It’s a little hard to put your finger on exactly what the RØDECaster is: It’s an audio mixer, allowing you to combine four microphones and a few other sources in real time. It’s a stand-alone recorder that can save audio to an internal SD card. It’s a USB interface for transferring audio into a computer, […]
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Look up Lauren Chooljian’s work for New Hampshire Public Radio; you’ll see stories like: • Sununu Tasks Panel With Offering Ideas On Police Accountability, Transparency • N.H. Supreme Court Rules Public Has Right to More Government Records • In Reopening, N.H. Businesses Balance Personal Economics With Public Health Clearly, Lauren’s a news and politics reporter. In fact, […]
The post Pandemic Diary appeared first on Transom.
The other day, I dropped off some computer speakers at a friend’s house. She came to the door and I thought to myself right there, in the moment, “I’m a little nervous but I’ll do it.” The “it” was to share the seed of an idea. So, I told her, with trepidation, I’d send her […]
The post Sound Art Meets Poetry Meets Cicadas appeared first on Transom.
La estructura de un podcast Acabas de grabar y mezclar tu primer episodio de podcast (quizás con la ayuda de nuestros artículos anteriores) y ahora necesitas compartirlo con el mundo. Este es el aspecto realmente revolucionario del podcasting: desde hace mucho tiempo es posible hacer tus propias producciones de audio con recursos relativamente modestos, pero […]
The post Principios básicos del podcasting, parte 4: alojamiento y distribución appeared first on Transom.
There’s a presentation at the Third Coast Festival from back in 2005 that has stayed with me for years. It shocked me. I thought “Wait, what??! Reporters can’t help people?” Anne Hull, a reporter for the Washington Post, was talking about how to foster a sense of place in a story. And, in the middle […]
The post Walking In The Margins Of Journalism Ethics appeared first on Transom.
Our Reluctance Here at Transom, we’ve been reluctant to focus too much on recording phone conversations because we generally prefer the results of an in-person interview. The warmer, more vivid sound of someone speaking into a good microphone paints a more complete picture than the tinny, crackly, distant sound of a phone call, and the […]
The post Recording Cellular Phone Calls appeared first on Transom.
There are a handful of things about recording interviews that I always get asked by students in a Transom Workshop. “Do I have to mic my questions?” is a classic. The answer is “yes.” But the reasoning may not be obvious at first since a lot of reporters (and documentary film makers) don’t mic […]
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Empieza con una base sólida Has grabado una gran conversación o quizás estás mezclando tu voz con música o efectos de sonido, pero lo que escuchas no termina de convencerte. No es algo inusual. Obtener la mezcla correcta involucra muchas cosas: escoger los elementos adecuados, equilibrar niveles, limpiar ruidos, y asegurarse de que el producto […]
The post Principios básicos del podcasting, parte 3: niveles de audio y procesamiento appeared first on Transom.
One of my favorite episodes of Code Switch is about the explanatory comma. In short, the hosts explore this question: When should cultural context be given when talking about race and culture. (As they put it in the episode, how long is NPR going to say “Tupac Shakur, the rapper” vs. simply, “Tupac Shakur”?) But, […]
The post A Feast For Your Ears appeared first on Transom.
Your Equipment Matters I have a confession to make: even though I love sound, I don’t really like sound equipment. It’s expensive, for one. Also, the names are either a charmless mess of letters and numbers that I can never keep straight, or they have too much character, like the time I had to reassure my panicked […]
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I’m keenly aware that HowSound is a fairly mainstream podcast in the way it’s written and produced. Sure, I’ve featured a lot of experimental work on the show. But, the overall approach to how I produce HowSound is, I’d say, middle-of-the-road. But, don’t let that suggest that’s where my taste lies. It isn’t. And, while […]
The post The Recesses Of Jay’s Mind appeared first on Transom.
Inadequate To The Moment Just as the spread of Covid-19 was escalating across the United States, Samantha Broun suggested I record my response to her concerned friendly email about what the heck I was witnessing as a nurse on the front lines here in Queens, New York. I hesitated at first because I was afraid […]
The post Pandemic ER: Notes From A Nurse In Queens – The Hour appeared first on Transom.
In the last episode of HowSound, I posed a question to producers: What do you stand for? When I interviewed Selly Thiam for this episode, I didn’t need to ask. The answer is right there. Front and center. “Being a part of the society that you’re in and trying to make it a better place […]
The post AfroQueer And Podcasting In Kenya appeared first on Transom.
Dealing With A Pandemic By Making Something When the lockdown started, I called my son’s school to see if they needed volunteers to prepare lunches. They didn’t. I called the local hospital and, not surprisingly, they didn’t need unskilled volunteers. All the reporters I knew were working furiously to cover every new development in the […]
The post Our Show – The Hour appeared first on Transom.
My daughter and I were sitting in a Thai restaurant eating dinner and she was kind of freaked. Actually, a lot freaked. She told me this story . . . Her high school volleyball coach nominated her to attend a student leadership conference. She spent the day with a hundred or so other kids her […]
The post What Do You Stand For? appeared first on Transom.
The face-to-face interview is a fundamental element of a lot of audio journalism. Much of the content here on Transom is devoted to tools and techniques for making an interview sound as natural and engaging as possible. That said, getting in the same room with a good microphone isn’t always practical. The COVID-19 crisis has […]
Reporters and producers are scrambling. Because of social distancing and shelter-in-place orders due to COVID-19, they’re having to figure out how to report from home. The new circumstances raise lots of reporting questions: How do I record a phone interview from home? Do I have the gear to do that? Should I use a call […]
The post Gathering Scene Tape While Reporting From A Closet appeared first on Transom.
Just the other day, I walked a beach near my house in Woods Hole. A serious wind blew out of the north. The waves roared a dense, white noise. The sound was inescapable. It was so loud, I could barely hear my footsteps in the sand. After the beach stroll, I walked home about three […]
The post Take A Walk With Your Mic appeared first on Transom.
From Transom’s Samantha Broun: Kate O’Connell is a radio producer who studied at our nine-week Story Workshop in Woods Hole. She’s also a nurse in an emergency room at a hospital in Queens, NY. When the coronavirus pandemic began to explode in the U.S. and especially in New York City, I reached out to Kate […]
The post Pandemic ER: Notes From A Nurse In Queens appeared first on Transom.
Our Show is a mini-podcast-series produced by Rumble Strip, created in response to the coronavirus. It’s a show that we make all together. People all over the planet are — essentially — experiencing the same thing, but separately. In a way it is the most unifying event of our lifetimes, and yet we can’t be with […]
Estamos enfrentando una crisis global sobre una enfermedad infecciosa, y —comprensiblemente— tanto a reporteros como a productores les preocupa cómo protegerse a sí mismos y a sus entrevistados. Es importante recalcar que aquí en Transom no somos doctores ni especialistas en enfermedades infecciosas, así que nada de lo que vamos a sugerir a continuación debe […]
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From our CEO, Ken Ikeda:
The effects of the COVID-19 outbreak can be felt everywhere and could last for many more months. We at AIR want to communicate our support for the freelancers and small businesses among our membership, peer institutions and friends. There are few resources available for small businesses and for many of us, there are few funds to cover living costs as gigs are delayed or cancelled. (Details on those funds that do exist are available from the freelance artists resource guide.)
