A 13-year-old girl cries, longing for her mother who was detained by federal immigration agents.
A mother reflects on living in her car with her son and dog, Phoebe.
Hartford residents, wearing suits and nursing scrubs, discuss the importance of showing up for low-income children on the first days of school. “Our children matter,” the principal says.
These are moments that defined Connecticut in 2025 – and they’re moments captured by Connecticut Public Radio’s team of journalists.
Connecticut Public works to serve audiences on a variety of platforms, thanks to a collaborative team – reporters and editors, radio talk shows, an investigative unit, visual journalists, a social media team and a regional newsroom called the New England News Collaborative.
We’re focused on innovation and connecting with our audiences. We’re holding more events in the community – from taking talk shows on the road to moderating panels on a variety of topics. We’ve beefed up our social media efforts, which has resulted in impressive growth. We are expanding our efforts to serve Latino communities – in English and Spanish. We’re launching new series, more unique investigative stories and only-in-Connecticut podcasts. We’ve expanded the topics we cover, hiring reporters to cover the environment as well as Puerto Rican communities. We’re using AI to help us scan videos of government meetings to help us find news tips.
An audio rundown is below. And below that is a listing of notable digital stories, as well as a summary of coverage highlights from 2025.
Audio rundown (40 minutes)
Opening sounds
0:00-0:31 An accordion player, curator and owner of an accordion museum, reflects on the stories that accordions tell. It’s part of our ongoing project, called “Sounds of Connecticut,” where we hear from people across the state in 30-second radio vignettes.
ICE crackdown coverage (0:32-3:20)
0:32-1:25: A 13-year-old girl misses her mother, who was detained by ICE. "Calling her once a day hurts so much. You don't know the pain you're putting families through. I hope you genuinely consider what you're doing to my family.”
1:25-1:58: Coverage of an ICE raid in Danbury; an eyewitness describes an empty car after a woman was taken out by ICE agents: “Remnants of a life that she was just ripped away from.”
1:59-3:20: A New Haven teen returns home after being detained by ICE – he missed his high school graduation, but was back just in time for family and friends to sing “Happy Birthday.”
A mix of scenes and sounds
3:21-4:28: A Native American drummer sings a whaling song for us spontaneously. “Our people were whalers.”
4:29-6:06: A boisterous, musical back-to-school welcome at a Hartford school.
6:07-7:07: A Connecticut woman talks emotionally about sharing her cancer diagnosis with her husband. “It’s just really hard to see the look on his face and the heartbreak.”
Feature story highlights
7:08-9:01: Feature excerpt: Connecticut protesters face pushback from state police for highway overpass protests. One Connecticut woman was arrested twice for demonstrating, including at 6 a.m. at her home. “We were built on protests and throwing tea into the harbor and saying enslaving people isn’t right and we’re going to fight for our right to be free.”
9:02-12:12: Feature excerpt: Connecticut's new slots for autism services sit empty, even as hundreds of families wait for help. We start the story with an 18-year-old with autism who is playing a video game and relies on his mother – a single parent – for help with daily activities. The state posted job openings for autism services soon after Connecticut Public asked about them.
Feature stories
12:13-19:33 Feature: Amid mist and music: A Native American reverence for water, celebrated on the banks of the Connecticut River. We take our listeners to a unique sunrise performance, featuring Indigenous musicians and a world-renowned cellist. It’s a chilly morning in New Hampshire as several hundred people gather at the edge of the river. A fog hovers over the water. Slowly, out of the mist, shapes emerge – canoes gliding toward shore, rocking gently as singing begins. The canoe docks. Musicians step out. And as the sun breaks over the horizon, a performance begins. The story is from a special series, “Still Here: Native American Resilience in New England.”
19:34-24:12 Feature story: Connecticut kids are learning to hunt on “Pheasant Lane.” The story includes creative use of natural sound and soundbites as we go on a hunt with teenagers and adult instructors. “Ask my wife; I’ve been here since 5 a.m.,” one instructor told us. “This is like Christmas morning for me, I get that excited.”
More feature excerpts – from the unhoused with pets to prison bookcases
24:13-25:07 Feature excerpt: For CT's unhoused population, pets provide comfort, but can be a barrier to safe shelter. We hear from a Connecticut woman who lives in her car with her son and dog, Phoebe.
25:08- 27:49 Feature excerpt: Hand-crafted bookcases are filling prisons. They’re made in Connecticut by formerly incarcerated workers. One man explains how books were a way to connect with other people: “I don’t know how to be a husband, so I’ll grab the Harlequin romances. And I’ll read them.”
27:50-28:31 Feature excerpt: Going fishing with a conservationist in a Connecticut river.
In conversation
28:32-33:56 How Peter Yarrow taught a mom in Newtown, Connecticut, to sing through grief after the Sandy Hook shooting. An excerpt of a conversation with Francine Wheeler, who lost her son, Ben, in the shooting, about her connection with Yarrow, who died in January: “One of the greatest lessons that Peter taught me was how grief can be sung. Because grief is love that has nowhere to go. If I could keep loving ben, I could stay alive.”
Sampling of host story introductions and breaks
33:57-34:15 Intro: Art supplies include ... insects?
