath, filmmakers al-Kateab and A full house in WGBH’s Yawkey Theater. Edward Watts and Dr. Hamza al-Kateab (Waad al-Kateab’s husband, © Patricia Alvarado Núñez a Syrian doctor and human rights activist). This event gave us the opportunity to reach new audiences and organizations: Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center, Syrian American Medical Society New England Chapter, Physicians for Human Rights, Massachusetts Chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center and the International Institute of New England.

17 IN THE COMMUNITY • Our fourth annual WGBH 5K: Run for Public Media took place on April 14 at the DCR Artesani Park in Brighton. In addition to the adult 5K run along the Charles River for fellow fans of WGBH TV and WGBH Radio, we expanded our reach to offer a kids one-mile Fun Run, which followed the first mile of the adult 5K course. Runners came from 7 states and ranged in age from 2 to 76 years old. • In November WGBH presented two full-house events in the community surrounding the College Behind Bars film. The program is a four-part documentary film that explores the power of education through the eyes of incarcerated men and women trying to earn college degrees from one of the country’s most rigorous prison education programs. Director Lynn Novick and producer Sarah Botstein worked for decades with the film’s executive producer Ken Burns. The first screening, presented at Showcase de Lux Patriot Place in Foxboro, Massachusetts, featured a panel with filmmakers Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, formerly incarcerated students featured in the film, and Devin and Jason McCourty of the New England Patriots. A screening and panel discussion at Boston Public Library’s Rabb Auditorium included a conversation with the filmmakers and program beneficiaries. This event gave us the opportunity to reach new audiences and to connect further with city and state officials in public safety organizations including: Educational Justice Institute, Mayor’s Office of Returning Citizens, Boston College Prison Education Program and Norfolk and Suffolk County Sheriffs.

18 WGBH STUDIO at the BPL

The WGBH studio at the Boston Public Library is a community space in the heart of the city that encourages civic engagement and conversation. With open public access to WGBH broadcasts and events, we connect citizens with local newsmakers, leaders and, of course, with each other. In the past year, we doubled our content production and events.

Linda Polach, executive director of the WGBH • We launched our new Lunch Hour Live digital streaming series that Studio at the BPL. broadcasts live on Wednesdays and Thursdays at noon. Wednesday © WGBH Educational Foundation Lunch Hour Live explores the latest local news stories. Thursday Lunch Hour Live gives viewers a behind-the-scenes look at WGBH’s upcoming national productions. Both broadcasts allow an in-studio audience and viewers online to participate with questions. • We capitalized on our proximity to New Hampshire ahead of primary season and created a series of digital town hall interviews with several presidential candidates. Bostonians had the opportunity to ask the candidates questions about the issues in real time. For some events, digital participation reached 60,000. • The WGBH Children’s Media Department along with the Children’s Library at the Boston Public Library and the Newsfeed Cafe partnered to host two children’s events in our BPL studio, featuring PBS Kids’ Pinkalicious and Peteriffic and Molly of Denali, which also celebrated a new book release. Hundreds of local families enjoyed art, food and screenings. • Now in its third year, our Hear at the Library digital and radio segments allow library patrons to voice their opinions on current issues in the news cycle. This year they were able to weigh in on such topics as the state of the union, MBTA woes and the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. • Brian O’Donovan continues to host a live taping of A Celtic Sojourn once a month from our Boston Public Library studio, consistently drawing crowds upwards of 100. • Boston Public Radio continues to bookend our weekly productions in the BPL studio for three hours every Tuesday and Friday. Guests from this year include Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg, Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley and actor Ed Asner.

19