Please don’t hesitate to communicate with us. Our advocacy work is grounded in fair wages and working conditions for freelancers. COVID-19 illuminates just how challenging and fragile our economy, work portfolios, and professional security can be. At the same time, the value of the incredible reporting and storytelling that each of you contributes is needed now more than ever. We’ve adopted the saying internally that AIR members are “Always Independent. Never Alone.” In the best of times this captures the spirit of everyone we meet. In the most challenging times, it is our promise that you are not alone. As a community, if we can connect you with others, listen, and assist in any way, please let us know.
AIR staff have gathered information from across our network in an effort to amplify the work others have already put in. We are thankful for how quickly they have mobilized to provide information and resources and hope that you find it useful as well.
Your primary source of information and guidance about the spread of the virus and best practices for prevention should absolutely be the CDC and your own local news outlets who are best positioned to provide fact-based assessments of local conditions.
We’ve identified a few additional resources that may help AIRsters navigate the next few months:
Squadcast is a web-based app that records conversations with remarkable fidelity. AIR members receive for a month free trial and up to 5 hours of free recording time. Use promocode AIRMEDIA at checkout.
Women in Sound shared an excellent crowd sourced round up of resources for finding work and financial support as well as handling the logistics of social distancing.
For folks in newsrooms, Hearken shared some fantastic resources on Handling Audience Questions in a Crisis.
Wherebyus’s Rebekah Monson shared some practical tips for managing newly remote teams on Medium. It’s a great read if you’re on a team that isn’t used to working remotely.
Marketplace Tech Team has shared their remote plan, including basic protocol for using Zoom.
Current has a great post from KUOW News Director Jill Jackson on how the station is handling coverage of the outbreak in Seattle.
If there are resources that you have found helpful, please do share them!
The post A Word from AIR and COVID-19 Resources for freelancers appeared first on AIR.
It's hard to do truly custom interactives work within WordPress. INN Labs' Pym.js Embeds plugin is built to make it easier for your newsroom to embed your latest data project, with help from NPR's Pym.js library.
Other solutions often involve pasting JavaScript into the post editor, disabling or bypassing parts of WordPress' security filters, or using interactive-builder plugins that limit your creative freedom.
All that Pym.js Embeds requires is a place to host your interactive as a standalone HTML page, and that you use NPR's Pym.js library in your interactive to make it resizable. Our plugin provides the seamless WordPress integration. Take the URL of your interactive and embed it in posts using the Block Editor or shortcodes. We handle the rest!
For the first time, thanks to the efforts of Claudiu Lodromanean and Weston Ruter, the Pym.js Embeds plugin supports the official WordPress AMP ⚡️ plugin. With both plugins installed, your Pym.js-based iframes will now be displayed as <amp-iframe> tags when your site is viewed through AMP.
Since amp-iframe now includes Pym.js's messages as a supported protocol, your embedded content is now more likely to work in AMP sites than it was before. As Google drives more content to your AMP pages, your readers will continue to have the same first-class experience they'd have if the reader viewed your full site.
This release also fixes some minor documentation issues, and we've improved this plugin's contribution guidelines on GitHub for external contributors.
If you're using this plugin, let us know how you're using it! Send us links to cool things you've done with it; we'd love to include them in our weekly newsletter.
If you'd like to learn more about INN Labs' open-source WordPress plugins and tools for publishers or how we can work together on your next project, send us an email or join us at one of our weekly Office Hours.
In honor of #worldradioday we’re offering a 30% discount for new and lapsed members.Visit airmedia.org/join, select 1 year student or individual memberships, and use promocode RADIODAY. This discount is good for today only so move quickly.
The post World Radio Day Discounted Membership appeared first on AIR.
Erin McGregor joined AIR as its new Engagement Strategist on January 21st. AIR’s CEO, Ken Ikeda, explains her new role as “a combination of member engagement, partnership development and oversight of our online platform, which is relaunching in early May. We had so many compelling applicants for this role, but Erin’s aspirations for AIR, her project management experience and work in founding Gaydio, align so well with our priorities. We are assembling a team of active learners, practitioners and organizers. Erin is all three. We are so thrilled she has joined AIR!”
A proud Canadian, Erin is based out of Philadelphia. She brings with her 10 years of project management and coordination experience in non-profit, corporate, and education sectors and 6 years of experience as an audio producer. “I’ve been a member of AIR for three years. The organization supported me through my early career in audio production and I am thrilled to bring those experiences and my passion for people who tell great stories to the Engagement Strategist position. I look forward to connecting with our members.”
Erin can be reached directly at is erin@airmedia.org
The post Introducing AIR’s new Engagement Strategist appeared first on AIR.
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Everyone needs an editor. Yes, even you. Good editors bring an experienced ear to the whole story, and that can make a world of difference.
And even if you know precisely what you’re doing, you also need someone with an experienced eye on the big picture. On some shows that’s the executive producer and it’s a full time role. Other shows bring in a consultant to lay solid groundwork and then step back after the first few episodes are out the door. Often, newcomers to the space turn to experienced editors in search of guidance that looks a lot more like content strategy or operations. We’ve covered this group of experts under “consulting” below.
In the last in our 2019 rate guide series, we wanted to capture those roles, editing and consulting, and the current market rates we found in our research.
Though these two roles are very different in practice, we’ve included them in a single guide because many of the consultants and other indies we interviewed in the course of our research on rates told AIR that they also do some story editing. Some of them mix a part time staff editing role with freelance reporting. Some freelance full time and only edit stories. We also talked to experienced professionals who tackle more strategic work helping podcasts or radio shows think through their plans, develop realistic editorial budgets, refine their voice, and maximize their reach.
In this context “editing” refers to the process of working with a producer, reporter or host to refine and finalize a story, episode or segment. Sometimes we’ll use “story editing” to distinguish this kind of editing from “audio editing,” or actually cutting the tape, which we cover in our guide to engineering and music rates.
Most editors are involved from the pre-reporting stage to help frame the goals of the story, they’re checking in along the way to help troubleshoot and prioritize, and they’re helping shape the final piece, including the script itself.
It depends on the format of a show, and on the rest of the staffing structure. But in general an editor is consulting with a reporter or producer about the content, tone and structure of a story (or an episode or series). Often that starts at the conceptual stage, talking with a reporter, producer or host about the goals and big questions for the project. In most cases an editor expects to check in along the way to help assess the projects evolution by asking questions like: what do we have? What do we need? What is turning out to be hard? Almost every editor will want to work directly with the script. Some will also want to listen to a lot of raw tape, while others look to the reporter or producer for that. Every editor will want to listen to a live read with tape.
Obviously some projects proceed much faster than others: the conceptual stage might be a quick conversation for a news feature, while a more deeply reported segment or series could involve substantially more conversations.
Editors tend to bring a good deal of experience both reporting — ensuring that a piece is complete and accurate, and narrative — ensuring that a piece tells a compelling story.
For experienced editors, we saw rates from $85 to $150 per hour, with most falling in the $100 to $125 range. We did talk to a handful of either specialized or uniquely desirable editors whose rates ranged significantly higher than $150/hour.
Newer editors who are still establishing a professional reputation cited rates closer to $75 per hour, in some cases ranging down to $50 or $65.
Editors at every level of experience cited a range and noted that rates at the lower end of their range reflect consistent, reliable gigs that they can count on and have been doing for a few years.
Need a great editor? You can search the Talent Directory for AIRsters who are available for Story Editing. And if you’re an AIR member with editing experience, update your profile!
Most productions can benefit from the insights of an experienced leader who can help establish the show’s voice, identify opportunities to reach a larger audience, assemble a staff and realistic budget, and connect with financing. While some editors can also provide this kind of support, this is usually where consultants come in on a small production.
