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Story in the Public Square is an initiative to study, celebrate and tell stories of interest to the public discourse. Based at Salve Regina University in Newport, Rhode Island, it is a partnership of The Providence Journal, Rhode Island PBS, and Salve's Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy, and it has received support from the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities, the Pulitzer Prize Board, and other sources.
Story in the Public Square's guiding premise is that however they are communicated — through text, images, art, music or other means — stories have a unique ability to influence opinions and beliefs that is beyond the cold, hard facts of exposition. Story in the Public Square sponsors seminars, conferences and lectures; supports original scholarship about public storytelling; annually names a local and national story of the year; and annually awards the Pell Center Prize for Story in the Public Square, which recognizes a contemporary storyteller whose work has had a significant impact on the public dialogue.
In the fall of 2014, SIPS sponsored performances of 'Ajax: A Community Conversation About Returning Veterans,' a play about the struggles of veterans after war produced by Providence College Professor and SIPS fellow Robert B. Hackey.
Story in the Public Square is guided by a creatively and ethnically diverse Story Board composed of writers, filmmakers, print and broadcast journalists, artists and scholars. The initiative was founded in 2012 by Pell Center executive director Jim Ludes and author, journalist and filmmaker G. Wayne Miller, now Story in the Public Square Director.
On February 12, 2016, Story in the Public Square announced a partnership with the national PBS show White House Chronicle to produce monthly episodes of "Story in the Public Square" which "will feature interviews with today’s best print, screen, music and other storytellers about their creative process and how their stories impact public understanding and policy." The first broadcast, also available online, was the weekend of February 13, 2016.
On March 15, 2016, SIPS announced the fourth annual winner of the Pell Center Prize for Story in the Public Square: Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer and documentary filmmaker Javier Manzano, who received the award in a ceremony on June 21, 2016, at the Pell Center.
In accepting the award, Manzano spoke of why he risks his personal safety while working inside Syria, Afghanistan and other war-torn places. "The motivation is to see the courage and to see the resilience and to see the dignity that some of the people that have gone through hell on earth, still can look you in the eye and want you to tell their story. Even though they know that they are not going to gain anything out of it and most likely none of their entire family, or clan or neighborhood, or city or country. But they still want to tell you their story. You still have to tell their story."
On January 14, 2017, Story in the Public Square launched a new weekly PBS and SiriusXM Radio show. The first guest was national security analyst Tom Nichols, professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval War College, who discussed Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and the "death of expertise" in an era of fake news.