Maine Public Is Sharing Authentic Refugee Stories Thanks To Its Innovative Multilingual Newscasts

In 2021, Maine Public launched its ‘News Connect’ project to ensure that new Mainers have access to reliable information about what is taking place in the immediate world around them. The project delivers news from Maine Public’s news desks in French, Spanish, Somali, Khmer, Arabic and Portuguese. Maine Public also launched a partnership with Report for America and hired a full-time reporter, Ari Snider, to cover Maine’s immigrant communities. Through their work engaging with immigrant communities, Ari stumbled upon a story about how the Cambodian community was snapping up green crabs for traditional Khmer dishes.

Tell us who you are, and share a brief summary of the reporting project?

My name is Ari Snider and I’m the Refugee & Immigration Reporter at Maine Public, via Report for America. This project was a radio/digital feature story about efforts to grow a commercial market for invasive European green crabs in Maine’s Cambodian community. 

How did community engagement inform your reporting? 

This story came directly out of our engagement work around the News Connect program (which offers four stories a week translated into six languages, including Khmer, the national language of Cambodia). After the Cambodian community held a Khmer new year celebration, I called one of the community leaders to write a short story about the celebration. He mentioned that some seafood harvesters had shown up at the event to give away 1250 lbs of hardshell green crabs, testing demand in the community. The crabs were snapped up and the harvesters were blown away by this level of demand. 

That struck me as an interesting story idea. I contacted the executive director of the Cambodian community association, who we also met through outreach meetings and now translates the News Connect into Khmer,  and she invited to me to her house to record & take photos of a community elder while she prepared several traditional Cambodian dishes with green crab. I also interviewed one of the harvesters who’d shown up at the Khmer new year event, and someone from the Maine State Chamber of Commerce who is pushing for more seafood outreach in immigrant communities. 

How did you build trust in the community you were reporting on?

The trust for this story was established gradually over the last year, as I reached out to Cambodian community leaders when I first started this job. The relationship was strengthened when my colleague Miles Brautigam and I got in touch with the same leaders during our community outreach meeting series. 

How are you bringing this reporting back to the community?

A version of this story appeared in our News Connect videos and newsletter, and was translated into Khmer. The digital version in English was circulated on social media and reposted by the Cambodian community association. 

What lessons do you take away from this project in terms of strengthening your engagement?

The big lesson for me was always to pay attention to the small stuff, because you never know where it will lead. I came across this story idea while reporting a brief write up of the Khmer new year celebration - but if I hadn’t paid attention to that community event, I probably wouldn’t have found this much larger story.