While titles like “Executive Producer” and “Content Strategy Consultant” are by no means interchangeable, we found that most shows need someone in one or both roles, at least during the conception and launch phase. Once a show is up and running the folks who provided initial scaffolding aren’t as necessary — but unless there’s a very experienced editor in place to keep things moving in the right direction, some level of strategic oversight is important at any stage.
As we were interviewing consultants with an eye for the big picture, we also talked to a few who specialize in operations. If running an organization is outside your expertise, operations consultants can help you get the contract templates you need, connect with attorneys when you need legal support, and make sure that your budget includes the logistical details of keeping a production running smoothly — details that are often left out of editorial budgets.An operations consultant can help a show scale or just start up in a way that makes sustainability possible.
Some consultants who do this work describe themselves simply as experts, others use show runner. More than one described their work as “creative-meets-editorial-meets-business.”
Our sample size for big picture consultants was both small and diverse so these rates represent snapshots rather than a complete picture. We’re still including them here because we regularly get questions about budgeting for strategic planning.
Rates for expert consulting among our respondents ranged from $1000 -$1500 per day — many consultants at this level told us that they only work by the day. Where folks take hourly rates, those range from $150-250 per hour, sometimes ranging up to $500/hour. The amount of time that any one show will need with an outside executive producer or content strategist will vary, but most consultants will be able to accurately estimate the level of engagement they foresee.
We interviewed experienced shows and production companies about what they expect to pay for editors and strategic consulting. We also interviewed experienced editors and consultants, to understand how they set their rates and what they are actually paid on individual projects.
AIR is actively developing a series of guides designed to help independent producers, editors, and engineers set fair and reasonable rates, and to help everyone create accurate and realistic budgets. We want to hear from you. Contact amanda@airmedia.org if you have feedback on our rate recommendations.
This guide was completed in December 2019 and has not been updated. Our hope as an organization is that AIR can keep these rate guides up to date but if you’re reading this and it is more than a year old, you should adjust the recommended rate to reflect changes in the cost of work and living.
The post Rate Guide: Editing and Content Strategy appeared first on AIR.
Testing 10up plugin, Distributor.
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ProPublica’s Documenting Hate collaboration comes to a close next month after nearly three years. It brought together hundreds of newsrooms around the country to cover hate crimes and bias incidents.
The project started because we wanted to gather as much data as we could, to find untold stories and to fill in gaps in woefully inadequate federal data collection on hate crimes. Our approach included asking people to tell us their stories of experiencing or witnessing hate crimes and bias incidents.
As a relatively small newsroom, we knew we couldn’t do it alone. We’d have to work with partners － lots of them － to reach the biggest possible audience. So we published a tip form in English and Spanish, and recruited newsrooms around the country to share it with their readers.
We ended up working with more than 180 partners to report stories based on the leads we collected and the data we gathered. Partnering with national, local and ethnic media, we were able to investigate individual hate incidents and patterns in how hate manifested itself on a national scale. (While the collaboration between newsrooms is coming to an end, ProPublica will continue covering hate crimes and hate groups.)
Our partners reported on kids getting harassed in school, middle schoolers forming a human swastika, hate crime convictions, Ivy League vandalism, hate incidents at Walmarts and the phrase “go back to your country,” to name just a few. Since the project began in 2017, we received more than 6,000 submissions, gathered hundreds of public records on hate crimes and published more than 230 stories.
Projects like Documenting Hate are part of the growing phenomenon of collaborative data journalism, which involves many newsrooms working together around a single, shared data source.
If you’re working on such a collaboration or considering starting one, I’ve written a detailed guidebook to collaborative data projects, which is also available in Spanish and Portuguese. But as the project winds down, I wanted to share some broader lessons we’ve learned about managing large-scale collaborations:
Overshare information. Find as many opportunities as possible to explain how the project works, the resources available and how to access them. Journalists are busy and are constantly deluged with information, so using any excuse to remind them of what they need to know benefits everyone involved. I used introductory calls, onboarding materials, training documents and webinars as a way to do this.
Prepare for turnover. More than 500 journalists joined Documenting Hate over its nearly three-year run. But more than 170 left the newsrooms with which they were associated at the beginning of their participation in the project, either because they got a new job, were laid off, left journalism or their company went under. Sometimes journalists would warn me they were leaving, but most of the time I had to figure it out from email bounces. Sadly, it was rare that reporters changing jobs would rejoin.
Be understanding about the news cycle. Intense news cycles, whether it’s hurricanes or political crises, mean that reporters are not only going to get pulled away from the project but from their daily work, too. Days with breaking news may mean trainings or calls need to be rescheduled and publication dates bumped back. It’s important to be flexible on scheduling and timelines.
Adapt to the realities of the beat. It’s not uncommon for crime victims, especially hate-crime victims, to be reluctant to go on the record or even speak to journalists. Their cases are difficult to report out and verify. So like in a lot of beats, a promising lead doesn’t guarantee an achievable story. Crowdsourced data made the odds even longer in many cases, since we didn’t receive tips for every partner. That’s why it’s important to set expectations and offer context and guidance about the beat from the outset.
Expand your offerings. Given the aforementioned challenges, it’s a good idea to diversify potential story sources. We made a log of hate-crime-related public records requests at ProPublica for our reporting, and we made those records available to partners. We also offered a weekly newsletter with news clips and new reports/data from external sources, monthly webinars and guidance on investigating hate crimes.
Be flexible on communication strategies. Even though Slack can be useful for quick communication, especially among large groups, not everyone likes to use it or knows how. Email is what I’ve used most consistently, but reporters’ inboxes tend to pile up, and sometimes calling is easiest. Some journalists are heavy WhatsApp users, and I get through to them fastest there. Holding webinars and trainings is helpful to get some virtual face time, and sending event invites is another way you can get someone’s attention amid a crowded inbox. It’s useful to get a sense of the methods to which people are most responsive.
Celebrate success stories. There is a huge amount of work that doesn’t end up seeing the light of day, so I make an effort to signal-boost work that gets produced. I’ve highlighted big stories that ProPublica and our partners have done to show other partners how they can do similar work or localize national stories. Amplifying these stories by sharing on social and in newsletters, as well as featuring them in webinars, can help inspire more great work.
Be diligent about tracking progress. Our database software has a built-in tracking system for submissions, but I separately track stories produced from the project, news clips and interviews that mention the project, as well as impact from reporting. I keep on top of stories partners are working on, and I also use Google Alerts, internal PR emails and daily clip searches.
Evaluate your work. I’m surveying current and past Documenting Hate participants to get feedback and gauge how participants felt about working with us. I’m also going to write a post-mortem on the project to leave behind a record of the lessons we learned.
Are you a Philly-based print reporter looking to venture into audio storytelling? AIR and WHYY are partnering to offer a weekend-long audio training bootcamp, January 11–12, that will provide print journalists with the skills they need to expand their career into radio news reporting. WHYY, an NPR member station, is seeking to expand its pipeline of contributors available to pitch story ideas on a freelance basis
The training is free. Nine selected individuals will work with award-winning radio journalists, editors and audio producers. After, they will have access to guidance on story ideas from WHYY’s news directors and editors. All participants will receive the opportunity to directly pitch a story, with a focus on diverse, local voices, to WHYY editors.
You must be able to commit to the full weekend and complete readings/listening homework assigned prior to the training session. On the first day of training, be prepared to briefly describe a freelance story you would like to pitch to WHYY.
