When reading Bill McKibbon's piece, "The Pen is Easier than the Mic" (http://www.transom.org/tools/beginnings/2006/200602_bill_mckibben/), I could relate to every example he was sharing with his audience about how difficult it is to "record an interview" versus "taking interview notes." In my current position, I directed a 13-minute video intended to explain and promote a new health management initiative that the State of Ohio launched in November 2007. Within the video, we included four vignettes of real-life state employees. We filmed the interviews over two separate days, and I think we were faced with every distraction possible. Even though we only included four veignettes, I interviewed eleven employees to ensure that we had enough quality raw footage to include in the final product.

While I was interviewing the employees, I was faced with a difficult balance of keeping them engaged, making them feel at ease (even though they were surrounded by strangers and tons of video recording equipment), and being able to get those great soundbites from them about their story that I knew would translate well into video. Not to mention, we were faced with scorching heat (it was July and August), sweat in eyes, cicadas singing in the background, torrential downpours (and yes, we wanted to get a lot of shots outside).

I was mentally and physically exhausted after each day of shooting, but the end result was awesome! Does anyone else have a story to share where the interview was being video/audio recorded, but you wished it was just your good 'ol "normal" interview in which you just captured your notes on paper?

G. Feldmann, 1/27/08

I honestly do not have any exciting stories to share, but I did want to write that I really enjoyed reading this piece. Having minimal experience in the production arena of the journalism world, the reading provided great insight into a few of the little details that go into producing a radio piece vs. a written story/article. I’ve never had to produce a piece for radio, and he hit on areas that sound not-so-obvious at the beginning but are those “A-ha!” moments once the writing and editing begin. I imagine these moments are the ones you only need to learn once that will stick with you as you progress in your career.

Just a few of the points he brought up that caught my attention:

1) The physical voice linking the piece together rather than the authorial voice: Another piece of the puzzle that must come together to capture the listener (tone, speed, feeling, etc)

2) The use of quotes in radio vs. in writing: Disjointed voices from person to person with 1-2 sentence quotes

3) "Illustrations" with music rather than images: Visuals can have such a powerful impact on an audience. I would imagine trying to transport a listener to an environment without the use of visuals can be difficult through voice and music

- Christie O'Connor 1/28

This article really opened my eyes to the added difficulties that coincide with writing for radio instead for printed articles.  I am one of the few people in the class with no journalism experience, and I never considered the additional hurdles to tying together a good radio piece.  Keeping the subject entertained, maintaining technical equipment, and catering to time parameters all seem to present stressful limits to completing a piece.  In writing an article for print, it appears easy to paraphrase comments to accommodate limited writing space, but as McKibben mentioned, shortening a radio interview cannot provide the same convenient transition.

Matt McQuade 1/28   

After this week's readings I took a spin through the iTunes podcast directory for news and political content, and I have to admit: I don't really want to listen to a lot of what's out there. NBC is posting its entire nightly broadcast -- NOT something I want to dedicate space to on my computer. ABC does a better job by creating an actual web cast.

Still a lot of what's on the nightly news, but I could easily skip to the next story if I wanted, and it wasn't just a rehash of the broadcast edition. They take 2 minutes to talk about the hottest stories coming up in Google search. As for audio, well as soon as it sounds like talking heads (which is what many of the political roundups seem to consist of), I'm clicking "next."

This made me appreciate Ira Glass's series on radio storytelling all the more. In a way, I think that audio on the web seems like one of the most difficult techniques (especially for print newsrooms) to execute. You don't have pictures. You can't simply read your print story. You have to find compelling questions and "Big Ideas," paint vivid pictures and draw out your characters with their voices and quotes. These are all essential to good print reporting, too. But without the benefit of b-matter and transitionary text, good radio reporting boils a story down to its essence. I was also encouraged to be reminded by him (and John Solomon) all that goes into the end result. A lot of question and a lot of experimentation.

"But to get that nice answer on tape - to get so lucky - I had to try dozens of different things during the interview. I threw out all sorts of half-baked questions and speculations and proddings. To give you a sense of just how far-ranging and ill-conceived some of these are, I put together this montage of all the Big Idea questions that went nowhere in that one hour interview."

-- Amanda, 1.29.08

I have no experience with journalism (print or media) and have found it challenging to get good audio for my piece.  I went to the settlement house last week and had some idea of what i wanted.  Once we got going I felt pretty good because I thought I was getting the audio that I wanted (the director reading from a script) to use.  When I went back and listened what was written reads well but doesn't sound good as an audio clip.  I'm definitely going to read the script to myself and record it before taping it again.  The other challenge that I'm having is envisioning the fit between my photos and the script.  I definitely need some more time to play around until I get a better feel for how to do this.

-- Sarah C.