Justine Braun, Video Production Specialist, listens to feedback after informing the De Pere city council about winning awards in the 2022 WCM Media Fest.
Justine Braun, Video Production Specialist for the City of De Pere, makes a clear distinction between the kind of coverage the city provides through De Pere TV with the kind of coverage it receives from the local broadcast affiliates. “De Pere gets a decent amount of coverage from the local Green Bay broadcast affiliates,” she said, “but the focus is very much on micro level stories – they come out and do a story when something happens. We show up and do stories about all the good that people do in our community and explain how our community works. We are able to tell a wide range of stories in a lot more depth, so people end up with a much better understanding of local issues.”
Located just outside Green Bay, the City of De Pere has a population of 25,000. It has been offering local government coverage on Channel 4 for more than thirty years – ever since the city signed its first cable television agreement with Time Warner. “People often refer to us just as Channel 4,” said Braun. “We are lucky we have a great spot on the dial where people know where to find us.” She says “lucky” because after Charter Communications (Spectrum) bought the state’s Time Warner franchises in 2016, it never moved any PEG (Public, Education, Government) channels from their original low channel numbers. Everywhere else in the state, the company moved the PEG channels to the 980’s and 990’s right after Wisconsin enacted a state-level franchise system in 2008, making it hard for viewers to find them.
De Pere’s dedication to bringing local government to its residents means De Pere TV covers twelve city boards and commissions: City Council (two meetings each month), Board of Public Works, Finance/Personnel Committee, Board of Park Commissioners, Historic Preservation Commission, Plan Commission, Business Improvement District Board, Redevelopment Authority, Board of Health, the License Committee, the Sustainability Commission, and the Police and Fire Commission. “Our mission is to make government accessible,” said Braun. “We want our residents to hold us accountable, and by carrying city meetings, we give them an opportunity to do that,” she said.
During the COVID pandemic, the city transitioned to a hybrid meeting style, where residents can view and participate in meetings online. The next day, cable subscribers can view the coverage on Channel 4. “We replay our meetings in blocks of three, with the most recent meeting starting the block on the hour, repeating three times each day,” said Braun. Viewers can also catch archived meetings on YouTube and on the city’s website, where a Granicus IQM2 System integrates agendas and minutes with video coverage of meetings using indexing software. “Anyone can watch our coverage, not just cable TV viewers, although we consider our cable television channel to be our first and foremost platform,” said Braun.
Braun also produces The Mayor’s Corner, a monthly half-hour program hosted by De Pere Mayor James Boyd. “I’m most proud of this show,” said Braun. “While it had been done before, it had not been done in a while when I arrived in May 2021. I worked with Mayor Boyd and developed a new format that took us out of city hall.” Every month Braun takes a two-camera set-up to a location somewhere in the city where the mayor talks with an interesting guest. Sometimes it's a member of the city staff, like the police chief or the parks director, and sometimes it’s a community member like Kim Thompson, who is the De Pere Sister Cities International Coordinator. “Most people don’t get to see their local officials as their neighbor and have an opportunity to meet them and share their concerns. With this program we bring government a little closer to people’s everyday life.” Braun likes to complete an episode with a short, highly edited segment that complements the interview. The program about De Pere’s sister city, Amal, Sweden, ended with a feature about a visit from Swedish delegates, following them as they toured the city and spoke with city staff and officials.
Braun is a graduate of UW-Oshkosh’s Radio, TV, Film Program. While a student, she served as the Operations Manager and the Station Manager for Titan TV, the educational access TV station on the Charter Spectrum system. “You could say I worked for community television for three years while at UW-Oshkosh.” Braun moved around a lot after graduation, working in local news at WAOW in Wausau first as an intern and then as a full-time staffer responsible for promotions and PSAs. She also worked in a communications position for Easter Seals and Goodwill in North Dakota. She returned to the area when her husband was offered a position with a local television broadcast affiliate.
“I was excited to work for the City of De Pere because it gives me the opportunity to tell community stories. When I worked in the non-profit sector, I learned that there are so many great stories to tell, but most non-profits are not set up to tell them. Now that I’m with the city, I can share all kinds of interesting things with citizens, like the fact that the city makes its own salt grind for the streets. We explain why we do that and how we do it. I get to tell our residents how our city works and how our tax dollars are spent.”
Braun has part-time help from Jamie Christensen to cover the night-time meetings and she also works with Communications Specialist Andy Pantzlaff, who is responsible for the city’s general communications and social media channels. Braun puts her lengthy experience crafting PSAs to work by creating feature shorts promoting city government and “what we do to serve them and what lengths we go to serve them.” Braun considers these two-to-three-minute promos designed for social media to be her specialty. With her marketing hat on, Braun has produced segments about the fire department, which recently celebrated its 150-year anniversary; the city’s sign shop, which showed viewers how signs are made step by step; and the long-awaited Southern Bridge project, which may soon become a reality. The bridge would add a badly needed second bridge over the Fox River, which has always divided the town into east De Pere and west De Pere and caused a lot of traffic congestion downtown. Braun worked with the historical society to do a look-back on the history of the De Pere bridge, which you can see on YouTube here.
These documentary shorts are not only played on the city’s various social media channels (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok and YouTube page), but also on Channel 4. Viewers of channel 4 also see some programs from outside sources like The Local Perspective produced by the League of Wisconsin Municipalities and WCM member media centers and Wisconsin Eye’s Rewind – Your Week in Review, which is now available to all WCM member media centers for replay. Braun is eager to add more local programming to the line-up. “We are expanding the content we do slowly,” said Braun. She is particularly looking forward to developing public health programs with the city-based health department. Braun is approaching these new projects with the goal of making them “accurate and easy to digest” as well as engaging – not “dry.”
Justine Braun happily poses in front of her production set-up.
One way that Braun has injected some excitement into her programming is with drone footage. Braun has become a licensed drone pilot. “Drone footage looks great in our marketing compilations,” she said, “and I’m also available to help the police and fire departments.” Braun is also looking forward to the purchase of a new Castus server that will automatically inject programs onto the channel for playback. She is also hoping to garner more sponsors for programming to augment the use of Video Service Provider fees that are set aside for communications. Kress Inn currently sponsors the city council meetings. The inn’s logo appears in a corner of the screen during the meeting and afterward, there is a 30 second underwriter spot. She points out that “everyone can see our programming, not just cable television subscribers” and hopes that she can attract more area businesses to support De Pere TV.
“Without a strong local media, people just do not know what is happening in their community,” said Braun. While she likes using social media to reach residents, Braun has concerns with it. “One person makes a statement and other people pile on and too often, no one in the whole string knows what is truly going on.” Braun sees her job as bringing facts to bear on community issues so that residents can make informed decisions in their role as citizens. “Things can fall apart pretty quickly without facts.”