Who is eligible:
You will receive a complimentary one-year membership or one-year renewal to AIR. Apply by Tuesday, December 17 at 8pm ET.
The post AIR x WHYY: Print to Radio Bootcamp appeared first on AIR.
WordPress and Drupal are both powerful Content Management Systems (CMS’s) and two of the most popular ones in use today. There are several key differences between the two, and selecting the best fit has more to do with the specific goals and aims of a project than one being necessarily better than the other.
Both WordPress and Drupal are:
| FACTOR | WORDPRESS | DRUPAL |
| Ease of use & Complexity | Easy to install, requires little to no coding knowledge to get a site up and running. | Easy to install, requires more customization and configuration to set up. |
| Learning Curve | Small learning curve. | Large learning curve, coding experience often needed. |
| Content Structures | Focus on blog and article content that displays on webpages. Pre-configured content types and functionality for quick publishing and easy static pages and articles. | Focus on interconnected content that can display in multiple places and push to other places on the web. Ability to create complex and customizable content types for advanced functionality of pages. |
| Plugins/Modules | Solution oriented plugins that provide specific out of the box functions. | Functionality oriented modules meant to be combined with others to create needed functions. |
| User Access/Workflows | Easy to start publishing content. Simple roles and workflows out of the box. Complex workflows are implemented via plugins like Edit Flow. | Focused on more-complex workflows with highly customized permissions and roles. |
| Security | Third-party plugins can be prone to security vulnerabilities. For more information, see our blog post on WordPress Security. | Also has third-party vulnerabilities. |
WordPress is a powerful and easy to use tool for creating content-oriented websites of all sizes. Drupal is similar to WordPress in many ways, however it is has a higher learning curve and requires more customization.
If you would like to learn more about WordPress or are a publisher considering a site migration from Drupal to WordPress, get in touch!
We’re proud to welcome the Winter 2019 class to AIR’s Full Spectrum Storytelling Intensive. This group brings together makers from throughout the United States, and spans a wide range of interests including audio ephemera, communal listening experiences, comedy, video games, ice cream cakes, and then some. Their storytelling expertise runs the gamut, from radio art to digital journalism to film and television production. This December, the Winter 2019 Full Spectrum cohort will gather at UnionDocs in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, for a week of learning and exploring with the guidance of co-leaders Chiquita Paschal and Cher Vincent. Meet the cohort below!
Myra Al-Rahim (she/her) is an audio producer currently living and working in Brooklyn, New York. Outside of her day job editing audio, she considers herself a practitioner of hauntological radio art. Many of her performances and compositions are preoccupied with the physicality of analog technologies and emphasizing the material qualities of playback systems that enable us to access recorded sounds. She is an avid synthesist and the use of electronic music tech is prevalent in most of her work. She is also a restless collector of audio ephemera from the past. In an ever privatizing world, Myra believes that airwaves remain one of the last domains truly reserved for the public. In all her compositions, she is dedicated to channeling the public spirit.
Heloiza Barbosa (she/her) is creator/producer of Faxina Podcast, a Portuguese-language podcast of stories that get swept under the rug. She is also a Brazilian academic researcher and a writer whose work has appeared in Alpaca literary magazine and other international academic and literary publications. Heloiza believes that the future of podcasting sounds like women, people of color, queer individuals, and immigrants.
Ellen Berkovitch (she/her) is an award-winning documentary radio producer and podcaster, as well as a digital journalism entrepreneur and writer. She has been news director of Santa Fe Public Radio. In 2018 she contributed a long-form investigative environmental radio documentary about uranium pollution on Navajo Nation to KRCB/NPR One. Ellen is now at work on two new podcasts as well as on a participatory journalism initiative, the Re-Voice Project, to amplify voices of people experiencing homelessness as experts in the accelerating social crisis. She moved back to her hometown of New York City from New Mexico in September 2018. In 2019 she has participated in #50WomenCan (Take the Lead in Journalism), a women’s journalism leadership training program. She’ll begin teaching journalism at Pratt Institute in January 2020.
Molly Born (she/her) is a journalist and producer living in West Virginia. She has spent 2019 working on film projects with documentary filmmaker, Elaine McMillion Sheldon. In 2018, Born was a fellow with Report for America, an organization that places journalists in under-covered areas. As a fellow, she covered issues in southern West Virginia for West Virginia Public Broadcasting, the state’s NPR member station, and was a finalist for the 2019 Livingston Award. Before that, Born worked six years at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Elizabeth Friend (she/her) is freelance journalist and audio producer based in North Carolina. She’s also the co-creator of Audio Under the Stars, the largest outdoor audio documentary festival in the Southeast. Each summer Audio Under the Stars shares a selection of original stories and thoughtfully curated favorites designed to bring the world of audio storytelling out of your earbuds and into the outdoors, creating a one-of-a-kind communal listening experience.
Robin Gelfenbien (she/her) is the Ambassador of Fun aka an NYC-based storyteller, writer, comedian and host. She’s a three-time Moth StorySLAM winner who has performed on PBS, RISK!, Mortified and countless shows. She’s also shared the stage with luminaries like Hannah Gadsby, Trevor Noah and more. She’s the Creator and Host of the storytelling series and podcast, Yum’s the Word, which features her homemade ice cream cakes. The show has been named a New York Times and Time Out New York Critic’s Pick.
Andrea Gutierrez (she/her) produces interviews and features for The Frame, a daily arts and culture radio show by NPR station KPCC. She is drawn to stories about the intersections of gender, race, class, and ability in arts and culture. Her work has appeared in print, digital, and audio in various outlets, including BBC World Service, The Current (CBC), LAist, The California Sunday Magazine, Marfa Public Radio, and Bitch. In 2019 she was an AIR New Voices Scholar and a finalist in KCRW’s 24-Hour Radio Race. Andrea received an MFA in creative writing at the University of California, Riverside, and B.A. in German studies at Scripps College. Social: @AndreaGtrrz
Alisha Hall (she/her) is the creator and producer of the weekly podcast Tell It. Each episode is less than five minutes long and offers listeners little nuggets of wisdom. She’s worked as a board operator and Freelancer for WFYI in Indianapolis, staff writer with FAF Collective, and she was a 2016 New Voice Scholar. Alisha is from University Park, Illinois. She is a mother, college graduate, crybaby, and an overall people-lover. She wants to tell whole stories that open minds, hearts, and inspires people to live fuller lives!
Ari(el) Mejia (she/her) is a Chicago native who believes multiple truths exist at once. She came to audio art and radio production by way of feminist praxis, community organizing and education. As well as working on independent audio projects Ari is the Assistant Director of Features at CHIRP Radio, a Chicago community radio station where she curates & produces interviews with Chicago-based artists. She is also the Youth Radio instructor for Chicago’s youth programming non-profit After School Matters. Ari was a 2019 Air New Voices Scholar, and is a proud member and co-founder of the Radio (R)ejects, a queer + poc audio collective challenging what it means to make experimental work based out of Los Angeles, Chicago, and New Orleans.
Ron Lyons (he/his) is an independent journalist and audio storyteller. He writes about culture and technology which can be found in 101.9 WDET, StoryCorps and Slate Magazine. When not working on stories he unwinds by video games, eating Korean food and traveling. Journalism like any other industry can have both it’s good and bad days, but he wouldn’t leave it for anything else in the world.
