The ProPublica Nerd Blog - ProPublica→ Meet the Baconator

2020-10-02 by Frank Sharpe As a member of the team responsible for keeping ProPublica’s website online, there were times when I wished our site were static. Static sites have a simp …›

Transom→ A Night of Ear Candy – Sam Harnett and Chris Hoff

2020-09-29 For decades, one of the downsides to radio was that it ephemeral. Something is broadcast and then it’s gone — lost to the ether. The internet changed that, of course. Now, a great program or live public event can be archived after it’s ai …›

Transom→ Stephanie Foo, 2020

2020-09-22 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 Associatio …›

Transom→ The Intersection of Folklore, Radio Journalism, and a Pear

2020-09-15 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 …›

Transom→ Lewis Raven Wallace

2020-09-04 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 “impartialit …›

Transom→ The Squirm Test

2020-08-31 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 dow …›

Transom→ Effective Sound Effects

2020-08-18 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 …›

Transom→ RØDECaster Pro

2020-08-11 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 S …›

Transom→ Pandemic Diary

2020-08-03 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 …›

Transom→ Sound Art Meets Poetry Meets Cicadas

2020-07-20 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 …›

Transom→ Principios básicos del podcasting, parte 4: alojamiento y distribución

2020-07-07 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 …›

Transom→ Walking In The Margins Of Journalism Ethics

2020-07-07 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 t …›

Transom→ Recording Cellular Phone Calls

2020-07-02 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 …›

Transom→ Leave In The Question

2020-06-23 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 …›

Transom→ Principios básicos del podcasting, parte 3: niveles de audio y procesamiento

2020-06-16 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: es …›

Transom→ A Feast For Your Ears

2020-06-09 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 sa …›

Transom→ Recording Kit Tune Up

2020-06-03 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, o …›

Transom→ The Recesses Of Jay’s Mind

2020-05-26 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. …›

Transom→ Pandemic ER: Notes From A Nurse In Queens – The Hour

2020-05-19 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 Qu …›

Transom→ AfroQueer And Podcasting In Kenya

2020-05-12 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&# …›

Transom→ Our Show – The Hour

2020-05-01 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 volunt …›

Transom→ What Do You Stand For?

2020-04-28 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 …›

Transom→ Zencastr

2020-04-25 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 r …›

Transom→ Gathering Scene Tape While Reporting From A Closet

2020-04-14 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 i …›

Transom→ Take A Walk With Your Mic

2020-03-31 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 stro …›

Transom→ Pandemic ER: Notes From A Nurse In Queens

2020-03-29 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 e …›

Transom→ Our Show

2020-03-25 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, bu …›

Transom→ Grabaciones durante la pandemia del coronavirus

2020-03-23 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 n …›

AIR→ A Word from AIR and COVID-19 Resources for freelancers

2020-03-13 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 fri …›

INN Labs→ Pym.js Embeds version 1.3.2.3: Now with AMP ⚡️ support!

2020-03-06 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 p …›

AIR→ World Radio Day Discounted Membership

2020-02-13 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.   …›

AIR→ Introducing AIR’s new Engagement Strategist

2020-02-11 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 ear …›

RadioPublic→ Gain: How James launched and promotes Filter Stories

2020-02-07 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. …›

RadioPublic→ Audience growth isn’t an accident: Your podcast needs a web strategy

2020-01-31 The new wave of podcast audience development is through digital strategy. Watch our full twelve-part video series on web strategy for your podcast on Youtube. Stop us if you’ve heard this one before: Gain listeners by marketing your podcast. Your po …›

RadioPublic→ Build every part of your website to bring in new podcast listeners

2020-01-31 The new wave of podcast audience development is through digital strategy. Watch our full twelve-part video series on web strategy for your podcast on Youtube. Every web strategy begins with a podcast website. Why? It’s a space you own and operate yo …›

RadioPublic→ Communicating with your podcast listeners beyond audio

2020-01-31 The new wave of podcast audience development is through digital strategy. Watch our full twelve-part video series on web strategy for your podcast on Youtube. Speaking to your podcast audience is a given: you’re talking to them directly each and eve …›

RadioPublic→ An introduction to Google Analytics events found in RadioPublic Podsites

2020-01-27 Better understanding how people are interacting with your podcast website can help you narrow in on audience development and target your digital ad spend more effectively. There are four main event categories to pay attention to in your RadioPublic Po …›