Guess I Gotta Write This Goddamn Diversity Article Again I’m writing this article for the third goddamn time. The first time was ten years ago, when I first entered an overwhelmingly old and white field. So I wrote an article for the Association of Independents in Radio (AIR) about how to diversify audio. Five years […]
The post Stephanie Foo, 2020 appeared first on Transom.
Rebecca Nolan arrived at the Transom Story Workshop in the spring of 2019 as a folklorist. “A quasi-folklorist,” she demurs. Regardless, Rebecca earned a degree in folklore from Memorial University of Newfoundland in Canada in 2017, but she wanted try radio journalism because she had fallen in love with interviewing. “The art of it, […]
The post The Intersection of Folklore, Radio Journalism, and a Pear appeared first on Transom.
Confronting Privilege and Power in Storytelling I host a podcast about the history of “objectivity” in U.S. journalism, which begins with the story of my experience being fired from public radio for purportedly violating standards of “impartiality” in early 2017, just after Trump took office. I co-teach a podcasting workshop called “Movement Podcasting” for social […]
The post Lewis Raven Wallace appeared first on Transom.
Some years ago, while I was working on an audio tour about rural Maine, I interviewed a beaver trapper who lived alone in the western part of the state. Inside his house there were dead beavers on the floor, dead beavers hanging on the wall heading down into the basement, and dead beaver smell permeating […]
The post The Squirm Test appeared first on Transom.
Ben Naddaff-Hafrey and I were nerding out about all things radio and podcasting when I interviewed him recently. As we talked, he bowled me over with a lovely quote he remembered about the power of audio written in the 1930’s: “The ear is half poet. It creates and believes all at once.” Ben’s memory of […]
The post Effective Sound Effects appeared first on Transom.
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, […]
The post RØDECaster Pro appeared first on Transom.
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 […]
The post Leave In The Question appeared first on Transom.
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 […]
The post Recording Kit Tune Up appeared first on Transom.
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 […]
The post Grabaciones durante la pandemia del coronavirus appeared first on Transom.
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.
Welcome to Gain, an interview series where we ask podcasters about the backstories of the great work they’re creating.
Today, we’re speaking with James Harper, creator and host of Filter Stories, a documentary-style podcast about coffee and people. The podcast launched in August 2018 and is based in Germany (and wherever good coffee stories can be found).
I’ve always loved stories, and have been telling them since I was a kid growing up in Australia.
Life eventually brought me to Berlin where I worked for a prestigious coffee roaster. I soon realised everyone around me was deeply ignorant about this product. And yet these are the same people that are informing coffee drinkers.
So, I bought microphones, a plane ticket to Guatemala and began a quest to discover the truth. I quickly realised how coffee was intersecting with many challenges we’re grappling with today as a society – illegal migration, climate change, war.
Filter Stories became a documentary that sheds light on these links through personal stories in faraway places and how we coffee drinkers can change the world by selecting our coffees more conscientiously.
I chose the name Filter Stories because each episode is as long as it takes you to enjoy a cup of filter coffee.
I met a man in Berlin who shared his plans for his shelved podcast project. Something lit up inside of me – this podcast is what I needed to do. ‘I hope you don’t mind’, I said, ‘but I’m going to steal your idea’, to which he replied, ‘Go for it!’
I have remained in touch and he’s a big fan of the show, although his vision was quite different from my own (less story, more interview, nowhere near as politically charged as Filter Stories). The last time we spoke I leaned on him for editorial advice on the Tito episode. He was enthralled – and admitted he choked up at the point in the story where Tito’s parents pass away.
So many of my listeners are actually people who discovered Filter Stories through my storytelling evenings and crowdfund projects. They are not podcast listeners, but love the show, so I needed a place for them to play episodes outside of podcast player apps. (Related: the people I interview for the show also have rarely listened to a podcast before, and I describe what I’m doing as “a documentary without the visuals.”)
Podsites does a great job of showcasing episodes with an intuitive player and helps me focus on creating stories.
I will often post on social media (Instagram, etc.) where I have thousands of followers to let them know that a new episode has dropped. I try to take photographs as I travel for interviews, but it’s sometimes challenging to include it with a tight schedule traveling in a foreign country. Once a month or so, I send a newsletter to my subscribers.
Filter Stories is also quite a novelty in the coffee world! There are many media outlets in the coffee world, starved of interesting content, so when a podcast comes along with gripping stories, they jump on the chance to feature it in their news round-ups. Initially, I built connections and trust by interviewing them when searching for story leads. For example, I received media coverage from Daily Coffee News when I started the show, and regularly feature episodes as the basis of an article.
After a while, Filter Stories itself becomes embedded in the media landscape and I do cross-promotional features. Nowadays, it’s less about promoting the show itself and more about advocating for change in the coffee industry.
The series “Is your coffee building Trump’s Wall?”
I spent a month in El Salvador last year and created a series that explored the history of El Salvador. It began as a relatively equal society, but once coffee enters the picture, the country brutally massacres indigenous Salvadorans and eventually slides to civil war and mass migration to the USA.
The story helped me unearth the plight of the most neglected people in the coffee world and led to the launch of a campaign to help their situation.
It’s always tough to describe a peculiar podcast like this in a way that compels Joe Bloggs to give it a chance.
I’ve learned the best thing is not to tell, but to show by giving them story teasers.
For example, for the episode Lemons and Berries, I’d say:
Martin is the best barista in Kenya and dreams of opening his own cafe. But he can’t. Kenyans don’t drink coffee.
However, Martin’s got a crazy plan: he’s going to win the World Barista Championships to bring fame and glory to his country’s coffee.
But he’s all alone and up against the richest teams in the world. In the episode, I follow Martin for three years as he tries to achieve the impossible.
I imagine them as busy people, queueing for their coffee in the morning before heading into the office for a busy day.
I work very hard to pace the episode and unpack the story in such a way that is easy to follow. Things will come up during their commute that will remove their attention so it’s my job to signpost often so they can quickly slip back into the story.
Many of my listeners are not native English speakers, so I deliberately talk a little slower and enunciate clearly.
I also want this podcast to be accessible and interesting to everyone, especially those who don’t drink coffee. I keep the content focused on people, life journeys, broad societal trends. And I think it’s been working because a listener told me last week that, while she doesn’t drink coffee, after enjoying Filter Stories for so long she finds herself exploring the coffee growing world every time she travels to a coffee growing country.
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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!
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