Cat Modlin-Jackson (she/her) is a freelance journalist and co-host/producer of WRIR’s Race Capitol, a weekly show that interrogates racial narratives in Richmond, Virginia — home to the former capitol grounds of the confederacy. Her educational background is in Middle Eastern politics and the Arabic language, which she studied intensively in Oman. She came to journalism by way of national politics after writing about the Women’s March in January, 2017. She’s done stints in New York, Tampa Bay, and Houston, where she covered gender, race, food, agriculture, and the political threads that tie it all together.
Emerald O’Brien (she/her) is a multimedia storyteller with predilection for audio. Along with the arts of communication and narrative crafting, she’s interested the ways people create and consume stories as a way to engage their world. Since receiving a degree in journalism from the University of Missouri, she has worked in various production and reporting roles at KBIA, NPR’s Morning Edition and APM Reports. She is currently a digital producer for American Public Media’s Live from here with Chris Thile.
Erika Romero (she/her) is a producer based in NYC. She’s traveled across the country in the iconic StoryCorps airstream trailer as part of the 2015 Mobile Tour, produced shows for Maeve in America and Mashup Americans. She is currently the associate producer for The Splendid Table.
Kip Reinsmith (he/his) is a writer, director, producer, and trans human who is passionate about unearthing stories and truths rarely told. His past podcasts include the time-traveling historical series Subframe about the 1915 World’s Fair in San Francisco, produced in partnership with the California Historical Society, and Marc Maron Presents: Classic Showbiz, about the untold history of comedy in the U.S. His audio work has been featured on WNYC’s Nancy and KALW. His directorial debut, a music video for Mal Blum’s Reality TV, was featured on NPR’s First Watch. He is a graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts where he studied film and television production with a focus on documentary studies.
Laurel Morales (she/her) has been a public radio reporter since 1998 but she has spent the majority of her career in northern Arizona covering Indian Country. During that time it’s been her mission to find innovative ways to break down complicated issues for local, regional and national public radio audiences. She has won several awards for her reporting and writing, including a national Edward R. Murrow Award for her continuing coverage of the Yarnell Hill Fire, the Arizona wildfire that killed 19 firefighter hotshots. Her greatest accomplishments have been sparking dialogues, informing decision-makers and moving people to action.
The post Introducing: The Winter 2019 Full Spectrum Cohort appeared first on AIR.
The entire AIR staff will be at Third Coast this week and we’re thrilled to meet (or reconnect) with AIRsters and beyond in attendance at the conference. Visit our table to meet our team and get to know our New Voices and AIR ambassadors who will also be working the table. Here’s your guide to the AIR experience at Third Coast:
Don’t snooze on our Bitchin’ Pitchin’ Panel.
Happening Friday at 2pm and Saturday at 11am, the pitch panel will bring brave storytellers into an arena of editors to pitch their stories—LIVE! Make sure to swing by to catch one of the sessions—or both.
It’s always a good time for a mingle.
Join us Friday evening, November 1, 5pm–7pm at Motor Row Brewing—just twelve minutes away from the conference hotel. Enjoy some light bites while you catch up or connect with audio pals. RSVP here!
We’ll have a raffle going on along with discounts to membership.
Thanks to our lovely industry partners, we’ll have a slew of prizes including tools from iZotope, Hindenburg, and Epidemic Sound. Swing by the table to submit your name and grab a discount code for 20% off AIR membership.
Contribute to the membership fund for some snazzy AIR swag.
New this year, we’re asking AIRsters to pay it forward though small donations that will go towards membership costs for those who would benefit from an AIR membership but can’t afford it. In exchange, we’ll have (freshly-designed!) t-shirts, tote bags, metal straws, and more.
Follow along online.
Last but not least, stay connected to our Third Coast goings-on by following us on social media:
Twitter: @AIRmedia | Instagram: @AIRcurator | Facebook: Association of Independents in Radio.
Looking forward to seeing you all there!
The post We’re going to be at Third Coast this week! Find our table for swag and conversation. appeared first on AIR.
October 28, 2019—In an effort to bring more sustainable support to women-identifying producers of color in media, AIR has paired five mentors with mentees through our inaugural Claiming the Rad in Radio Fellowship. We’re excited to announce the pairs today. Over the next five months, fellows will have time with their mentors to navigate career transitions, assertiveness on the job, dealing with race and gender bias, salary/pay negotiations and finding/creating community for self care. The program will also be accompanied by a series of exclusive webinars specifically designed for the fellowship cohort and their mentorship discussion topics. Meet our fellows below!
Amarachi Anakaraonye and Kim Bui
Amarachi Anakaraonye is a freelance multimedia producer with a keen eye and ear for calling out inequities, and calling in objective subjectivity. She has spent the past decade sojourning the United States, Europe, and Sub-Saharan Africa utilizing her innate empathic nature and cultural sensitivity to explore how Black women experience and transcend trauma within and beyond such institutions as health, education, and media. In 2017, she created her podcast, The Fragmented Whole, a bi-monthly podcast series that simultaneously dismantles and reframes narratives of trauma, displacement, and healing among women of color, particularly Black women. She has guest hosted and produced such podcasts as The Measure of Everyday Life (WNCU 90.7 FM/RTI International) and The Nonprofit Experience (NC State University’s Philanthropy Journal). Amarachi is a proud member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. and when she’s not producing new and existing projects, she enjoys cycling, yoga, and dancing. To learn more about Amarachi’s present and future pursuits, visit www.amarachia.com.
Fellowship statement: “My present and future aim is to establish my own multimedia production and marketing company. I have a strong desire to work with organizations prioritizing health equity and media literacy through technological innovation. The ‘Claiming the Rad in Radio’ Fellowship will provide me with critical insight on industry standards to reference when: 1. Educating clients about the significance of multimedia arts in marketing their services in an educational and/or entertaining manner, and 2. Partnering with clients that already realize the significance of using diverse multimedia outlets in marketing, but need guidance in planning, executing, and/or evaluating such assets.”
Gabrielle Berbey and Dmae Roberts
Gabrielle Berbey is a documentary filmmaker and multi-media journalist from San Francisco, based in New York. Interested in exploring how stories can be adapted throughout different forms to have the most impact, Gabrielle’s experience spans across audio and broadcast documentaries. Upon graduating from Bard College with a B.A. in Film/TV and Human Rights, she worked on the producing team for the FRONTLINE PBS award-winning investigative podcast, The FRONTLINE Dispatch. She currently works on the edit team for a PBS broadcast biographical series about Muhammad Ali, directed by Ken Burns.
Fellowship statement: “Gabrielle’s independent documentary work ranges from radio pieces to short documentaries. With a specific focus on illuminating stories in the Filipino diaspora, she produced a documentary about the last remaining Filipino grocery store in upstate New York, and her senior thesis documentary tells the story of a Filipino-American community grappling with political unrest in the homeland. Throughout this fellowship, she is excited to develop and produce a historical audio documentary about the 1941 attack on Manila Bay, and how the Philippines’ legacy as a U.S. territory has been largely overlooked in American history.”
Elizabeth Estrada and Juleyka Lantigua Williams
Elizabeth Estrada is a Cuban American multimedia producer dedicated to using audio to explore and amplify stories about Latinx communities living in America. She is currently the engagement editor at WHYY’s PlanPhilly where she connects audiences with local news. Elizabeth has worked at the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance, Firelight Media, New York Women in Film & Television and interned at The Pulse. She is a producer and board member at PhillyCAM, Philadelphia’s public access media station, where she was the recipient of the Innovation Award for Radio in 2018.
Elizabeth is a graduate of Ithaca College and The New School University. Originally from Queens, New York, she now lives in South Philadelphia with her fiancé and dog. You can follow her on Twitter @theElizabethEst.
