Changing Gears: Remaking the Manufacturing Belt is a multi-year project that will look at the future of the industrial Midwest, with a two fold mission: journalism and public engagement.
Changing Gears is a product of the Upper Midwest Local Journalism Center, created through a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Its host stations are Michigan Radio in Ann Arbor, Chicago Public Radio and ideastream in Cleveland, the parent of WVIZ-TV and 90.3 WCPN.
The Changing Gears team, headed by Senior Editor Micheline Maynard, includes three reporters — Niala Boodhoo in Chicago, Kate Davidson in Ann Arbor and Dan Bobkoff in Cleveland.
Each week, Changing Gears offers feature reports aired on our stations, and the project also will include documentaries and regional call-in programs.
Changing Gears’ coverage focuses on five main themes: jobs and job creation, community redevelopment, education, the environment and agriculture, and cultural issues, from the arts to food and ethnic diversity. The series “Our Towns” looks at communities across the region. Bobkoff is reporting from Sandusky, Ohio; Boodhoo from Kenosha, Wis. and Davidson from Kalamazoo, Mich. Along with that, Davidson is anchoring a series of special reports called Still Working, looking at older citizens who remain on the job.
Changing Gears has an active presence on the Web via social media, such as Twitter and Facebook, and a regular podcast available on iTunes. Along with its on-air and Web work, Changing Gears sponsors community events.
In all its coverage, Changing Gears will tell the stories of individuals, families businesses, and innovators — their struggles and solutions, their efforts to reinvent themselves, and their capacity to cope with difficult times.
About Team Gears
| A journalist, author and scholar, Changing Gears senior editor Micheline Maynard joins Changing Gears after 10 years at the New York Times. She was a senior business correspondent, reporter and Detroit bureau chief, covering the automobile industry’s devastating decline, as well as the airline industry.
A frequent guest on NPR, she has taught at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan as well as the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and is the author of four books. Her best-known, The End of Detroit: How The Big Three Lost Their Grip on the American Car Market, published in 2003, sparked a lively discussion about the future of the industry. Her latest, The Selling of the American Economy, published in 2009, looks at investments by foreign companies in the United States and their impact on communities, workers and politics. Micki is a native of Ann Arbor, Michigan, and received a bachelor’s degree from Michigan State University as well as a master’s degree from Columbia University. She has held a series of fellowships, including the Knight-Bagehot Fellowship in Business and Economics Journalism at Columbia and the Knight-Wallace Fellowship at Michigan. |
 |
| Cleveland reporter Dan Bobkoff has spent more than three years covering Northeast Ohio’s economy and politics for Changing Gears partner station WCPN ideastream. He has worked at public radio stations WAMC in Albany, NY, WNYC in New York City and at ABC News in New York.
Bobkoff has extensively covered the effects of the recession on businesses, employment and government. He also covered Lebron James’ decision to leave Cleveland and join the Miami Heat. Bobkoff is from Chappaqua, NY, and graduated from Wesleyan University in Connecticut, where he earned a degree in philosophy. |
 |
| Chicago reporter Niala Boodhoo has been a business reporter for 10 years, working at the Associated Press, Reuters, and most recently, The Miami Herald, where she reported on the local economy, labor and employment.
Boodhoo was the newspaper’s first print journalist to have a weekly radio report. It aired for three years with the Miami Herald’s news partner, WLRN, the South Florida public radio station. She was also created the first weekly business video show on MiamiHerald.com. Born and raised in Miami, Boodhoo has a Master of Science in Journalism from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism and a Masters of Arts in Latin American/Caribbean Studies from Florida International University. She is also a graduate of Calvin College, where she studied philosophy and psychology. |
 |
| Ann Arbor reporter Kate Davidson comes to Changing Gears after five years as a producer with NPR. Davidson has produced a variety of news and feature pieces including coverage of the Gulf oil spill as well as the Three Minute Fiction short story competition.
Prior to joining NPR, Davidson was an independent producer and reporter in Flagstaff, Arizona. Her radio documentary “Saints and Indians,” which aired on NPR, won the Edward R. Murrow Award for best national news documentary in 2006. Davidson has a master’s degree in journalism from the University of California Berkeley, where she studied documentary filmmaking. Her film “Take It and Like It,” played in film festivals and on PBS stations around the country. Davidson is also a graduate of Yale University. |
 |
This website was created by Nick Meador.