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PIN FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions about the Public Insight Network

What is the Public Insight Network?
How do I share what I know with you?
Who will have access to my information?
Why do you ask for information about me?
How do I unsubscribe?
I have more questions. Who do I ask?

What is the Public Insight Network?

We want you to help us cover the news. The Public Insight Network is a new way for North Carolina Public Radio - WUNC's journalists to connect with people like you who have knowledge, experience and ideas about the stories we cover. The Public Insight Network is a group of people who have agreed to help us cover these stories.

As we look into various subjects--say, green development or immigration or workplace injuries--we ask people in the Network to share their observations and experiences with us. We take that information and pass it on to our reporters and producers. That information helps us determine what's important to the listener in a given story and shows us angles and topics we may not have found otherwise.

We will use the knowledge, observations and expertise people provide to inform our news reporting and talk programs. Our public insight analyst maintains relationships with public sources, distills the information we receive, checks it and passes the most useful information and sources on to our journalists. The analyst may follow-up on one of your responses with a request for more information or perhaps an interview.

We believe this partnership will help diversify our coverage and provide greater depth in the stories we do. We also hope it will lead us to stories that we might not find otherwise. We invite you to strengthen our news coverage and help us better serve listeners.

How do I share what I know with you?

Most often, we interact with our public sources via e-mail. You can e-mail us anytime with questions, ideas, criticism or suggestions at publicinsight@wunc.org.

We'll send you about one email per month with questions about topics we're researching. If you have expertise on the topic or relevant experience, we'll ask you to share that information. If you don't have knowledge on a particular topic, you can forward the message to someone who does or simply delete it.

We also ask public sources to tell us about stories that we should be covering-stories that matter to them and are not on our radar.

Who will have access to my information?

Responses are sent directly to WUNC's Public Insight Analyst, Yasmeen Khan. She acts as a gatekeeper for your information. She reads every response and passes on relevant information to reporters and producers. Personal information shared with us is tightly restricted to the Public Insight analyst and other journalists working directly on stories using public sources. No one else will use this information to contact our sources.

We've partnered with American Public Media in developing our Public Insight Network. American Public Media has a small group of analysts who will also have access to your contact information, answers and ideas. APM's analysts will be looking for help for nationally broadcast programs like Marketplace, Marketplace Money and Weekend America.

We will not share any personal information we receive outside of the WUNC newsroom. We also will never quote your responses without first getting permission.

You have our guarantee that we will never, under any circumstance, sell or share your personal information with marketers or other outside individuals. We won't even share it with our own Membership Department, so you will not receive requests for donations as a result of signing up for the Network.

Why do you ask for information about me?

We ask for information so we can target our e-mails to people who are likely to have some knowledge about a topic. If we're asking questions about parenting, we'll e-mail people we know have kids. If we're looking into issues affecting Rocky Mount, we'll e-mail people who live or work in Rocky Mount. You choose how much you would like to reveal. Respond only to the emails that are relevant, ignore the rest.