Fellowship statement: “Through this rad fellowship, I hope to cultivate a long-lasting community with other women of color audio producers. I also intend to conquer my fear and finally produce a pilot of a podcast that I’ve been wanting to create for a long time that centers diverse Latinx changemakers.”
Janae Pierre and Alyce Myatt
Janae Pierre is a general assignment reporter and local host of NPR’s All Things Considered at WBHM in Birmingham, Alabama. A native of New Orleans, Pierre has worked and volunteered with several different media organizations, notably NPR affiliate WWNO, the New Orleans Tribune and WBOK 1230AM. In her spare time, Pierre enjoys listening to old vinyl records (she loves that scratchy sound). Some of her favorite artists include Al Green, Gil Scott Heron and Dinah Washington. In early 2019, Pierre was recognized as the “Best Large Market Radio Reporter” by the Alabama Broadcasters Association. She was also listed on Radio Ink’s 2017 “Future African American Leaders in Radio.”
Fellowship statement: “I’m thrilled to be a part of this mentorship program and I hope to literally ‘claim the rad in radio’ with the help of my mentor Alyce Myatt. With her advisement, I look forward to learning different ways to advance my career and ideas to merge my love for reporting and philanthropy in Birmingham and my hometown, New Orleans.”
Rhana Natour and Carmel Delshad
Rhana Natour is a national reporter and producer with PBS NewsHour in Washington D.C. where she covers a wide array of subjects including stories on technology, race, gender and gun violence.
Before coming to the NewsHour, Rhana was an associate producer at ABC News in New York. In 2014, she earned an Emmy nomination for her work on the Nightline special “Crisis in Syria.”
Rhana is also passionate about quality long-form storytelling. She was part of the producing team for the feature-length documentary Speed Sisters that follows the first female race car driving team in the Middle East. Rhana is a graduate of the University of Michigan and was a Fulbright scholar to the United Arab Emirates.
The post Introducing: AIR’s 2019 Claiming the Rad in Radio Fellows appeared first on AIR.
Editor’s note: “Meet this Member!,” is an interview series that spotlights AIRsters doing outstanding work in the audio and media industry. This week we feature composer and audio producer, Elliott Peltzman.
1) Where are you based and what do you do?
I am a San Francisco based Composer and Audio Producer with a particular interest in scoring and sound designing podcasts – the weirder the better!
2) A piece of yours (in any medium!) that you would like to share? (And why?)
I’m really proud of this one piece of mine called “Couldn’t Find A Way”. It’s part true-crime, part smoky tiki lounge, part cumbia?? Not really sure what I’d call it. I wrote it outside of any project – just for myself – and to me really showcases my ability to play with tension and release within just a few notes, only two chords. I’m always most proud of one of my pieces when it incites that amazing feeling where you can’t decide if it’s more major or minor and leaves you wanting to dive further in to find out. Also I absolutely love the tone of the guitar I went with 
3) What draws you to storytelling?
The Fiction. There was a certain point in life when I started realizing that the best storytellers are not the most accurate storytellers. And I want it to stay that way. The re-coloring, the erasing and augmenting of storylines; it’s not just juicier and more interesting – it’s the stuff that art is made of! What I love most about composing is creating pieces that incite complex emotions that have the power to guide and influence the narrative when played alongside the spoken word.
4) What’s playing on your radio/audio streaming service right now?
This group Khruangbin have really stolen my heart. They’re really moving mountains for (mostly) instrumental music right now.
5) What’s the most underrated tool (technical or not!) you use in your creative practice?
The standard Marimba sound in Logic is where almost all of my compositions begin and where a lot of them stay! I like anything that helps me move past tech and spend most of my time in the compositional headspace.
6) What is something you want to see more of in the industry?
This is such a self-serving answer, but I’d honestly love to see more podcasts feature the same composer(s) for the entirety of the show, or at least the entirety of each season. I believe most shows would really benefit from the cohesion and composers like myself would create much finer work knowing they can create repeated motifs, unique instrumentation per episode / per character. Delivering one-off themes and/or ambiguous pieces is fun, but I wish there were more positions that would allow me to go as deep as I’d like to!
7) Who’s your radio/audio idol and why?
On the same note as the previous question – my favorite composer to tune in to each week is Sean Real who composes original music for every episode of 99% Invisible. Sean has my dream job and does a very, very good job at it. Always subtle, but never innocuous – quirky as all get out. And most importantly, always very well-suited to the narrative.
8) What’s the best method for people to connect with you (including social media)?
I share new works to my website pretty often and prefer to be reached out to through email (epeltzman@gmail.com). Please don’t hesitate to reach out – that’s why we’re members of AIR!
The post Meet this Member! | Elliott Peltzman appeared first on AIR.
For nearly three years, ProPublica’s Documenting Hate project has given newsrooms around the country access to a database of personal reports sent to us by readers about hate crimes and bias incidents. We’ve brought aboard more than 180 newsrooms, and some have followed up on these reports — verifying them, uncovering patterns and telling the stories of victims and witnesses. Some partners have done significant data journalism projects of their own to augment what they found in the shared dataset.
The latest such project comes from News12 in Westchester County, New York. Reporter Tara Rosenblum joined the Documenting Hate project after a spate of hate incidents in her coverage area. Last month, News12 aired her five-part series about hate crimes in the Hudson Valley and a half-hour special covering hate in the tri-state area. The station also published a public database of hate incidents going back a decade. It was the result of two years of work.
Rosenblum and her team built the database by requesting records from every police department in their coverage area, following up on tips from Documenting Hate and collecting clips about hate incidents the news network was already reporting on. Getting records was a laborious process, particularly from small agencies, some of which accept requests only by fax. “It was definitely torturous, but a labor of love project,” Rosenblum said.
She also expanded the scope of the project beyond her local newsroom and brought in News12 reporters from the network’s bureaus in Connecticut, New Jersey, Long Island, the Bronx and Brooklyn. The local newsrooms used Rosenblum’s investigation as their model, examining hate incidents since 2016. In all, six News12 reporters in three states documented around 2,300 hate incidents.
“We knew that this was one of those cases, the more the merrier,” Rosenblum said of collaborating with other newsrooms. “Why not flex our investigative muscle and get everyone working on this at the same time so we can really get a regional look?”
After the series aired, Rosenblum heard from a number of lawmakers — some who said they’d experienced discrimination — as well as students and schools. The special also aired on national and international networks, garnering responses from other states and countries. “A lot of what I heard is people being really grateful that we were shining the light on this,” she said.
Catherine Rentz, a reporter at The Baltimore Sun, wanted to investigate hate incidents in her area after learning how the Maryland State Police tracks hate crimes. (Since this writing, Rentz left the Sun to pursue freelance projects.) Maryland has been collecting hate crime data since the 1980s, so there was much to explore, Rentz said. Her reporting was also sparked by the May 2017 homicide of Richard Collins III, a second lieutenant in the Army who was days away from his college graduation. He was stabbed to death at the University of Maryland in what may have been a racially motivated attack; the suspect will be tried in December.
Rentz began her hate crimes investigation the summer after the killing, and she worked on it on and off for a year, she said. She sent public records requests to the Maryland State Police, city police departments and the state judiciary, and she built a public database of hate crimes and bias incidents reported to police in Maryland from 2016-17, including narratives of the incidents. She also worked with Documenting Hate to look into Maryland-based reports in our database.
