Clarence Ewing: The Million Year Trip writesCHIRP News Launches New Series: Person of Interest

CHIRP News is releasing its first on-going series featuring the voices of people from all around Chicago. News Director Dan Epstein and series producer Whitney Henry-Lester provide their perspectives on what they hope to achieve and what CHIRP listeners can expect to hear.

Dan Epstein – Director, CHIRP News
If you’re thinking we’re producing a radio version of the CBS television series of the same name, I hope you’re not disappointed to hear that’s not the case.

So why “Person of Interest?”

The title is a deliberate attempt to appropriate the phrase law enforcement likes to use to describe people who aren’t yet officially suspects. Despite its degree of separation from “suspect,” this phrase now shares the power of “suspect.”

If you’re labeled a “person of interest,” you might as well be an actual suspect. We want to free “person of interest” of its scarlet letter quality by seeking out the “people” part of “person” and the “pay attention to” part of “interest.”

As a news organization, we try to bring you stories about what’s happening in our community. We talk to people who are involved in activities that shape our culture, our public policies, our work, our leisure.

But as a community radio station, we feel it’s necessary also to talk to you, your neighbors, your fellow Chicagoans about how news-making events affect you, about how you’re getting along, about what’s on your mind.

Person of Interest is produced by a team of reporters from CHIRP’s News Department. We have Whitney Henry-Lester, who’s worked with NPR’s Story Corps, Meg Whedbee and Iris Lin. They’ve been traveling around the city asking people if they’d like to sit down and have a chat. Despite shoving a microphone in people’s faces, they can still make people comfortable enough to talk about such things as meditation and how they’ve recovered from breaking their neck.

So take a listen. Tell us what you think. And if you know someone we should talk to, drop us a line at news@chirpradio.org.

Whitney Henry-Lester – Person of Interest Producer
I admit it, I don’t know the name of my next door neighbor. Actually, I feel like I know more strangers on Twitter than people in my building.

It’s not because I don’t care or because I’m rude or unfriendly, but rather, I live in a buzzing city of millions of (busy) people. And I’ll never be able to meet all of them, let alone have a conversation.

Chicago has millions of people coexisting on one big plot of land, all with different backgrounds, jobs, hobbies, dreams, musical tastes, stories. And yet we tend to hang out with the same people, hear from the same people on the news.

This is an attempt to listen to the people around us rather than those in the headlines. Person of Interest is that person you see on the train or at a cafe or in the park that makes you wonder, “Who are you?” Person of Interest is your barista, your taxi driver, your next door neighbor. It’s not breaking news, but collectively it’s the real story of our city.

Click here for a complete list of Person of Interest stories.