CINCINNATI — They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but Elissa Yancey believes a picture can say so much more – you just have to listen.

So, the longtime journalist, educator and nonprofit founder created a podcast with that idea in tow. And its newest season revolves around the election with an alternate direction.

Ohio has long-been known as the “swing state” when it comes to election season — and all eyes are watching to see how the state will vote in the presidential election.

With that in mind, the Cincinnati-based nonprofit, "A Picture’s Worth” (APW), launched a new podcast season dubbed, “Ohio Values” and highlights the upcoming election, but instead of talking to candidates, each episode focuses on a voter in the Heartland, detailing what matters most to them, based off a personal photo.

The podcast creator’s goal for the podcast’s second season was to give a voice to voters, allowing them to express their values and how those have shaped who they are today.

However, her overall vision for APW, aims to flip the script and change the narrative of storytelling – in hopes of not only informing, but also inspiring.

Elissa Yancey

Yancey, the CEO and founder of APW, is also the owner of the consulting firm E.Y. Ink and a faculty member at Poynter Institute. But these days, she said, she considers herself a “story gatherer" rather than a storyteller — and that is a difference she hopes will ultimately change the narrative when telling stories, like the ones heard in APW’s podcast episodes.

Sitting at a black, wrought-iron table in the shade of a quaint courtyard, nestled in the eclectic Northside neighborhood, Yancey sips her latte from a local cafe, as the colorful foliage falls to the cobblestone at her feet. She discusses what she hopes will reframe, what she said is the traditional narrative, giving the listener something to stop and think about — with an overarching vision of changing the historical record and showcase more accuracy and accountability.

Everything Yancey has accomplished in journalism and education, spanning three decades, culminated when the 54-year-old Cincinnati native began to run with the idea for APW in 2017. Her goal was to bring people closer by stories with a visual cue — and perhaps change the way you see people through their words, their voice and their story, as told by them.

The idea initially sparked for her in 2014, after she retweeted a photo of Lorraine Hansberry – renowned for her play, “A Raisin in the Sun,” she was the first African-American female author to have a play performed on Broadway.

“It had no context in the photo at all. And I just retweeted it… about how much I admire Lorraine Hansberry. Well, I don't get a lot of social media, tweets and such, but that tweet got a lot of attention,” Yancey recalled.

“And I started to think about the power of an image to communicate a story and how even if you don't know the context of that story, it immediately pulls you in and you come up with one – like the brain sort of manufactures a narrative to go along with this image,” she said. “And I thought, ‘Well, that's interesting.’”

An avid podcast consumer, Yancey had another thought.

“There is this intimacy with audio storytelling… this visual cue of narrative with the photograph. And I started to think, ‘Well, what if you combine those two things to create sort of this multidimensional story that actually added context?’”

And with that, APW was born.

During the first stages of developing the “story-gathering” podcast project, Yancey was also in the process of creating a curriculum for college journalists that focused on accountability journalism. That played right into her hand for APW as well, she said.

For each season of the project, Yancey enlists journalists from across the state to partner with her as the interviewers. She trains them on what she means by “building a tidal wave of narrative change.”

She created a training program for journalists, that, she said was informed by people who practice community conversation building around difference.

And that new method for story gathering, started with a few questions: “How do you engage in constructive, productive dialogue with people you don't agree with? How do you get to know people without immediately putting them in a category that you can dismiss them?”

With those questions in mind, she shifted her own concept of what journalism's job is and she was introduced to a concept called the “ladder of inference.”

“How we come to understand and see the world, which as a journalist is fascinating because we're always trying to understand,” Yancey explained. “We want to know how people come to believe things they believe. And we are part of that because we're creating these stories that help shape their beliefs. So the ladder of inference is fascinating. It's basically what you see.”

She further clarified.