To collect the data, she set up a spreadsheet and entered each case by hand, since the state police records were in PDF files and she wasn’t able to easily extract data from them. She had a number of other challenges. For instance, many agencies redacted victims’ names, so it was a challenge to use the data to find potential sources to interview. And when she did find names, some victims didn’t want to talk about what happened to them.
“I completely understood that, and I didn’t want to do any more damage than had already been done,” she said.
In the course of her investigation, Rentz discovered that there were agencies that did collect reports of potential bias crimes, but that they weren’t reporting it to the state police, so the data wasn’t being counted. She also looked at prosecutions; in 2017, there were nearly 400 bias crimes reported to police, but only three hate crime convictions.
Following the Sun’s hate crime reporting, the state police held several trainings with local police and reminded agencies that they’re required by law to turn in their bias crime reports on specific deadlines. In April, the governor signed three new bills into law on hate crimes.
Last year, Reveal investigated hate incidents that involved the invocation of President Donald Trump’s name or policies. They published a longform story and produced a radio show. Reporter Will Carless built a database using reports from the Documenting Hate project and news clips. He worked his way through a color-coded spreadsheet of hundreds of entries to verify reports and find sources to highlight in the story. After the investigation published, Carless says he received emails from readers who said similar incidents had happened to them; others thanked him for connecting the dots and gathering data on previously disparate stories. He also said a few academics told him they were going to include the story in their courses that involve hate speech.
And this year, HuffPost created a database for a forthcoming story examining hate incidents in which the perpetrator used the phrase “go back to your country” or “go back to” a specific country. Their database combined tips submitted to the Documenting Hate project, along with news clips culled from the Lexis-Nexis database, social media reports, as well as police reports gathered by ProPublica. The investigation is slated to publish this fall.
“The thing I want to stress for this project is that this type of hatred or bigotry or white nationalism is kind of ubiquitous and foundational to American society,” said HuffPost reporter Christopher Mathias. “It’s very much a common thing that people who aren’t white in this country experience on a regular basis. There’s no better way to show that than to create a database of many, many incidents like this across the country.”
Like News12, HuffPost opened the project up to its newsroom colleagues, bringing in reporters from HuffPost bureaus in the United Kingdom and Canada. After HuffPost published a questionnaire to collect more stories from readers, its U.K. and Canadian colleagues set up their own crowdsourcing forms to collect stories. (Documenting Hate is a U.S.-based project, and our form is limited to the U.S.) Their plan is to publish stories using the tips they collect when HuffPost’s U.S. newsroom publishes its investigation.
Want to create your own database of hate crimes? Here are some tips about how to get started. 1. Get hate crimes data from your local law enforcement agency.
We have a searchable app where you can see the data we received directly from police departments, as well as the numbers that agencies sent the FBI. (The federal data is deeply flawed, as we’ve found in our reporting.) We have partial 2017 data for some agencies.
If we don’t have data from your police department, you can replicate our records request.
Also, some states, like Maryland and California, release statewide hate crime data reports, so find out if top-line data is publicly available.
Some things to keep in mind:
More than half of hate crime victims don’t report to the police at all. And the police don’t always do a good job handling these crimes.
That’s because police officers don’t always receive adequate training about how to investigate or track hate crimes. Still, training isn’t a guarantee to ensure these crimes are handled properly. Some police mismark hate crimes or don’t know how to fill out forms to properly track these crimes. Some victims believe officers don’t take them seriously; in some cases, victims say police even refuse to fill out a report. 2. Put together a list of known incidents using media reports and crimes tracked by nonprofit organizations.
It’s a good idea to search for clips of suspected hate crimes during the time period in question to compare them to police data. You can use tools like Google News, LexisNexis, Newspapers.com and others.
You can also consult organizations that track incidents and add them to your list of known crimes. They can give you a sense of how police respond to hate crimes against these groups. Here are some examples.
Once you receive data from the police department, compare it with your list of known hate crimes from media and nonprofit reports. That will be especially useful if the police claim to have no hate crimes in the time period. Ask about any discrepancies.
You can also check to see if the department’s data matches what it sent the FBI. If the department’s numbers don’t match what they sent the feds, ask why.
The best way to get a deeper look at the data is to get narratives. Ask for a police report or talk to the public information officer to get the narrative from the incident report.
Then review the data and incident reports for potential mismarked crimes. Take a look at the types of bias listed for each crime. We found that reports of anti-heterosexual bias crimes were almost always mismarked, either as different types of bias crimes or crimes that weren’t hate crimes at all.
Also check the quantity of each bias type. Is there a large number of a specific bias crime that may not fit with the area’s demographics? We’ve encountered cases in which police marked incidents as having anti-Native American bias in their forms or computer systems because they thought they were selecting “none” or “not applicable.”
Next, check the crime types. We’ve also seen that certain crime types are unlikely to involve a bias motivation but are sometimes erroneously marked as hate crimes; examples include drug charges, suicide, drug overdose and hospice death. Request incident reports, and follow up with police to ask about cases that don’t appear to be bias crimes. Police have often told us that mismarking happens as a result of human error, and that officials will sometimes rectify the errors found.
Though radio transmitters have been broadcasting for more than a century, the emerging podcast industry is disrupting traditional models of audio production. Experienced audio engineers, recordists, sound designers, and composers all bring vital skills that can make a big difference in the sound and quality of any show, however the final audio is distributed.
In addition, experienced professionals who bring skills honed on other productions can provide an unbiased editorial ear, and are often able to improve a project long before production gets underway.
In many cases the roles described here overlap and any one show’s needs is going to vary. Most independent producers do their own recording and they often expect to do their own initial dialog edits. Some sound designers compose original scores. Some do all the mixing and scoring for a show. Some mix engineers are asked to make editorial decisions about how to cut tape.
No glossary or guide can replace a clear and direct conversation about expectations. Whether you’re hiring a freelancer or taking on a new gig, make sure everyone is on the same page about what you need.
audio engineer is a broad term that can be applied to someone in any one of a variety of engineering-related roles.
audio mixer, mix engineer, mastering engineer are all titles for someone who mixes a show or segment. NPR Training defines mixing as “the process of creating balance, consistency and clarity with differing audio sources.” An audio mixer or mix engineer brings a clear understanding of audio concepts like phase and gain structure and core tools including equalization, compression, loudness, and restoration software to the mixing process. Mixing is typically the final step of producing an audio story and results in a publishable audio file. “Mastering” actually describes the final step in creating a music album, which follows the mixing stage. The term is not technically applicable to audio storytelling, but it is sometimes used to describe mixing work.
Note: some shops use “mix” to refer to the process of cutting and arranging audio — a clear conversation about expectations will help avoid any misunderstandings.
composer describes a musician who creates original music. A show might commission a composer to create original music designed especially for that show, or they might commission existing music from a composer.
dialogue editor is a term borrowed from the film world for someone who cuts and cleans dialogue. In audio storytelling, this responsibility more often falls to a producer who is charged with cutting the story.
scoring describes the work of creating or identifying, selecting and licensing existing music from a music library or other source to suit the needs of a segment or story. In our research we found composers who were firm that scoring a segment always means composing original music, and other folks who were just as firm that in radio and podcasting work, scoring always means finding music from an existing source. As ever, no glossary is a substitute for a clear conversation about expectations.
sound designer, sound design is another title borrowed from film. Sound design traditionally refers to the practice of cutting and layering sound effects and ambient audio using natural or synthesized sounds. In audio storytelling it might refer to someone who provides music and pacing decisions, or to someone who customizes a palette of music and sonic materials that form the defining sound of a show. Transom’s series on sound design is a great introduction to the craft. A sound designer might compose original scores themselves, find composers to create original sounds and music, or use sound libraries to identify and license existing music and effects. The bounds of a sound designer’s responsibility can vary a lot: some sound designers do all the mixing, engineering and sound design for a single show.
sound recordist, field recordist, production sound recordist are all terms that describe an audio engineer who records “in the field” outside of a studio. Someone using these titles should be competent with remote recording equipment and able to set up equipment that will optimize recording quality given the constraints of the particular scene.
studio engineer describes an engineer who operates a live broadcast or recording studio.
