CANTON — North Country Public Radio will receive $20,000 in taxpayer dollars in the form of a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to pay for a “news census project.”

The Canton-based public radio station is one of 20 selected to receive the money and participate in the 2022 national America Amplified Initiative. The initiative is hosted by WFYI in Indianapolis and is funded by $983,451 from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to support community engagement journalism in traditionally underserved areas. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is a private, non-profit organization created by Congress to be be the steward of the federal government’s investment of tax dollars in public broadcasting.

The initiative prioritizes meaningful in-person and online engagement in an effort to “build trust, expand audience, and deepen the impact of public media journalism,” said a press release from NCPR.

North Country Public Radio’s News Census Project will use community engagement tools to jump start an effort to learn more about – and better serve – its large geographic region, the press release said.

NCPR’s 34 transmitters cover an area approximately the size of Switzerland that includes the northern third of New York State, western Vermont, and parts of Ontario and Quebec. The rural region is -- by and large -- economically challenged, ethnically homogenous, and isolated from major population centers.

And because most of NCPR’s listening area is either not surveyed at all or under-represented in traditional audience measurement like Nielsen ratings, the station does not know enough about whether it is adequately serving the region through its news coverage and full slate of programming.

“Community engagement work is really important to any radio station – but especially one like ours, in which our audience is spread out over a vast geographic region,” explains NCPR’s Station Manager Mitch Teich. “It is vital for us to illuminate our blind spots and serve as broad a population as we can.”

The NCPR news census will set out to reach both existing audience members and people they are not reaching to better understand their needs and how the station can better serve them, whether through radio programming, events, or other activities, the press release said.

The News Census Project will be headed by Amy Feiereisel, who has successfully devised community engagement tools as the coordinator of NCPR’s long-running North Country at Workseries.

The project will also involve members of the news and digital team, development and programming staff, and others, both to help assess our past work and to identify geographic areas that have been underrepresented.

NCPR plans to use what it learns through the census to shape its day-to-day news coverage, special projects and programming, and, as public health concerns permit, in-person events.

The ultimate objective is to better serve the station’s entire geographic area and develop a model for ongoing, economically sustainable community engagement work that will be baked into not just the newsroom but into the entire NCPR culture.

“Our participation in America Amplified will give us the tools to engage with the North Country audience in new ways, listening more closely to issues that matter to them, and reporting better stories as a result,” says NCPR’s News Director David Sommerstein. “We can’t wait to get started.”