If you’re a regular reader of this newspaper or its website you have likely noticed it in our pages: The Reporter and WBUR 90.9 FM have been teamed up for about a year now in a partnership that has produced more than a dozen stories that we have shared with both of our audiences. This alliance is the latest advance in our effort to bring the stories of our neighborhoods to eyes and ears in Boston and beyond.

The format is straightforward: The Reporter has created space in our Columbia Point newsroom to house one full-time WBUR reporter who is embedded with our news staff for months at a time. Last year, WBUR began its team coverage with Fred Thys, who specializes in covering higher education for the radio station. For the last six months, the designated reporter has been Símon Ríos, a Boston native who has lived near Fields Corner for the past few years. Ríos is a veteran newspaper and radio reporter — and his general assignment coverage for WBUR takes him well beyond Dorchester on any given day. But he is based in our newsroom and works on enterprise stories and, sometimes, on spot news events that come up in our part of the city. WBUR has installed special equipment in our offices that allow Ríos — or any other journalist on their team (or ours) – to jump right onto their airwaves when events warrant.

Over the past year, this partnership has generated additional coverage of several key stories that the Reporter has helped to produce. They include in-depth coverage of the sale of the Boston Globe property and the budget woes and leadership changes at UMass Boston; deep-dive looks at creative efforts to build and preserve new affordable housing in Mattapan and Dorchester; the changing dynamics of small business on Bowdoin Street, Geneva Avenue, and the Polish Triangle; and even a feature on the Wahlburgers restaurant chain and the namesake family behind it all.

These stories have been published by the Reporter in print and online. They have also been produced as radio segments, with the added value of providing interesting context and texture through audio recordings of the people who are central to the story. It helps bring our neighborhood’s people and places to life in a way that was not possible before.

This partnership, we should note, is a two-way street. Reporter articles are often re-published on the WBUR website— like Jennifer Smith’s exclusive reporting on city housing trends and the 7th District Congressional race— or our recent story on this summer’s meetings to discuss the future of St. Ann-St. Brendan parishes in Neponset.

This is all for the greater good. We need more professional journalists and editors with experience focused on this community, which is at once blessed with new residents, housing units and amenities, but also bedeviled by what that growth means in a city still challenged by violence, poverty, and institutionalized racism. Journalists with passion, training, and good guidance on the ground from people with many years of experience in what’s already happened in Dorchester and Mattapan are most certainly in demand.

We look forward to building on what has already been a very fruitful relationship with WBUR— and we invite our readers to send in their own ideas for how we can bring stories that you care about to their audience as well. As always, please send in your thoughts and tips to our team at newseditor@dotnews.com — or send story suggestions to Simón Ríos at srios@wbur.org.

-Bill Forry