In our research the rates for mixing, recording and engineering roles varied with experience and sometimes by the complexity of the job but rarely varied by the role. We focused our research on independent contractors, though it is not uncommon for a specialist to be on payroll for a short term appointment. In general, independent contractors should expect to charge at least 30% more than peers doing similar work on payroll.
Rates: Most independent engineers we interviewed cited hourly rates in the $75-125 range, though some experienced professionals charge $150 to $200 or more. Everyone we interviewed quoted day rates commensurate with that range.
Comparable rates for someone doing the same work on payroll, with an employer covering payroll taxes, workers compensation, unemployment insurance would range from $58-96/hour.
Some engineers reported including a fixed number of revisions in their contract, even for work that will ultimately be billed by the hour. They opt to bill at a higher rate for the aggravation of inefficiency.
Tape Syncs are a special case — the work involved in preparation, set up, and follow up on a tape sync is relatively consistent and described in our tape sync rate guide.
Additional fees, consistent with time-and-a-half overtime standards, are typical for unusually long days or condensed schedules.
We also found many folks at all levels working in short term staff positions. Staff rates, which include significant additional benefits (among them access to workers compensation and unemployment insurance, paid sick leave) start at $30-35/hour for staffers working under the close supervision of a more experienced engineer. Staff engineers, whatever their hourly rate, are entitled by law to overtime pay after working 40 hours in a single week.
Many people we spoke with noted that newcomers to the field often wait until the last minute to bring a mix engineer onto the team. Though many of the roles described here are technically “post-production,” we’ve avoided that term intentionally. A good mixer, engineer or sound designer can make a big difference in the final quality of a show. Bringing a “post production” team in early can head off problems with recording quality or file organization that will be labor intensive to fix later.
Experienced engineers working across these fields reported including a fixed number of revisions in their contract, even for work that will ultimately be billed by the hour. Revisions, tweaks, corrections and adjustments are part of the work, but when those trickle in piecemeal, the freelancer is stuck managing a lot of inefficient communication. Charging a higher rate for revisions after the first two passes can help encourage efficiency and ensure that everyone is able to do their best work.
Establishing “standard” rates for original music composition is particularly challenging because
some composers can command substantially more for their work than others. Session musicians and a studio cost money, but some music can be produced “in-the-box” using only software. Most composers take expected usage of the work into account when setting their rates as well. With those criteria taken into account, a composer will generally propose a flat rate that includes a fixed number of revisions (two or three is typical).
Note that our sample size for composers was both small and diverse so these rates for composition represent snapshots rather than a complete picture of the industry. We’re still including them here because we regularly get questions about budgeting for music.
Composing theme music, or an intro and outro for a weekly public radio show with a national audience might run to $15,000. A smaller budget show or one with a smaller market might expect to pay $2000-$5000 for an original score.
Some shows and sound designers also turn to composers for help scoring a single episode. Though we didn’t find consensus on what constitutes a small or large audience, licensing might look like this, where figures reflect a small, medium or large audience:
Licensing a pre-existing track for use on a single episode: $50 | $100 | $200
Non-exclusive use of a custom track: $300 | $500 | $750
Exclusive use of a custom produced track or score will vary more widely.
In almost all cases, a composer retains the copyright to the work and use beyond the original intended medium may need to be renegotiated. Many experienced composers and sound designers will ask for revisions to a standard contract that asks for exclusive worldwide use in any medium, or will charge more for that level of licensing.
We interviewed experienced radio shows and podcast production houses about what they expect to pay. We interviewed experienced sound designers, composers, and engineers about what they charge. We also talked to professionals working in film or music to get a sense of where rates overlap and reviewed rates. We reviewed existing research including Blue Collar Post Collective’s survey of post-production rates in film and television.
For this guide, we relied heavily on interviews to establish the roles and categories. Rob Byers, Michael Raphael, and Jeremy Bloom helped refine, define and clarify the terms we’ve used here and were absolutely indispensable to the creation of this guide.
AIR is actively developing a series of guides designed to help independent producers, editors, and engineers set fair and reasonable rates, and to help everyone create accurate and realistic budgets. We want to hear from you.
This guide was posted in October 2019 and has not been updated. Our hope as an organization is that AIR can keep these rate guides up to date but if you’re reading this and it is more than a year old, you should adjust the recommended rate to reflect changes in the cost of work and living.
The post Rate Guide: Engineering and Composition appeared first on AIR.
With a great WordPress site comes great responsibility. WordPress offers journalists a distinguished platform to publish and distribute their content, but keeping your site safe and secure can seem like an overwhelming and daunting task. Luckily, keeping your WordPress site in tip-top shape isn’t as difficult as it seems. We’ve put together a list of a few basic do’s and don’ts to follow in order to keep your site running smoothly and securely, along with the basics of WordPress vulnerabilities and how to understand why some WordPress websites end up getting exploited.
Before we discuss what you should and should not do with your WordPress site, it will be helpful for you to understand the two main ways that WordPress sites can end up becoming vulnerable to attackers.
Now that we’ve gone over what some of the most commonly exploited WordPress vulnerabilities look like, we can explore a basic list of some do’s and don’ts when it comes to keeping up with your WordPress site.
An additional benefit of following these steps is that most of them will help you speed up your WordPress site speed. For example, reducing the number of plugins you have will help control what we call “plugin bloat”. Having too many plugins may result in slow page load times due to all of their assets and functions having to load on the page at once.
Another area to keep an eye on if you’re looking to increase your site speed is your theme. Lots of themes are built with a lot of unnecessary tools and functions which may be useful sometimes, but most of the time just end up increasing page load times. Verify that the theme you’re installing has been thoroughly tested to see the effects it’ll have on your page speed.
If your site is the unfortunate victim of a successful attack, knowing what to do will save you from a lot of headaches. First off, don’t panic! Panicking will only make the situation worse, and you will need a level head to successfully recover your website. The first step you’ll want to take is finding out what exactly happened and locating the vulnerability that was exploited. Ask yourself these questions:
Once you figure out what exactly happened, you can continue to recover your website. At this point, you should contact your hosting provider. Your host has dealt with this before and will know how to help with these next steps:
WordPress is a great tool for publishers when used properly and maintained often. However, if you ignore maintaining your WordPress themes and plugins, you could potentially welcome unwanted threats to your site. Keeping your WordPress site secure seems daunting at first, but it’s not that big of a hurdle to overcome. Now that we’ve explored the basics of how the majority of WordPress sites are exploited, you can keep an eye out and know what to look for and what best practices to use on your website.
Have a question for our team or need help with WordPress design and/or development? Check out INN Labs' full services here, join us for one of our weekly Office Hours, or get in touch!
Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: Analytics don’t have to clash with journalistic values. Here’s how the Buffalo News used analytics to reinforce its mission.
The post Want to find time for more enterprise reporting? Dive into analytics. appeared first on Better News.