“We, like you and I, are sitting in the same space. We see the same thing. We pull away separate details. Separate details we pull away are based on our prior experiences. And this all happens instantaneously. We don't think about it. It's subconscious,” she said about the concept. “What stereotypes we’re reinforcing or disrupting, what belief systems we were reinforcing or disrupting, what conclusions we’re drawing about what could be the same scene, we could draw completely different conclusions from it, based on how we are extrapolating pieces of data.”

For her, she admitted, it was a revelation that as a journalist, she would pick out things to showcase in a story, unintentionally and subconsciously, based on her own experiences.

Therefore, in her training for journalists for APW, she wanted to refocus how questions are asked and interviews led, in an attempt to broaden their understanding of the person and the issues they are talking about.

Each interview for the podcast is driven by a single photo and how that picture represents the common theme for a season, which Yancey said, allows the subject for the interviews to reflect deeply about a moment in time from their life – and why it is so relevant and influential to them still today.

Yancey recalled her first interview for APW in 2017 – which has not yet aired – with Iris Roley, a born-and-raised Cincinnati community activist and the founder of the Cincinnati Black United Front.

That conversation, and Roley’s photo for the interview, was beyond eye-opening and powerful, Yancey vividly remembered. It was the first time Yancey had interviewed someone based off a photograph.

“The result was it kind of blew me away,” she remembered. “I had been a journalist for, what, decades? And I kind of prided myself on being a good interviewer and finding out like the one answer that nobody had been able to get.”

But this interview was different, and for her, she said, it was “transformative.”

“It’s opened my mind to what the power of that image could be in the right environment,” Yancey said.

It goes beyond the traditional journalism questions of, who, what, where, why and shifts to a more intentional line of questioning, she said. But more than that, it is about listening and engaging.

And for her, Roley was a perfect choice to start this journey with, considering her strong voice and leadership within the community.

“She was the citizen who helped develop the collaborative agreement, which was a landmark ruling after the shooting and death of Timothy Thomas, who was an unarmed Black young man in Cincinnati. So her activism sort of grew out of that movement. And she has become sort of a national resource. When Ferguson happened, she was there. You name a hotspot, she’s been there to help guide community members and conversations about really difficult relationships between Black communities and police,” Yancey explained.

During their meeting, the two women swiped through photos on Roley’s phone – so many powerful images to choose from, Yancey thought. But then, there was one that stood out for her.

It was the 2017 Women’s March the day after Trump’s inauguration. Roley was standing inside a small gazebo in Washington Park in Cincinnati.

The photo portrays a woman’s silhouette. It is the back of Roley, looking out toward a large crowd, with her hand raised in the air. There are thousands standing in front of her, looking up at her.

Yancey remembers thinking that she looked as though she had complete command of the audience. But, she said, Roley’s story behind the photo is much more insightful.

“She tells the story behind it and how it was really hard to get up to the stage, there were so many people,” said Yancey, who remembered how overwhelmed Roley was in that instant.

“She stood there and was kind of at a loss for words for a moment. So, she just raised her fist in the air and said, ‘Power to the women; power to the people.’ But then I thought, ‘If you just saw that picture and then heard her tell that story of what was behind it, it gave it so much richness and meaning.’”

“To hear her talk about her insecurities of getting up on stage – all white people. You don't see that when you look at that photo, you see the power. But here, I think maybe her vulnerability was pretty powerful… and it makes you stop to think, too, how many meanings we put on images we see that may or may not be accurate, which I think is also helpful in terms of critical thinking.”

For Yancey, it was in that moment, she realized how much people could start to see things differently, and with a more diverse lens, through the power of a photograph, and moreover, the true story behind it, as told by the voice within that image.

“You could start to see how perhaps in these divisive times, people could be like, ‘Wow, she's this strong Black woman advocate. But actually, I have so much more in common with her.’ And we have this shared humanity. And it was so obvious to me in that moment, that that was A Picture’s Worth. That was the power,” Yancey said.

It is that power, she said, that she hopes will bring people closer together through the combination of a story and an image.

