2021-10-19 A reluctant manifesto for the best computers of this moment The most perfect anything I have ever owned is a 2004 PowerBook G4. Its entire chassis is machined from brushed aluminum; even the keyboard is metal, giving each key the perfect key travel, pr …›
2021-10-14 Welcome back to Starting Out, from Transom and me! If this is the first issue you’re reading, I’m Alice, a podcast producer and reporter. In the past few months, a lot of my friends have quit their jobs. Hell, I even did it recently. After pr …›
2021-10-12 Last year, during the pandemic, Ruby Schwartz says she was questioning everything about her identity and whether she should be an audio producer and reporter. On top of that, she was wrestling with a creative lull. Again, it was the pandemic. Anxiety a …›
2021-10-05 I. Pouring foundation One of my most viewed YouTube videos starts with a chattering 808 drum pattern. As the video fades in, the first thing you notice is a recording studio’s wall filled with checkerboarded golds and browns, evoking the basement of …›
2021-09-27 Alix Spiegel is a master of narrative storytelling. Listen to any of the episodes of Invisibilia she hosted or any of the stories she produced for This American Life and, I suspect, you’ll agree. Even back when she was a science reporter for NPR cove …›
2021-09-21 “There’s no such thing as a podcast emergency.” I first read that quote on Twitter a few years ago, thanks to podcast producing icon Kathy Tu. I have worked on about a dozen productions since then and that phrase has helped me breathe through eve …›
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’ …›