[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hi, and welcome to Know the news. I'm Becca Martin Brown, the arts and entertainment editor for the Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette and the River Valley Democrat Gazette. And we do this podcast every week to tease you. We want to tell you some of the stories that are coming up that you really want to read this weekend.
Hi, and welcome to the interview portion of Know the news. In case you missed it earlier, I'm Becca Martin Brown, the arts and entertainment editor for the Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette, and I am joined by the other half of us, April Wallace, who is the features editor for our Town profiles and Religion. And we're going to talk about her Sunday story about the rural Renaissance Roadshow. Hey.
[00:00:56] Speaker B: Hi. Say that three times fast.
[00:00:58] Speaker A: I had to write it down so I could say it at all.
[00:01:01] Speaker B: Right.
[00:01:03] Speaker A: Okay. First of all, this is your spotlight story for Sunday, so let's tell people what a spotlight story is.
[00:01:10] Speaker B: Spotlight is something that we began many years ago and have revived recently. This year we feature someone who's doing good in the community and always has some kind of personal tie to their cause.
[00:01:27] Speaker A: And so this particular week, April has a much broader range of story interests than your artsy girl here. And so this week, the rural Renaissance Roadshow is what, besides a big name?
[00:01:45] Speaker B: Well, in short, I think you could probably call it a clean energy conference, but that doesn't quite encompass all that they do. So the Royal Renaissance Roadshow was based on the work of Michelle Moore. She is CEO of the nonprofit Groundswell, which is not local, but she brought her conference here because she's very interested in giving rural communities clean energy, more resources, ways to do things that will keep people living in the small towns that they really love and want to live in, but with more funds to make their homes more energy efficient, to make workers happier, keep them in their towns, and to make sure that they're living in a quality place. And it includes things like solar energy projects to keep the lights on in churches, which, you know, are a bit of a social thing for communities because they feed people and sometimes they let know, in some cases, let people stay there overnight. So it's very important for rural communities to have their churches operating no matter what.
[00:03:04] Speaker A: Plus, it's also where the Marion's Burians family reunions and the churches are hugely important. Well, give me an example of some of the work that this organization has done.
[00:03:18] Speaker B: It's incredibly personal, and you'll find that out in the story for why Michelle began to do that. She was a White House official, and she realized after her four years in the Obama administration that she had done a lot of things to be proud of, saved a lot of energy, made things a lot better for the country. But when it came down to it, she hadn't done a lot for people like her grandparents who raised her in a small town in Georgia, in a cotton mill village. So Groundswell does things that directly impact those people. They repair homes before making the homes more energy efficient. So if you are an hourly worker at a shoe factory, like one in Arkansas that started a similar program, you don't have $10,000 for a roof repair out of nowhere. Maybe you have some rotted floorboards. Maybe you only have one or none working bathrooms. That's the kind of thing that they fix. And then you don't end up having folks who are afraid to turn on their heat in winter or who amass a $400 electric bill to keep the pipes from freezing. They do things that help. Well, not just these widows who may not have the house repair skills, but just anybody who can't afford to spend more than they have to for electricity.
[00:05:01] Speaker A: Well, you and I both grew up in small towns, and we knew lots of folks like this, definitely. So it's a really cool sounding program. And they came to Bentonville.
Why?
[00:05:13] Speaker B: Well, she said she found leadership in Arkansas that she really admired, and by that, she means, I believe her name is Martha Jane Murray. Started a program for she and her husband's shoe factory employees.
And in that program, which I believe was called heal, in its first iteration, their employees could borrow money from the company to make their homes more energy efficient so that they would have stable lives and not have to come to work. Thinking about, God, I hope I don't rack up another bill like that. How am I going to meet it? Because their dollars need to go to their rent and to the rising cost of groceries. So she started a way to kind of co op the expense. That way they would feel comfortable, know, in turn continue to be loyal to the out of. It was from a very good place. So Michelle noticed that, and she said, I want to have it. The first roadshow in Arkansas because of that. And that program in particular went on to have a partnership with the Washta Electric Company and has grown ever since.
She was also attracted to Bentonville because it's a small town and because it's doing very well in its economic efforts, and it's just essentially a good example for how she'd like other rural towns to have similar opportunities. So in it, they showed people where they could get more grants, more funding, other resources for farmers, for everyday people, people who live in Arkansas and other rural towns.
[00:07:08] Speaker A: Cool. So I wanted to ask you, while I have you here, people have always asked us, because you pick out and schedule and write and wrangle the profiles, and people have asked us for years, how do you choose a profile? How do you get to be a profile? Let's talk about profiles for just a second while you're here.
