Transom→ Stand-Ups (Rerun)

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 …›

Transom→ Fireworks

2021-07-19 I called up the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies out of the blue. I had read that Salt, a school in Portland, Maine, was considering adding a radio track to their longstanding writing and photography tracks. I had no background in documentary rad …›

Transom→ Bittersweet News

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 …›

Transom→ Narrative Justice

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 …›

Transom→ The Kids Will Have Their Say

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 …›

Transom→ How To Build Your Editorial Muscles

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 …›

Transom→ When Anthropology Meets Audio Storytelling

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 …›

Iffy.news→ Vax vs. Vote

2021-06-02 A side-by-side, state-by-state comparison showing vaccination rates closely correlated with Biden-vote percentages. …›

Transom→ Wrangling Stories With A Focus Sentence

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 …›

Transom→ In Focus: Ways To Home In On The Core Of A Story

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 …›

Transom→ Remote Recording: Riverside and Talk Sync

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 …›

Iffy.news→ The United States of Conspiracy

2021-05-18 Americans will believe almost anything. Two decades of polling prove that. No matter how insane the claim, at least 10% and up to 40% of people will say it's true. …›

The ProPublica Nerd Blog - ProPublica→ New: View an Organization’s Employees and Officers on Nonprofit Explorer

2021-05-14 by Andrea Suozzo On Friday, we updated our Nonprofit Explorer database in two big ways. First, we’ve added the ability to view key employees and officers right on an orga …›

Transom→ Celebrating 50 Years of NPR (And The Independent Producers Who Helped Shape Its Sound)

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 …›

Transom→ Tape-Driven Storytelling

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 …›

PressThink→ A current list of my top problems in pressthink, May 2021

2021-05-07 1. We have a two-party system and one of the two is anti-democratic. The Republican Party tried to overturn the results of a free and fair election. When that failed it did not purge the insurrectionists and begin to reform itself; rather, it continued …›

Transom→ Treat an Interview Like a Relationship

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 …›

First Draft→ An introduction to live audio social media and misinformation

2021-04-29 What does the rise of live, audio-based social media mean for identifying and moderating misinformation? We’ve taken a look at the platforms and their moderation policies, and offer some key takeaways for journalists and misinformation researchers. ( …›

Transom→ Dissecting a Good Story, Well Told

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 …›

Transom→ Principios básicos del podcasting, parte 5: volumen para podcasts v. radio

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 …›

PressThink→ If you’re worried that journalists have learned nothing from the Trump years.

2021-03-21 Even after all that has happened from the escalator to the insurrection, you’re worried that the American press has learned nothing from the Trump years. You’re seeing it fall into old patterns. Your frustration is rising, your patience thi …›

PressThink→ Tim Lambert and Scott Blanchard of WITF.org explain why they decided to repeatedly connect local lawmakers to their election-fraud actions

2021-03-21 WITF.org is the public broadcaster in the Harrisburg region of central Pennsylvania. On January 28 the newsroom explained a new policy toward those in public office who spread the election fraud lie and encouraged the January 6 insurrection. The journa …›

Iffy.news→ Mainstream media funds fake news

2021-03-01 When debunkers link to fake-news stories, they do more harm than good. There's a right way and wrong way to cite unreliable sources. Most publishers use the latter. …›

Transom→ Occupational Hazard

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 …›

Transom→ Gas Mask? Check. Bullet Proof Vest? Check…What To Wear When The Reporting Gets Dangerous

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 …›

Transom→ Hexagon Heart

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 …›

Transom→ Eavesdropping On The Insurrection

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 …›

Transom→ Going Narrative

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 …›

Transom→ Perk Up Your Ears

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 …›

Transom→ FRAN

2021-01-12 Backstory In its original form, FRAN was actually a television pilot. When I wrote the pilot, I was living in LA and working at a television production company. However, at the time, I was pretty much exclusively focused on one thing: comedy. Almost ev …›

The ProPublica Nerd Blog - ProPublica→ She Photographed Police Abuse at a 2014 BLM March Then Watched the Image Go Viral During Capitol Riot

2021-01-11 by Lisa Larson-Walker In the midst of Wednesday’s assault on the U.S. Capitol, Twitter user @thejuliacarter gave voice to the outrage many felt at the stark difference be …›

Transom→ Bow Glacier Asserting Its Existence

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 …›

Transom→ How Do You Know a Story is Worthy of a Podcast Series?

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 …›

Transom→ Shure MV7

2020-12-15 A Worthy Successor to the SM7B When recording from home became much more common, even necessary, during the pandemic, the Shure SM7B became a very in-demand microphone. It had already become a favorite of many serious podcasters, largely for the same r …›

Transom→ Show, Don’t Tell

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’ …›

Transom→ Gear Guide for a Lockdown

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. …›

Iffy.news→ Congress’ COVID-Positive Party

2020-11-30 Do partisan beliefs and behaviors affect COVID-19 infection rates? Maybe, at least among members of the U.S. Congress. …›

Transom→ Everybody’s Home

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 …›

Transom→ Nancy Was Here

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 …›