Author: EJohnson

Announcement: 

First Dollars & Sense meeting is tomorrow.

Discussion:

We’ll talk about any hurdles or insights that came up during the making of your podcasts and listen to a number of them.

Reminders:

Pitches for Assignment #2, a 5-minute news radio feature (a “wrap”), will be due on Monday, Sept. 23. Pitches should be posted on the blog by class time. Full details on assignment here.

Class discussion:

We’ll listen to a handful of your practice exercises from last week, and address any problems that came up or lessons learned. (Issues with sound quality, for instance, or making sure you intentionally record both questions and answers so you have quality sound for both, sitting close to your subject, finding a place to rest your elbow so your arm doesn’t get tired and you don’t have to change hands, creating handling noise, etc.)

Upcoming dates:

• Class this coming Monday, Sept. 16, will be devoted to editing and production on your podcasts, recording your host intros and outros, equipment returns and checkouts, and/or time spent reporting, if that’s how it can best be used.
  (Note: We have a makeshift studio in a room on this floor that I can give you access to, where you can record directly onto the computer, which is set up with a mic. If you plan to record at home, make sure you’re recording in a location that is as soundproofed as possible, like under a blanket or in a closet, or at the very least a room with carpeting and the air conditioning switched off.)
• Completed podcast due by class time on Wednesday, Sept. 18.
• Pitches for Assignment #2, a 5-minute news radio feature (a “wrap”), will be due on Monday, Sept. 23. Pitches should be posted on the blog by class time.

A wrap is a scripted radio piece that weaves together natural sounds, interview clips (known as “actualities”), and reporter narration to tell a story. The trick is to choose your actualities carefully to get the most memorable, interesting, powerful, or colorful sound bites possible, leaving the bare facts and background info for your narration. In your narration, you’ll write in and out of the actualities and provide any context that is necessary to help the story make sense. The natural sounds evoke a sense of scene and place. It’s also the reporter’s responsibility to script an introduction for the host to read.

Examples of wraps:

Fusion restaurant in Brooklyn

Punk in Aceh

When brainstorming pitch ideas, ask yourself these questions:

Does this story have news value? (What makes a story newsworthy?)

Is there potential for scene-setting natural sounds? (If the whole thing takes place in an office, the sound will not be very compelling.)

Can I confirm that I will have access in order to do the story?

Here is a sample script for reference: Aceh Punks

In-class practice assignment, due by class time Wednesday (9/11) next week:

Partner up and record brief interviews, taking turns asking each other to tell a funny or interesting story you don’t mind sharing with the class. It can be between three to five minutes. Find a quiet place to record. Ask open-ended questions to get the best responses. (“Tell me about a time when you did something really spontaneous.” “What’s the craziest thing that ever happened to you in New York?” etc.) Feel free to jump in to get more details or provide a prompt. (“What did the guy look like?” “So you were stranded at a gas station in New Jersey…” You can cut out these little interruptions when you edit.

Before you put the recorder down, record yourself introducing yourself and your guest. Something like: “Hello listeners! I’m your host ___ ____ and I’m here with ___ _____, who’s going to tell us a story about _____.” Record a brief outro as well. “Thanks for listening! This has been a Baruch College production.” (Or however you’d like to sign off.)

Next, import the audio file into Audacity and edit it in the same way you will edit your first full-length podcasting assignment. By that I mean very little major editing is required for this—mostly just some trimming and tightening to make it flow well. You can get rid of ums, long pauses, tripped-over words, and tangents to keep the story moving—but make sure not to cut things too aggressively! This may be simple and straightforward editing, but it requires you to be exact and precise, so you’ll want to zoom in close on the waveform when you make any cuts. You want it to sound natural. Let the story breathe. (I mean this literally as well… careful not to cut any breaths too short! It’s jarring to the ear.)

Find and download some music that works well to introduce your story by setting the right tone. This can also be used as the outro music. Let the intro music fade down after you finish the host intro and the story begins. Let it fade up as you are about to give your outro.