34:16-34:29 Break: The Bacon Brothers come to Connecticut – “sounds sizzling.”
34:30-34:50 Break: A preview of a partial solar eclipse with clouds in the forecast – and how the clouds may end up with the best view.
34:51-35:33 Newscast item: Angry New Yorkers defend their claim to pizza fame after Connecticut provokes them.
The end, with memorable music and conversation
35:34-39:31 Interview excerpt: A conversation with Paul Winter regarding how he creates distinctive nature music to celebrate the world around us. He describes the process in creating “The Well-Tempered Wood Thrush,” folding in bird sounds with his music. In this creative use of sound, as he talks about each step of the process, we play the wood thrush piece underneath him to help illustrate what he’s saying.
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Digital highlights
1. ICE arrests are up in Connecticut. Here's where migrants were apprehended
2. ‘No Kings’ rallies draw 12,000 to Capitol, thousands across CT
https://www.ctpublic.org/news/2025-10-18/no-kings-rallies-draw-12-000-to-capitol-thousands-across-ct
3. Still Here: Native American Resilience in New England
https://www.ctpublic.org/still-here-native-american-resilience-in-new-england
4. Instagram: How to be ‘bear aware’ in Connecticut
https://www.instagram.com/p/DJm7IdWPnzx/
5. A “Gilmore Girls” guide to Connecticut
https://www.ctpublic.org/news/2025-12-15/a-gilmore-girls-guide-to-ct-festivals-bookstores-coffee-and-more
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Coverage highlights
Controversial topics: Our team of journalists covered various aspects of the ICE immigration enforcement crackdown across Connecticut in 2025. We took our listeners across the state, featuring a variety of voices and perspectives across the political spectrum. We brought together a college Republican and a college Democrat to take a temperature check on political dialogue.
In-depth series: For generations, stories of Native America have been kept separate and apart from the American story. Connecticut Public’s journalists wanted to take a fresh look at the history of our region, featuring today’s Indigenous voices. That led to a year of reporting and research, which resulted in "Still Here: Native American Resilience in New England." The special series, which launched in November 2025, includes five in-depth radio features that are available as podcast episodes; a radio special featuring bonus conversations; several videos and a television special; and digital and social media storytelling elements. (We also hosted a community conversation in January 2026 at the Connecticut Museum of Culture and History.)
Visuals: Our visuals team produces storytelling for a variety of platforms. Visual journalists create short monthly video documentaries, called Mini-Docs, that capture slices of life in Connecticut. We spent July 4 at a one-of-a-kind parade, the Willimantic Boom Box Parade, where participants blast music from their own boom boxes. In an in-depth documentary, “Where Then Shall We Go?,” we spent two years following an experiment where a family opened their backyard in New Haven for unhoused people; they aspired to create a self-governing community as an alternative to the overburdened city homeless shelter system in one of the country’s wealthiest states.
Social media: We continue to experience record-breaking growth and reach with our social media audiences. Our social media team produces social content highlighting our newsroom’s reporting and photojournalism, but they also create their own original social-first storytelling, from serious to silly. Our social strategy is focused on Instagram in part because it allows us to showcase visuals from our award-winning visuals team. Compelling content has led to momentum and growth on that platform – during 2025, we saw a nearly 70 percent increase in followers and a 64 percent increase in impressions, as well as a 40 percent increase in reach. Our engagement metric more than doubled.
Diverse communities: Connecticut Public is committed to elevating the stories of, and connecting with, our growing Latino communities. (Nearly 20% of Connecticut residents are Latino or Hispanic.) As part of Somos CT, we’re expanding our reporting, programming and engagement opportunities locally and beyond. We produce stories in Spanish and distribute a monthly newsletter– in English and Spanish – to highlight our storytelling and programming. And we host community events – called La Tertulia – designed to bring people together. We work with a Puerto Rico news outlet – GFR Media – as part of a reporting collaboration. We have a reporter in Hartford and GFR has a reporter in San Juan; they work together to share sources and reporting. In addition, our ongoing Black Voices effort aims to elevate diverse communities across the state through stories, conversations and interviews.
Innovating with AI: Connecticut Public is piloting the use of generative AI to monitor government meetings and elected officials across the state. Our Meeting Monitor system scans meetings across the state posted on YouTube and generates news story pitches, alerting our journalists to stories developing in dozens of communities. It quickly proved its value. An alert gave our investigative team an early lead on one of the biggest stories of the year: the financial collapse of a major Hartford-area nonprofit, and a federal investigation into a lawmaker's role steering the funds it received. Alerts also helped us produce the two top-performing local stories on our website in 2025. One brought to light a town official's controversial vehicle purchase. Another explored a real estate developer's puzzling inability to fill affordable rental units, despite a statewide housing crunch. Journalism originating from AI leads ran the gamut from a sound-rich radio feature about a unique firefly conservatory in New Canaan — which aired nationally on NPR— to a social media video showing the surprising reemergence of bottle nose dolphins in Long Island Sound. A piece about the University of Connecticut's unorthodox plan to open a brewpub near its campus garnered scores of likes and new followers on Instagram.
Thank you for your time and consideration.