• “As part of WDET’s Crossing the Lines series, WDET created and fielded a survey that was designed to test our hypothesis that the two sides, city/suburb, Detroit partisan and skeptic, are speaking past each other….This survey is a big listening project. We hope our findings open the door to some committed listening and real collaboration.

The first investment a station can make in its community engagement strategy is simple: listening. Thanks to the Public Insight Network, WDET in Detroit has an infrastructure to facilitate a sophisticated form of listening that is focused on discovering and understanding community needs and aspirations. WDET is doing what it already knows intuitively as a local news resource: curating and packaging information for broadcast. The station has now embarked on an exciting new path, creating a credible brain trust that gives back to Detroit its most valuable resource: community ideas on how to make the city better for everyone. We’ll be looking forward to seeing the collaborations this project will no doubt inspire. 

~Ann Alquist, @radioanngal