2021-09-16 Meandering musings on audio consumption I. Recently I was listening to the podcast It’s Been a Minute with Sam Sanders, enjoying an episode about monoculture, specifically regarding the Olympics, and (separately) the Jennifer Lopez / Ben Afflec …›
2021-09-14 There’s an illustration I’m sure you’ve seen. Look at it one way and you’ll see an older woman in a veil. Look at the same drawing a while longer and you see a younger woman wearing a hat with a feather plume. Same picture, different image. …›
2021-09-09 Welcome back y’all! Or welcome period, if this is your first issue. To catch you up, Starting Out is a partnership between me (Hi! I’m Alice!) and the folks at Transom. We’re glad you’re here! If you frequent a certain corner o …›
2021-09-06 Audio editing is a really weird job. You spend hours staring at a computer, sliding around pictures of soundwaves — it can be hard on your eyes — and your attention is often consumed by the absurd, like “why doesn’t this person ever say …›
2021-08-31 This is true: I was so smitten by a story from the Kitchen Sisters airing on NPR’s All Things Considered, I brought my radio into the bathroom so I could shower and listen and get to where I needed to be that afternoon. I got delayed briefly because …›
2021-08-24 Loudness Loudness is a helpful technology for any audio storyteller. It can help you balance voices to each other, know that your podcast will sound consistent from one episode to the next, or meet a specification set by a distribution platform. When t …›
2021-08-17 It’s hard to imagine an experienced storyteller like Jonathan Goldstein feeling anxious about writing and putting a story together. But, he says the anxiety is always there. Ever since he was a kid and he had a story from school to tell his parents, …›
2021-08-12 Hiya! Welcome to Starting Out, a newsletter for people entering into the audio industry. I’m Alice, a podcast producer/reporter and former intern. I’m thrilled to partner with Transom on this project. They are the gold standard in train …›
2021-08-02 I thought the whole thing was kinda strange. It was some years ago. I was working with a producer and a reporter on a collaboration between the BBC and Marketplace. We were reporting on the Brazilian economy. And, we were about to interview an expert o …›
2021-07-08 Changes at Transom After so many years helping to steer the ship, Samantha Broun and Rob Rosenthal are leaving Transom to work on exciting new projects. At Transom, we’re all about providing people with the tools and encouragement to tell t …›
2021-07-05 What’s the truest form of journalism? “Letting others speak their own truth… Give them their voice. Letting them speak from their heart… It actually conveys a truer sense of what you’re trying to get the audience to hear in a more pure fo …›
2021-06-22 Some years ago, I worked with Blunt Youth Radio in Portland, Maine. It was incredibly rewarding. The young people I spent time with were grateful an adult cared enough to hand them a microphone — especially because they were so curious and had so muc …›
2021-06-17 By the time I left The New York Times, I had been there 18 years and had worked as an editor and a reporter. I’d been dissatisfied and yearning for a change for a while. I wanted to get into podcasting, but I wasn’t sure I had the chops to work in …›
2021-06-08 The other day, I started listening to Stay Away From Matthew MaGill from Pineapple Street Studios. I’m very intrigued by it. Eric Mennel, the reporter and producer, is a clear and engaging guide to what appears to be a strange story about a huckster …›
2021-05-25 Starting a story when you’re not sure what’s at the heart of it can be tricky. But there are a couple of techniques I’ve used with students over the years that can help focus a story and center on what it’s all about. You can tr …›
2021-05-25 There’s a risk when you write a story — lack of focus. No center. I’m sure you’ve heard stories like this. It’s like someone let a horse out of the paddock and it’s running all over the place. You can’t tell where it’s going or when it …›
2021-05-18 The COVID-19 crisis forced a number of dramatic changes in the ways that interviews are conducted. We explored different approaches earlier in the pandemic, including looking at some specific programs, such as Zencastr, and hardware, like the Rode Rode …›
2021-05-13 For 50 years now, NPR has steered toward the goal — and remarkable vision — of an all-embracing, choral representation of America. It is a daunting task and requires a diversified team to pull off. In the language of the original enabling legislati …›
2021-05-11 There’s research that indicates people form their musical tastes when they’re young. Songs and bands that you liked as a teen will stay with you and, typically, remain your favorites as you age. That doesn’t mean taste remains static, it just mea …›
