Imagine if you had a role in choosing what stories we follow, even before we start reporting them.

What you’d get would be a piece of reporting inspired by your own curiosity about the world around you combined with the insights of the journalists at CapRadio.

That’s the idea behind a project we recently launched called Great Question. It’s a new way for you to talk to us about what’s interesting or concerning about Sacramento and the surrounding region.

Is there something you’ve always wondered about your neighborhood? Some little pattern or quirk about Northern California that sparked your curiosity? Or maybe you heard something in the news or from a friend that made you scratch your head.

Whether your questions are big or small, light or hard-hitting, we want to hear from you.

The idea is simple: You send in your questions and our journalists, trained at finding answers, will work with you to investigate them.

So far, we’ve worked with a listener to dig into the history of Sacramento’s trees, and we’ve begun tracking down answers to questions about what PG&E’s move toward bankruptcy will mean for their 16 million customers.

By involving you from the beginning, we get to better understand what information is meaningful to the people who live here. The result is reporting that we know is relevant to our community before we even start reporting.

Here’s how it works:

1. You send in your questions using the form below. (For example: What can I recycle in Sacramento? How do California ballot propositions get their numbers? Do the foothills get more smoke from wildfires?)
2. We’ll group them into themes and ask you to vote on which one we should tackle next.
3. Then we’ll assign a reporter to the task and work to include the question-asker in the process.
4. And finally: we share the answer!

We think this is going to be fun. But, more importantly, we think we’re going to learn a lot. Because we know you have great questions.