Decibel Hosts Third Meeting with Dove Springs Sounding Board

This week, Decibel hosted its third meeting with the team’s Sounding Board. The team is covering Dove Springs, and the nine members who make up the Sounding Board allows Decibel to actively collaborate with residents and ensures that the team accurately reports on the area while bringing important stories to light.

Hosting these meetings continues Decibel’s community-led journalism initiative, in which we report on an underrepresented central Texas community for a year. In the first two meetings, staff and Sounding Board members discussed stories the team should cover on housing and affordability issues. At this meeting, Decibel’s senior multimedia reporter Blair Waltman-Alexin gave updates on published stories so far, provided an outline on upcoming projects and community events, as well as allowed for the members to provide any thoughts and questions they’ve had along the way.

From late August to November, Decibel has covered stories such as changes to local wildlife, talking to survivors of the 2013 and 2015 Onion Creek floods, and highlighting an artist working with the community to honor the survivors and lives lost. This content has been distributed via 16 articles and 24 videos, which encompass longform video and vertical videos for social media platforms such as TikTok and Instagram.

“This is something that we haven't had, taking community perspective and actually coming into the community and talking to people,” one member said. “That is something that we have been looking for, so thank you for doing this.”

A Dove Springs story featuring resident Bertha Hernández ran nationally on PBS News Weekend. One of the Board members helped connect the team to Hernández, which aided in profiling how the urban heat island phenomenon affected local people and brought this issue to a wider audience.

“That makes me cry,” one of the members said. “She’s amazing, and she's gold.”

As Decibel reports on the area, we’ve also attended local events to reach the community. Some of these events include the Dove Springs Back to School Bash at the George Morales Dove Springs Recreation Center and the Widen Elementary Haunted Hallway, where we passed out candy, “Arthur” plushies and PBS Kids paint kits. We also attended the Onion Creek mural unveiling, which allowed us to hear directly from those affected from the floods.

To make sure reporting and community outreach methods are functioning for those actually in the community, Waltman-Alexin sends out feedback forms to the Sounding Board where they can provide information and rate the quality of the work. Based on responses so far, 64% of the Board rated the stories as Excellent, 28.6% as Pretty Good and 7% as Okay.

Feedback provided by the Sounding Board.

92% said the topics covered are important to the community, and 100% said Decibel has accurately portrayed the people in the area. These responses are valuable for improving on the reporting process and letting us see what direction to keep taking. The Sounding Board also gave tips for improving the response rate to these forms to gather as much data as possible.

Following feedback on Decibel’s progress, Waltman-Alexin brought up future stories, such as hearing from a parent support specialist who helps parents at a school with housing. She also brought up talking to people who no longer live in Dove Springs because of affordability issues.

One Sounding Board member said she would have to move out of the area by February because of continual changes in Austin. She said she worries that if she waits too long, she won’t be able to find a place close enough to Austin.

“I was thinking of renting this house, using the home equity and getting another one,” she said. “But I'm a single mom. I'm not going to be able to maintain this home. All of that is too much. I just want to do what I need to in order for me to be healthy.”

Decibel and the Sounding Board will continue to hold these conversations throughout the rest of the reporting project.

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