2021-05-04 Anna Sale’s Manifesto for Interviewing People About Hard Things When we started Death, Sex & Money at WNYC in 2014, the idea was pretty simple: to create a place for conversation about what really made up the details of our lives but what I found …›
2021-04-27 Sometimes I’ll call another producer and I’ll say, “Hey, I can’t quite figure out what to do in order to… ” And they might respond and say, “Well, did you hear the latest episode of such-and-such podcast where they did this thing wher …›
2021-04-20 Este artículo nació en 2016, con un email a la lista de distribución de AIR. Había muchas preguntas sobre niveles de volumen para podcasts y para radio, así que una noche me senté mientras me preparaba para una mudanza de Mineápolis a Washington …›
2021-02-23 What to Pack I used to think I carried a lot of radio gear. Going out to any interview I’d bring a backpack filled with headphones, a recorder, couple of mics, spare batteries. The usual. These days I’d do anything for that light load. Starting las …›
2021-02-16 Over the last year, Casey Martin has reported from the front lines in Seattle. What he’s seen is crazy, he says. First the pandemic. Then the occupation of several blocks of the city in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. And now, the far-right prot …›
2021-02-09 THE (WAY) BACK STORY I’ve been working with audio for close to 50 years, so it feels like almost my entire life. I began at my college radio station, then later, in NYC, I fell in with a little crowd that included Jay Allison, Karen Frillman, Lou Gia …›
2021-02-02 The obvious, stand-out aspect of this story is the tape. It’s absolutely stunning. Micah Loewinger produced this story for On the Media (OTM) about the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol building on January 6th of this year. Micah logged into a public …›
2021-01-26 Eight Axioms of Semi-Efficient Narrative Production Believe me. I get it. Narrative can be intimidating. And expensive. We listen to our favorite podcasts and we hear reporters talking about the years they spent chasing down a story. We listen in as th …›
2021-01-15 One of my favorite things about podcasting is that it reminds me of community radio. These are stations where the door is wide open; everyone is welcome to enroll in training and get on the air. I think of community stations as a kind of “electronic …›
2021-01-05 Some years ago, I was walking through Government Center in Boston. I wasn’t really paying attention to where I was going when I heard music — timed with my footsteps. I looked down and discovered I’d walked into a sound art installation. Some …›
2020-12-22 If only there was some magical equation for figuring out if the story idea you have equals a podcast series. Something like: Characters + Tension + Surprise + Date Peg + Narrative + Social Issue = 7-part series Wouldn’t that be handy? Unfortunately i …›
2020-12-08 Sometimes I’ll slap myself on the forehead and say, “Oh right! Don’t forget to do that when I write!” It’s for that very reason we’re dusting off this old episode of HowSound from 2012 with Brian Reed about the writing maxim “Show, don’ …›
2020-12-01 2020’s holiday season, like the rest of the year, is certainly unlike any other in memory. Economic hardships, and changes in work processes due to safety concerns will make many people’s year-end purchasing plans dramatically different. …›
2020-11-26 David Greenberger The process for working on Everybody’s Home was similar to what Tyson and I had been doing over the course of about a hundred pieces that we co-wrote for three CDs with the ensemble Prime Lens (My Thoughts Approximately (2017), It H …›
2020-11-24 I went to high school in the 1970s at a time when the queer community was marginalized — to say the least. In fact, I won’t say the least. It was dangerous for gays and lesbians and trans people then. I grew up on Cape Cod a culturally con …›
2020-11-17 The Fall 2020 Transom Story Mentorship students on Zoom with Rob Rosenthal and special guest Shereen Marisol Meraji. About Rob Rosenthal, Lead Instructor Rob Rosenthal is an independent producer and a teacher. He’s the host for the HowSound podcast o …›
2020-11-10 If you were to ask me, “Do you have a copy of Thoreau’s book Cape Cod?” I’d say yes, and immediately find it among my pile of books in the Cape Cod section of my collection. Or, if you were to ask, “Can we listen to that Rahsaan Kirk record y …›
2020-10-27 The longer I do this, the more I think the best audio storytelling is about the writing. Yes, of course, there has to be a story there in the first place. Yes, you have to interview well. Yes, you have to record well. Yes, a lot relies on the character …›