‘A Mask on the Mountains.’ Young podcast producers explore pandemic’s effects in Eastern KY

Crafted in bedrooms through Zoom calls, seven young podcasters are telling the stories of the pandemic’s impact in Eastern Kentucky.

The 30-plus year program with the Appalachian Media Institute, a product of Appalshop in Whitesburg, adapted, along with much of the world, their summer internships due to the COVID-19 outbreak.

“A Mask on the Mountains” podcasts premiered July 23 on WMMT 88.7 FM and online. They focus on COVID-19’s effect on life in the region, addressing a range of topics like foster care, health care disparities and canceled festivals. Some families huddled around a laptop to listen, an homage to past generations gathering around a radio to listen, Director Willa Johnson said.

Benny Becker, AMI guest educator, and Johnson told the interns the podcasts had to be about coronavirus, but the direction was up to them.

“The best stories come from when people care about what the stories are that they are telling,” Becker said. “They are telling stories that they are connected to.”

Hannah Adams told the story about the changes in the foster system during the pandemic in a piece titled “Foster Care in a Pandemic World.” Though she wasn’t able to tell the social worker side, she added the perspective of foster families, including her mom, and biological parents, a viewpoint she has seen lacking in foster care stories.

“When people think about foster care, they think about the children,” Adams said. “They think about the foster parents, but they don’t think about biological families and I feel like unfortunately, especially around here, biological parents are often seen as bad people, and I just wanted to shed the light that during this time.”

Adams said she didn’t share with her mom as she was producing, but the end result left her in tears, because foster care has become a huge part of their lives.

Alyssa Helton documented the cancellation of events in Whitesburg, calling it “Cancelled Culture.” Her topic stemmed from a conversation with a friend.

“‘Man it’s sad that so many festivals in Eastern Kentucky are being canceled because of this pandemic. It’s like y’all culture is slowly fading away,’” Helton recalled. “I was like you just gave me the best idea ever.”

She knew people in her community that frequently attended or worked at the festivals to include in her podcast, including a guitarist in a punk band who was affected creatively and financially from the cancellations. She wanted her podcast to demonstrate the feeling of loss.

“People in Eastern Kentucky may not have a lot but we have unity,” Helton said. “We have events that bring people together and that’s special. We lost that because of the pandemic.”

Johnson said Helton’s piece capitalized on what Letcher County does have and not what it is lacking.

Nikole Lee told the story of “College Students in a Pandemic.” She pieced together sound bites from Gov. Andy Beshear’s press conferences announcing the first case and additional cases and deaths in Kentucky. She talked to students about losing their college jobs, worries about scholarships and returning in the fall safely.

Abby Enfusse covered health disparities in a podcast titled “Symptom of Slavery: Racism in Healthcare During a Pandemic.” She spoke to her friend whose mom was in the hospital about

the nurses’ disbelief that she was hurting. She did research and got advice from an activist on how to cover a difficult subject as a white person.

“I obviously didn’t want to put my own opinion in it because it’s not my place to do that,” she said. “It was difficult, but I think I told it well as I could.”

Becker said the stories of Appalachia are important to tell, especially in a pandemic when journalism is struggling and national media can’t travel to these communities. It was up to AMI to tell the stories.

“This community is both under-served and often misrepresented and often doesn’t have control of its own narrative, so there are so many layers of having people here and especially young people of this place that know this place and are connected to the people,” Becker said.

Helton said Eastern Kentucky has a stereotype that the residents are not observant and not smart.

“It’s important that we create media centered around our area just to let people know we’re more observant than you think,” she said.

Johnson said AMI had a big ask of its interns to produce a podcast individually in a three week period, but they exceeded her expectations.

“I told them I’m always proud of what they produce,” Johnson said. “This year they were journalists that we needed them to be in a time we needed them the most.”