National contest honors Utah Public Radio and collaborative coverage of Great Salt Lake crisis

The Great Salt Lake Collaborative, a 23-member ad hoc media group including Utah Public Radio, has received national recognition for its reporting on solutions to the ongoing Great Salt Lake environmental crisis.

LOGAN — The Great Salt Lake Collaborative –represented here in Cache Valley by Utah Public Radio — has received national recognition for its reporting on possible solutions to an ongoing environmental crisis.

That initiative by more than 23 Utah member organizations was honored with the grand prize of $20,000 in the sixth annual nationwide “Local That Works” contest sponsored by the Current organization.

“The Great Salt Lake Collaborative is thrilled to be recognized on a national stage for the important work we are doing in Utah,” said Heather May, project manager for the collaborative. “This win validates our unique approach, focusing on collaboration, engagement and solutions journalism.”

The “Local That Works” contest is a project of Current, a non-profit news organization that covers public media for industry professionals.

The Great Salt Lake Collaborative and its member organizations were selected for the top honor in the 2022 contest from a pool of more than 90 public broadcasters, non-profit newsrooms and other media applicants.

“Finding and sharing solutions through a network like the Great Salt Lake Collaborative is impactful,” explained Kerry Bringhurst, the co-station manager for UPR. “We look forward to continued growth as a collaborative and we appreciate the opportunity of being a media partner.”

Since its inception in January of 2022, the Great Salt Lake Collaborative has produced approximately 150 stories about the Great Salt Lake’s diminishing water levels and solutions for minimizing that crisis.

Specifically nominated by UPR for the “Locals that Work” contest were a series of locally-produced radio stories called Lake Effect, highlighting relationships with Utah’s inland sea, and the efforts of UPR news director Sheri Quinn. She traveled to Las Vegas with collaborative partner Ben Winslow of Fox 13 News to report on Nevada’s response to the historic drought plaguing much of the West.

In addition to UPR and Fox 13 News, the Great Salt Lake Collaborative’s members include many of Utah’s other public and for-profit radio stations; newspapers along the Wasatch Front; the KSL news organization; and others.

“Instead of competing,” May added, “the state’s diverse newsrooms are cooperating to cover an existential environmental crisis. By partnering with scientists, artists, librarians and other community organizations, the collaborative ensures that the public is at the heart of what we do.”

The Great Salt Lake Collaborative’s community partners include the Great Salt Lake Institute at Westminster College, the Salt Lake City Public Library, the Salt Lake Community College Community Writing Center, the Salt Lake Community College Geosciences Department, the Utah Division of State History, the Utah State Historic Preservation Office, the Utah Film Center and the Utah State Library.

Support for the Great Salt Lake Collaborative is provided by grants from the Solutions Journalism Network and the Knight Foundation.

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