Export and post it on SoundCloud. From there, embed it into a post on the blog. You’ll have until class time Wednesday next week to complete this assignment. Sound resources:

https://freesound.org
http://soundbible.com
https://www.audioblocks.com
http://freemusicarchive.org
https://www.youtube.com/audiolibrary/music
http://dig.ccmixter.org

Audacity shortcuts to know:

Play/pause: space bar
Split track: Command I
Zoom in: Command 1
Zoom out: Command 3

In the tool bar, this is the selection tool that allows you to click and highlight and delete sections of track or select a spot where you want to split it:

And this is the tool that allows you to move sections of track:

And this is the one that lets youadjust the volume, basically the same way the pen tool works in Premiere:

Podcasting and Radio News Syllabus

Introductions

I’m Professor Emily Johnson. I’m a multimedia journalist, and I’ve done quite a bit of radio as a freelancer: emilyjreports.com

I’ve also worked as a producer on the Tiny Spark podcast (booking guests, researching and recording interviews), and have just signed on to work as a reporter and producer for an upcoming podcast with Foreign Policy about climate change.

What podcasts do you listen to and why?

What is a podcast?

The origin of the word: iPod + Broadcast = Podcast

Most radio news these days is available as a podcast, but not all podcasts are radio.

A podcast, simply, is a piece of audio storytelling that you can stream or download and listen to on one of your devices. Often they come in a series of episodes that you can subscribe to. At first, podcasts tended to be simply the downloadable versions of radio programs so people could listen to them at their leisure if they missed them when they were on air. But in the last five years the format has really taken off and become a massive industry unto itself.

One of the pretty great things about podcasts is that there’s a low barrier to getting in on the podcasting game: anyone with a decent audio recorder and a laptop can make one and self-publish it pretty easily. But news publications and radio programs with more resources are also pouring money into podcasting right now, and the results are pretty inspiring: every now and then something comes out that sort of reinvents the form and show how much you can do with this kind of storytelling.

This also means that, despite the struggles that many traditional media publications have faced in recent years, there are a lot of jobs for audio producers and reporters these days.

From Forbes:

Additional evidence for the growing popularity of podcasts is the fact that major legacy media organizations such as New York Times and Wall Street Journal and newer digital media organizations such as Slate and Buzzfeed are all heavily investing in podcasting.

From Business Insider:

But the format got a big boost in 2014 with the first season of Sarah Koenig’s show, “Serial,” which reached 5 million downloads faster than any other podcast before it. Now everyone from Snooki to Goldman Sachs has a podcast, and major media companies like HBO and the BBC are upping the game by bringing big budgets and talent to the format. 

From WSJ:

The number of podcast jobs in New York City rose 33% in 2017 from two years earlier, according to a report from the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment out Monday.

Programs produced by the four largest NYC-based podcasting networks—WNYC, Gimlet, Slate/Panoply and Midroll—saw 1.3 billion downloads in 2016, the report said. That is up sharply from an annual average of 199 million downloads between 2013 and 2015. The top four NYC-based networks produce almost 200 podcasts, employ nearly 600, and occupy nearly 140,000 square feet of office space.

The report called the New York the “podcasting capital” of the U.S.

Though podcasts are provided free to the public, the industry has been successful in raking in earnings from advertising. According to research firm Bridge Ratings, podcast advertising grew 48% between 2015 and 2016, when podcast ad revenue was about $167 million. Bridge Ratings expects total podcast advertisements to bring in revenue of nearly $250 million by the end of 2017 and to hit $395 million by 2020.

Spotify recently acquired Gimlet Media for $230 million.

Some important podcasts to know:

Serial:

A podcast from the creators of This American Life, hosted by Sarah Koenig. Serial unfolded one story – a true story – over the course of a whole season. The show followed the plot and characters wherever they led, through many surprising twists and turns. 

S-Town:

“The successor to Serial: This nonfiction take on southern Gothic is an unambiguous achievement. Novelistic, ambitious, and breathtaking in its attempt to capture the sum of a single person’s life, S-Town represents a high watermark for an ecosystem already bustling with creativity. That isn’t to say it’s perfect, though. Since S-Town dropped in its entirety in March, a growing body of criticism has targeted the show’s absence of any substantial consideration of race and legacy and the shadows they cast over the community depicted in host Brian Reed’s reporting. The existence of this criticism serves to further elevate the show’s importance to the form: It’s a project that endeavors to grapple with big ideas, only to trigger equally big ones in its wake.”