“(It’s) a story that isn't just one that's verbal, but that actually has this visual cue, that if you hear her tell the story, you get it. If you see the picture, you get a story. If you put them together, it's like the multiplication of that impact is very powerful,” she said.

By 2018, Yancey had what, she called, a fully formed idea of what APW could be. And she knew what she wanted the first season to be about: women and politics.

Yancey interviewed 14 Ohio women who were running for office, and titled the inaugural podcast season, “Running for our Future.”

But she wanted to tell a different kind of story. Their stories, not just their platforms.

“(There were) more female candidates than ever in response to the 2016 election in some ways. And what I realized was there were all these stories about how many women were running for office. And yet, it was just, they were data stories, they weren't people stories,” she said. “You heard about the people at the top levels, but there were hundreds of women running all over the place. And who was telling their story right and who was who was asking them, ‘Why do you run? Why are you doing this?’”

The photo for each interview, she said, represented why they were running for office.

“The story behind them, are incredibly powerful. They're about relationships. They're about personal experiences and trials. They're about commitments to specific issues and, you know, shared goals of acceptance and responsibility for each other,” Yancey said.

But for the newest season, Yancey had an alternate idea for covering, what is being dubbed as a historic presidential election. Instead of talking to candidates, she wanted to go inside the communities – talk to voters and tell their stories and showcase what they value most this election.

A Picture’s Worth of Ohio Values

This season, APW focused on “Ohio Values,” in which voters were interviewed to represent their communities — flipping the script, Yancey said, from focusing on candidates and zeroing in on voters and what matters to them.

“The other prevailing narrative about Ohio when it comes to politics is, every four years, the national media tends to descend upon some weird diner in the middle of nowhere, Ohio, and say, ‘Here's America.’ And that parachute journalism is not very helpful to anyone in terms of actually informing people,” she opined.

Interviewed throughout the state, subjects included farmers, a female veteran, a clinical social worker, mothers, a pastor, students and others — in an attempt to give a voice to the voters of the Buckeye State.

And during their interview, they were asked to talk about a photo that they held dear and encompassed what they saw as their values.

“The idea was to really find people representative in their communities who don't typically make headline stories because they're not involved in a conflict or controversy, but they are, in fact, sort of the backbone people of the community in many ways or people who are representative of the demographics of the communities, that maybe aren't showcased in more in-depth ways,” Yancey said.

The fact that Ohio is considered a swing state during presidential elections, gave Yancey all the more reason to focus on Ohio voters.

“We see election after election, a lot of very-targeted narratives coming out of the state that reinforce stereotypes – somebody is not getting their voice heard,” she said. “Part of it was, again, providing a more holistic and accurate portrayal, being more accountable to the people of Ohio.”

And what she said this season of the podcast uncovered was similarities in values, many stemming from family and relationships.

“It didn't matter if the person was right or left or red or blue or whatever was a new immigrant, a first-time voter, a person who whose parents were refugees from WWII, a pastor, a farmer. The values were so in line about what matters are your relationships and your family,” Yancey said. “The honoring of those connections really kind of pulls through all these stories, and it's so fascinating.”

Values in Their Words, Their Stories

The end of each episode concludes with: “And remember, no person, much less a whole state, can be captured in a single frame.”

But for one moment in time, for each episode of “Ohio Values,” the person being interviewed is transported to what is captured in the photo they chose to share – a single frame that depicts what “value” means to them.

Tai Sims

Born and raised in Flint, Michigan, Tai Sims has been surrounded his entire life by strong, independent and outspoken women, he said. They have molded him into the 22-year-old University of Cincinnati student talking today.

And that is what his photo for his “Ohio Values” interview represents.

In his photo, a 2 ½-year-old Sims, dressed in a tiny black suit with gray vest, sits proudly on his nana’s lap, smiling from ear to ear. It was the day she was sworn into the Flint City Council in 2000.

For him, that photograph symbolizes strong leadership and speaking up for those who may not be able to and making a difference in the community.