[00:07:36] Speaker B: Sure. It's what I've always loved doing. It was my very first job at the paper ten years ago, and I.
[00:07:42] Speaker A: Can'T tell you how happy I am. She loves it because they scare the dickens out of me.
[00:07:50] Speaker B: How do I choose them? Well, I start with the framework of, does this person make a difference in our community? And that can take many forms.
Are they doing something that helps others? Usually.
Are they very accomplished? Or are they bringing up people behind them and making life better somehow? That's how I start. But having done profiles for three years before returning to the paper, I simply do know a lot of people in the community, and they're always happy to tell me about the good things that are happening now.
So essentially, it is a bit of a game of telephone. I get notes from people. I get updates.
Having met, I think, 100 people that I profiled the first time around.
I do get updates from them saying, here's something brand new that I'm really excited about. How have you not heard about this person? Let me tell you about this new nonprofit or this new initiative.
And it's the things that we love to read because we want to have hope for our community getting better and better.
I get emails. I get press releases. I get text messages. I bump into people who I haven't seen in years, and it all becomes story ideas to consider. But if I'm hearing the same name over and over, that's a clue that, wow, this person really is doing something that resonates with people. Maybe I should check it out.
[00:09:33] Speaker A: So if someone wants to recommend a profile subject to you, what's the best way to do that?
[00:09:39] Speaker B: Can always email me at
[email protected] and that's the best way to reach start.
[00:09:50] Speaker A: Thank you so much for talking to us today.
[00:09:53] Speaker B: Thank you. Thanks for having me.
[00:09:56] Speaker A: That was April Wallace. She is the features editor for our Town Profiles and religion.
And we'll be back in just a minute.
[00:10:05] Speaker C: If you're enjoying this podcast, consider a newspaper subscription to the Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette or the River Valley Democrat Gazette. We have a special offer for our podcast listeners. So visit nwanline.com Podcast 23 to get started, you can also click the subscribe button on our websites, nwanline.com and river valleydemocratgazette.com. Or call us at 479-684-5509 and be sure to say that you're a podcast listener. Now back to the show.
[00:10:34] Speaker A: Of course, that's not the only thing happening this weekend in the Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette Here are some of the other stories we have coming your way over the next few days.
A new cell phone app called Cycle Wrap is being tested in five cities in the world, including Fayetteville. The app takes photos and other data to determine the most dangerous spots for bicyclists in a particular trail system. According to preliminary data, 70% of Fayetteville's trails are lower medium risk, with 30% at higher extreme risk. Stacey Ryburn will have that story.
More people are flying their own airplanes in northwest Arkansas these days, and that's creating a high demand for space to store them. Ron Wood will fill us in on that, and some of the country's best runners are expected to turn out for the Dirt circus Ten K next weekend in Bentonville, with $10,000 in prize money set to be awarded to the top finishers. Mike Jones has talked to some of those runners for a story he's working on. From the River Valley, Thomas Cicenti takes us to the city of Ozark and tells us about efforts there to breathe new life into the city's oldest park, and Monica Brick attended a panel discussion Thursday night concerning the growth, development and experience of downtown Fort Smith, a discussion moderated by Fort Smith Mayor George McGill. Monica will have a story on that. As always, it's sports season and the sports writers are running around the country like crazy and playoffs are about to be underway. We'll be covering numerous games, including Camden Fairview at Farmington North, Little Rocket Rogers and Fort Smith north side at Bentonville West. We'll also have some prep basketball for you. Yes, it's basketball season, and Paul Boyd will have a prep wrestling season preview. All that and more coming this weekend. And in entertainment, well, it's Christmas.
We'll have a Christmas roundup because the lights of the Ozarks turn on next weekend and Bentonville turns on its lights the day after. So check out what's up for everything Christmassy.
All of this ANd so much more will be available to our subscribers on our tablet and smartphone apps and at our websites nwanline.com and rivervalliedemocratgazette.com. To those of you who are already our subscribers. Thank you for your support of local journalism. If you're not a subscriber, hey, come join the party. We even have a special offer for our podcast listeners. Just visit nwanline.com Podcast 23 to get started. You can also click on the subscribe button on our websites, nwanline.com and rivervalleydemocratgazette.com, or call us at 479-684-5509 and be sure to say that you're a podcast listener. Know the News is a weekly podcast brought to you by the newsrooms of the Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette and the River Valley Democrat Gazette, and we appreciate you for listening. I'm Becca Martin Brown, arts and entertainment editor, your podcast host this week. Have a great weekend. Go get your Christmas tree out of storage and come back next Friday to find out what's going on.
