Our Mission
Decibel is a community journalism project. We amplify diverse voices in Central Texas through in-depth listening and storytelling. Our stories spark engaging conversations around the complexities of today’s world.
Core Values
What Community Journalism Means To Us
In a traditional newsroom, story ideas are often generated by journalists and editors and then reporters go into communities to do their reporting. Community journalism instead promises to put the community first. Instead of just having information flow one way, we are creating a two way street of communication between our newsroom and the community. We view our work as a partnership with the communities we serve. Under this model, no story will be assigned without community input. By creating a partnership we ensure the communities we cover have a say in how we represent them. Our goal is to create stories that move beyond one-dimensional, stereotypical coverage and instead provide a fuller picture of a person’s lived experience.
What you will see in our videos
Our videos are first-person news documentaries. We think it’s important to help diverse communities in Central Texas share their own stories. We use the first-person narrative mode of storytelling to do this. This means the people in our stories will be telling their stories from their point of view. Stories will be narrated by the people in them and you will often hear “I” or “we” used by people describing their own experiences.
What you will see on our website
On our website you’ll find in-depth storytelling presented in a multimedia format. Our stories will feature videos, photography, graphics and written narratives. In addition to our stories, you’ll also find posts that describe our process. We want to be completely transparent about what we are doing so our audience can hold us accountable.
Got story ideas, advice on how we can improve our reporting or just want to know more about what we do? Reach out to us at news@klru.org.
And if you value this type of reporting, then please consider making a donation to Austin PBS. Your gift makes the quality journalism done by the Decibel team possible. Thank you for your contribution.
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Contact Us
Email us at news@klru.org