My Next Big Thing
This will come as a bit of a surprise, but a week from today I begin a visiting professorship in NYU's journalism department. It's a one-year appointment. Friday was my last day on the air at Martha Radio.
At NYU I'll create a concentration in radio journalism. From scratch.
It's a pretty exciting thing. This coincides with an anniversary: 30 years on the air. I still have my third class radio operator's license from the FCC. Yes, it's framed.
When I first started talking with Brooke Kroeger, the journalism department chair, about the possibility of coming on board, she asked me to write a statement outlining how I'd proceed. What follows is a portion of what I presented to her:
Each year, the Third Coast International Audio Festival in Chicago attracts dozens of aspiring young producers involved in radio projects for organizations such as Blunt Youth Radio in Portland, ME; Youth Radio in Oakland, CA, and Radio Rookies in New York City. They tend to share early memories of growing up with NPR during long family car rides and a more recent fascination with public radio programs that target younger audiences, such as "This American Life" and "The Next Big Thing." They are excited about the medium and the possibility of injecting new life into it. They make me hopeful about radio’s future. I also think there is every reason to believe the Internet will provide expanding opportunities for journalistic audio production.
Recently a vice president at NPR told me that he thinks it is no longer feasible to create new programs for the nationwide system of affiliate stations; instead, he finds himself directing his energies more and more toward advertiser-supported podcasting and indeed discovering there is already a sizable audience for audio content over the web. I myself have come to refer to "the medium formerly known as radio.”
At its founding, NPR was dedicated to the notion that radio journalism is its own discipline, not merely print reportage that happens to take place on the air. It was understood that sound gathering was integral, not incidental, to the process. As a result, you will always get more facts from reading The New York Times, but radio allows you to feel a story as no other medium can.
As NPR became more of a primary news source—around the time of the Persian Gulf War—a large number of print journalists were hired in the belief that they possessed superior reporting chops. Those who espouse radio journalism's unique and special qualities became scarcer. There grew a cultural divide within the institution between news values and radio values.
I believe this is an unnecessary dichotomy, fostered by an educational landscape that offers training either in reporting or in broadcasting, but rarely a substantial experience in both, together. I propose to introduce radio in a way that gives equal emphasis to each word in the term radio journalism.
There are many ways to practice radio journalism. The style that interests me most, and which I believe is the most useful in a teaching environment, is the use of sound-gathering to capture stories as they unfold, where listeners witness events as they happen (rather than hearing after-the-fact narratives). In the truest sense of the word, we should call this documentary. And yet it is a loaded word. As practiced by filmmakers, it often implies a mixture of fact with fudge.
This addresses the question of form. As for content, I return to the idea that radio allows listeners to feel a story the way no other medium can. To that I wish to add the original description of All Things Considered: a radio magazine of the human experience. While it may sound a little grand, it does capture radio's unique strength as a medium. Radio is intimate. It reaches in through your ears, deep into your heart and soul. It encompasses the large and the small, the public demonstration and the quiet personal epiphany.
At NYU I'll create a concentration in radio journalism. From scratch.
It's a pretty exciting thing. This coincides with an anniversary: 30 years on the air. I still have my third class radio operator's license from the FCC. Yes, it's framed.
When I first started talking with Brooke Kroeger, the journalism department chair, about the possibility of coming on board, she asked me to write a statement outlining how I'd proceed. What follows is a portion of what I presented to her:
Each year, the Third Coast International Audio Festival in Chicago attracts dozens of aspiring young producers involved in radio projects for organizations such as Blunt Youth Radio in Portland, ME; Youth Radio in Oakland, CA, and Radio Rookies in New York City. They tend to share early memories of growing up with NPR during long family car rides and a more recent fascination with public radio programs that target younger audiences, such as "This American Life" and "The Next Big Thing." They are excited about the medium and the possibility of injecting new life into it. They make me hopeful about radio’s future. I also think there is every reason to believe the Internet will provide expanding opportunities for journalistic audio production.
Recently a vice president at NPR told me that he thinks it is no longer feasible to create new programs for the nationwide system of affiliate stations; instead, he finds himself directing his energies more and more toward advertiser-supported podcasting and indeed discovering there is already a sizable audience for audio content over the web. I myself have come to refer to "the medium formerly known as radio.”
At its founding, NPR was dedicated to the notion that radio journalism is its own discipline, not merely print reportage that happens to take place on the air. It was understood that sound gathering was integral, not incidental, to the process. As a result, you will always get more facts from reading The New York Times, but radio allows you to feel a story as no other medium can.
As NPR became more of a primary news source—around the time of the Persian Gulf War—a large number of print journalists were hired in the belief that they possessed superior reporting chops. Those who espouse radio journalism's unique and special qualities became scarcer. There grew a cultural divide within the institution between news values and radio values.
I believe this is an unnecessary dichotomy, fostered by an educational landscape that offers training either in reporting or in broadcasting, but rarely a substantial experience in both, together. I propose to introduce radio in a way that gives equal emphasis to each word in the term radio journalism.
There are many ways to practice radio journalism. The style that interests me most, and which I believe is the most useful in a teaching environment, is the use of sound-gathering to capture stories as they unfold, where listeners witness events as they happen (rather than hearing after-the-fact narratives). In the truest sense of the word, we should call this documentary. And yet it is a loaded word. As practiced by filmmakers, it often implies a mixture of fact with fudge.
This addresses the question of form. As for content, I return to the idea that radio allows listeners to feel a story the way no other medium can. To that I wish to add the original description of All Things Considered: a radio magazine of the human experience. While it may sound a little grand, it does capture radio's unique strength as a medium. Radio is intimate. It reaches in through your ears, deep into your heart and soul. It encompasses the large and the small, the public demonstration and the quiet personal epiphany.
posted by DO at 2:52 PM
4 Comments:
I envy your students! Congrats.
Mazel tov, Professor Olsher! That sounds like a grand and exciting (ad)venture, one that'll let you truly make a difference in the medium.
I was so excited to read about this. I hope we have the opportunity to meet as I too work at NYU! I hope your teaching experience is as gratifying for you as it will be for your students.
Wow, sounds like an interesting position and a welcome change from discussions of wallpaper and mulch (I don't know if you actually had such discussions; most of the Martha subject matter was alien enough to keep me from listening). I got an FCC third class license even longer ago, in 1969 in order to work at WKCR.
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