Behind the scenes: How ‘This Is Nashville’ will collaborate with the WPLN news desk

For our upcoming daily show, This Is Nashville, transparency is important. So, we want to take you behind the scenes as we build this show from the ground up. This is the fourth in a series of blog posts introducing our team and letting you in on the process.

“If only the show was on now!”

Here in the pre-production phase, there have already been many occasions on which one of us on the This Is Nashville team has exclaimed this, either in a meeting or text exchange.

Probably the most obvious example of this would be the multi-tornado outbreak that hit in December. As the weekend came to a close and Monday, December 13, rolled around, news was still developing. For those who might have missed the news breaks that morning, or just wanted the latest information, This Is Nashville would have been the place to get caught up on tornado coverage and remind listeners of available resources, while beginning to talk about next steps.

But of course, our show didn’t exist yet.

What does exist is the WPLN news desk — all the reporters, hosts and editors you already know. (Plus a few new ones you may not be familiar with yet.) Our show team already sits in on the morning news meetings, and we keep up with what the news desk is following via Slack. Many of us, including myself, have already contributed reporting to the daily newscasts you hear in the morning and afternoon.

In the aftermath of the tornadoes, the station was doing what it does best, with reporters on the ground and in-house collecting and updating vital information. Blake Farmer was in Mayfield covering the story for NPR. Had This Is Nashville been on the air at the time, we might have brought Blake in live from the field (spotty cell phone coverage notwithstanding). We could have had environmental reporter Caroline Eggers sit down with host Khalil Ekulona to discuss what we do and don’t know about how climate change affects the likelihood of tornadoes in our region, both now and in the future. We might have opened the phones — and our social media feeds — to your questions.

This is what makes me excited about the expanded coverage we’ll be able to deliver for you after we launch early next year.

This Is Nashville will be a place where we can highlight the great work the news desk is already doing, and take it further. Want to hear more in-depth feature stories? Want to hear from reporters about their process, and what stories they’re following? In short, do you want more? Yes, yes and yes again.

In the meantime, we’d love to know more about what you want to hear on This Is Nashville — fill out our community engagement survey! See you all soon.

Steve Haruch is the senior producer for This Is Nashville, a new daily show launching early 2022 from WPLN News. Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter at @steveharuch.