"I knew what was going on, in the sense that something powerful was happening. And for me, I really took that in and from that point, she really became a huge inspiration for me," he remembered about the moment that photo was taken.

His nana, a 27-year police veteran, was the first Black female president of the Flint City Council. And watching her speak up even when others disagreed, stayed with him throughout his life and his own leadership.

"It's not about your self-interest, it's about what's right and what's wrong," he said watching her lead her community.

Beyond absorbing the sense of what it means to be a strong leader like his nana, the photo further portrays his own values, he said, that family means everything.

"I think that family must come first before all else, before anything else," Sims said.

For his nana, he said, it was very important to instill the importance of education. And because of that, both of her children, including his mom, have master's degrees and are working towards doctor degrees – and also why he is pursuing his law degree once he graduates from UC in a few months.

"The machine, I think that she created, that there is no other option besides success and education – and then once you obtain success and education, then you give back to your family and you give back to your community. And that's what she's doing in this picture. She's getting ready to serve,” he said beaming with admiration. “And it's an inspiration.”

And she continues to be his inspiration and shape him into the person that he is today.

"My nana always says, 'There are two ways to do things. There's a right way and there's a wrong way.' I really try to take that with me."

When he reflects on the word: value, he said, it is anything that is precious to you.

"The values that I have of always be kind, of always care about your neighbor, of loving God, of loving your parents, of loving your enemies,” he said. “That's a big one, loving people that hate you. We're in a time where it's so easy to be so, so angry. And I am angry. I'm mad as hell. I am. But through it all, I still love everyone. I don't have an ounce of hate in my heart because when you start to hate, they win. When you become a different person because of the way they act towards you, they win."

The UC journalism student is on the swimming and diving team, the president of the Association of Black Journalists and a member of the Black Roundtable — an umbrella organization for all Black-run organizations on campus.

Following in his nana’s political footsteps, locally, Sims has worked with Cincinnati Mayor John Cranley, as well as with Cincinnati Councilwoman and owner of the Cincinnati Herald newspaper, Jan-Michele Lemon Kearney – and he is currently working on Kentucky Senate candidate Amy McGrath’s campaign.

Echoing his nana’s sentiments, his voice – whether in politics, on an organization committee or in a podcast about values – is important, he said, because he is in a unique position to amplify and to speak out about issues when he sees something that is not right.

"I've seen the disparity in the different systems. I think it's so important to give light to the Black voice,” he said.

And so, for him, his values are things that he is unwilling to waiver on and will defend. Because of that, he hopes to go on to earn his law degree and keep fighting for what he values as a civil rights attorney.

"I think that the one of the best ways to combat the system is to be able to represent people that look like me, against the system, and to argue cases against courts to try to change the system," Sims said.

While his nana instilled those values, and continues to this day, to be an influence in how he portrays those values throughout his everyday life, he said, he would be remiss if he did not thank another strong presence in his life.

“My mom is really the person, the reason that I am the person I am today. She has driven me so hard and just given me her very best and sacrificed so much, and she has gotten it done, and just given us such a great life," Sims acknowledge

Sa-Leemah Jihad

Much like Sims, Sa-Leemah Jihad also values her family, as well as overcoming challenges standing right in front of her and helping others whenever she can.

The administrative assistant in the healthcare industry runs a financial literacy business on the side, with the goal of helping others find financial freedom by learning how to fix their credit issues through education and understanding.

That is where her photo for the podcast comes into play for her.

"I'm proud to be an Ohioan, born and bred – raised here, lived here all my life. Just being a productive Ohio citizen and an influencer in the community, that picture, is just full circle for me," she said about the photo she used for the podcast to depict her values.

When she learned about financial literacy and building solid credit for herself, it changed her life and she knew that she was meant to share that knowledge with others.

Last year, a few of her mentors convinced her to share her story in front of a group eager to hear her financial wisdom.

However, her nerves almost got the best of her because of her extreme fear of public speaking.