Additionally, some argued that it was ethically ambiguous. (And yes, someone made a podcast episode about the podcast.)

This American Life:

“Including a piece from This American Life on a list of best podcast episodes is like including the Beatles on a list of the greatest rock bands of all time. It’s a little obvious, but you have to do it anyway. This American Life perfected the art of audio storytelling back before “podcast” was a word in the general conscious, and they remain the most consistent masters of the artform. Their unique sense of balance and fairness was on full display in this year’s “I Thought I Knew You”, which ended up being largely about the Trump phenomenon, and how his supporters don’t fit into anybody’s neat boxes. Not yours. Not ours. Not even their own.”

The Daily:

“This podcast by the New York Times is more than a solid morning-news digest — it’s a huge step forward for the packaging and delivery of news itself. The Daily is a revelation in form and ambition; not only do Michael Barbaro and his team execute emotionally intelligent pieces of audio-first journalism that seize a given moment, they also dare to pepper their dispatches with unforgettable constructions of tape. Two examples stand out in particular: the April 6, 2017 edition that offered unparalleled insight into a meeting between President Trump and Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Glenn Thrush, and the May 26, 2017 edition that closely followed one case of assisted suicide in Canada.”

So far, these are examples of journalistic podcasts with scripting, natural sound, and careful narrative structure. But there are many other kinds of podcasts. Kind of like how there’s an app for everything, these days there’s a podcast for everything, no matter how niche.

• There has been a wave of fiction podcasts. A couple good ones to know: Limetown, “from New York-based writers Skip Bronkie and Zack Akers, which has been billed as The X-Files-meets-Serial” and Welcome to Night Vale, a local news radio show for a fictional town where spooky things keep happening.
• TV podcasts: Podcasts about popular, long-completed TV series like The Gilmore Girls and The West Wing, as well as podcasts about reality TV shows. (There’s an entire, thriving subgenre of Bachelor-related podcasts.) These tend to be interview-based, unscripted, and minimally edited.
• Comedy podcasts like 2 Dope Queens:
  The premise is simple: Phoebe Robinson and Jessica Williams are friends who riff about their lives and host as several stand-ups deliver ten-minute sets. But this isn’t just a showcase for up-and-coming comics. Robinson and Williams’s hilarious conversations about their experiences as young black women living in New York City — which spans hair journeys, crushes on celebrities (“Yes” to the Rock, “Eh” to Lenny Kravitz), and opinions of Beyoncé and U2 concerts — is a refreshing departure from the white-male-dominated landscape of comedy. Their choice to mainly feature comics that happen to be women and people of color only solidifies their place as where to go to hear new, different, and, most important, uproariously funny voices.
• Everything else from a podcast that helps you fall asleep (Sleep With Me) to one for people who are stressed about Trump featuring four former Obama aides (Pod Save America) to one where each episode is dedicated to deconstructing a popular song (Song Exploder) to a documentary-style one about raising a transgender daughter (How To Be a Girl) to an audio game show (Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!) to a discussion of love, sex, and dating (Savage Lovecast). Some podcasts tend to be pretty long, like the Joe Rogan Experience,which sometimes goes on for hours, but there are quite a few that are on the shorter side: data suggests that the optimal length for a podcast these days is about 20 minutes, which is the length of the average American’s commute. An example of an even shorter one: Spark Live, where everyday people tell the story of the most astonishing day of their lives, live, at five minutes maximum. “The results have the intensity of crafted short stories.”

Resources

The Public Radio NYC Google group. Let me know if you would like to be added. (Be warned… you’ll get a LOT of emails, but you have the option to have them all bundled into one email a day.)

Assignment 

Find a podcast that you think is interesting and listen to at least two episodes. Write a short blog post introducing that podcast to the class: Who is this podcast intended for? What style/format is it in (scripted, host interview, a combination, etc.)? What kind of advertising does it feature, and how is it distributed? How popular is it? Has it made waves, either positive or negative? What would be a good episode to start with, and why?