Decibel Hosts Virtual Sounding Board Meeting

Last night the Decibel team hosted its fourth Sounding Board meeting of 2026. This was the final full meeting for the Rundberg reporting project, although team members are continuing to gather feedback and meet with residents. Staff members got to provide reporting updates, share some wins, and discuss Decibel’s next reporting location.

As of this month, the Decibel team has created 126 social media videos about Rundberg, and 39 longform videos. That puts us over our goal of one social video per week, and slightly behind our goal of two longform videos per month. Team members also shared feedback trends from Sounding Board members. Sounding Board members fill out a short survey on each longform report, letting us know how we’re doing covering their neighborhood. In total, our stories have been rated as Excellent (66.7%) or Pretty Good (33.3%). In two years no story has been rated as Neither Good Nor Bad, Poor, or Very Poor. Sounding Board members also overwhelmingly told us our stories cover topics important to Rundberg (92.5%) and that our stories accurately reflected some of the community (94.6%). Response rates continue to lag, and is something the team is continuing to work on.

We also shared our recent Lone Star Emmy nominations. The Decibel team earned three nominations: “The Boogeyman That’s Keeping Everyone Inside” in the Education/ Schools News category; “Can A Meme Save A Life?” in the Human Interest category; and finally “72 Hours Without SNAP” in the Politics/ Government category. Winners will be announced at the awards ceremony on November 14.

The team also shared new projects. Sounding Board members reviewed a new video by Jackie Ibarra on how one DACA recipient is finding joy, community and resistance through loteria. Attendees appreciated that the story covered an important topic with humanity and felt non-exploitive.

Divina Ceniceros Dominguez, founder of the Buenas Lotería Club, holds up a card. She started the program as a fundraiser for DACA recipients.

Finally, we gave a sneak peek at the locations we’re considering for our next reporting project. Our goal is to highlight areas that are often underserved in the Austin area. In the past we’ve used 211 call data to help us better understand what areas are requesting assistance. This year we have expanded our methodology, including data from The Eviction Lab, St. David’s Health Equity Index, and the Central Texas Food Bank’s Map The Meal Gap dashboard. From this, we’ve honed in on three possible locations. The Austin PBS Community Advisory Board will vote on the final location at their next meeting in November.

The fall is shaping up to be a busy time for our team, but the Decibel team committed to reporting on Rundberg through the end of 2026. If there’s a project or a story you’d like to see us tackle before we wrap things up, please reach out and let us know!