"I'm very social. If I'm sitting at a table with a whole lot of people, I'm fine, but there's something about standing up in front of people and they're looking up at me, that always made me nervous," said Jihad, a graduate of the School for Creative and Performing Arts in Cincinnati, where she was professionally trained to perform in front of an audience.

She prepared for two weeks and had a few sleepless nights.

But when the day arrived and she stood tall, with confidence, in front of the crowd and told her own success story, she felt at ease.

"That is one of my proudest moments," she remembers.

In her photo, a poised Jihad stands on a stage speaking – her hands are stretched outward in mid-sentence and a smile is beaming across her face.

"It was a triumphant moment for me," she said. "Now, I'm not afraid to speak in front of people at all, anymore. It really helped me to get over fear and it was a bigger moment than just educating on financial literacy. The big thing about fear is you've got to conquer that fear – anything you wanna do, when you have a testimony and a story, you need to tell it. It could help so many people."

Her photo, however, represents more than a successful speech. For her, it depicts something much larger.

For her, it portrays not only how she overcame her nerves to talk to and educate her community about finances, but also how she achieved the value she holds closest to her heart, giving back to her community and helping others.

It is a value that was imparted to Jihad by her mom, stemming from her childhood.

The 36-year-old was born and raised in Cincinnati by a single mother. She is the second oldest of four children, including two younger sisters, one of which interviewed her for the “Ohio Values” podcast. And she said she and her siblings grew up in a house with strong values.

"I learned everything that I know from her," she said about her mom.

"My strength, my community service, everything I know now, from my mother. I definitely come from a strong woman, a strong family. My mother taught us really young about giving back," she continued, recalling an instance when she was a little girl downtown with her mom, when a panhandler on the street asked them for money. Her mom went into a McDonald's around the corner, bought a couple of cheeseburgers and took them to the man on the street.

"She did that all the time. She would give people her time. She would give people money. I've always seen that and I've always learned that. And she taught us about volunteering at a young age," said Jihad, who today, volunteers for the Girl Scouts, as well as alongside her mom, at Crayons to Computers.

And while, perhaps one of her most prized values is her family, overall, for her, the word “value” means being the best human you can be.

"Treating people with respect, and just the way you want to be treated, teamwork, all of those are my very big values. I'm just a person who believes in helping people where I can – and add value to this community, to this state, this world, the city," she said.

Jihad will take those values into the ballot with her this election. Because for her, it is important to vote for a candidate who shares one key value in common with her: caring for the community.

When it comes to the election and values, she said, practice the Golden Rule.

"We need to stay true to our core values. Do onto to others as you want others to do unto you," Jihad said. "Let's just treat each other with respect and love and then we'll be better off as a country."

In addition to Sims and Jihad’s interviews, by Election Day, there will be a total of 25 episodes, featuring voters’ voices from across the state, published in the “Ohio Values” podcast series online.

For Yancey, this project, specifically the “Ohio Values” season of the podcast, has changed her and has opened her mind throughout the process more than she ever could have imagined.

This season, she said, illuminates the vast differences between voters, yet simultaneously, also depicts their undeniable similarities – showcasing the state’s diversity and offering a window into the values that shape it.

“Our stories provide a path for human connection across difference,” said Yancey, who hopes that the work that she and others with APW are doing, will make people think, and ultimately change human-to-human interaction.

“We all have something to gain by opening our minds to our potential biases, our assumptions and how they influence, how we behave, how we vote, how we act, how we make eye contact or don't, how we walk down the street, how we treat one another as people,” she elaborated. “If they hear the stories about somebody, who maybe doesn't look like them – the next time they see somebody who doesn't look like them, they might take a moment and think, ‘Huh, maybe, they're like that person I heard on the radio or on my podcast – maybe they're more like me than not like me.’”

You can follow APW on Facebook for the latest episodes, updates and to see what Yancey has in store next for the project.

*Editor’s note: Ohio Values photo illustration by Thea Huffman for A Picture's Worth.