Hi Julie,

As another of the international producers at this year's conference, I'd have to agree. And in actual fact, my colleague Fiona Croall and I were discussing what kind of a session could address this debate at next year's event. I don't deny that there was a lot of very powerful and inspirational story-telling in the material featured but much of it did seem to follow this theme of social change and consequent self promotion.

As an international festival, I'd love to see an international voice on every panel next year, representatives from the UK, Australia, NZ, South Africa and your near neighbours in Canada. All of these countries have strong track records in public broadcasting and would throw a different light onto the many excellent debates that you stage. As a Scot, I learn so much from listening to the North Americans, but I know there are many insights that the North Americans can be learning from us. Let's give a stage to that dialogue!

For me, the highlight was Jude Fletcher's Memento Mori, a fascinating insight into a bizarre trait of family life.

Thanks again for an inspiring few days in the wonderful city of Chicago.

Elizabeth.

I agree with Elizabeth. The conference would only benefit from a greater stage presence from international producers.

I?m a producer at the CBC. Last week was terrific. I found the work from NPR and PRI enormously stimulating, not just because of the quality, but because it was new to me. I wonder, though, how much novelty remains for American conference goers who are already familiar with the work of top American producers. I can?t help but think that American conference goers would be enriched by hearing a greater diversity of work, more viewpoints, and different approaches to craft. The Third Coast International Audio Festival can only get better by living up to the ?international? in its title.

As for whether American public radio is obsessed with social change and good deeds, it?s hard for an outsider to say without hearing a steady diet. It may be that radio dealing with social change gets more prominence at the festival because it?s what often garners awards. And yet, most of the Third Coast award finalists this year were personal stories. Joe Frank's world is hard to pigeon hole. But it's certainly not about social change.

My own highlights, BTW, were Hugh Levinson?s Darkness piece using his baby?s sounds, and the Two Jaspers presentation.

mmm...interesting. and certainly worthy of consideration. one of the things I really love about the US public radio community is the fact that it *is* so small. That, coupled with the commitment to localism and generally horrendous pay does separate us from the larger media conglomerates in our own country and in the rest of the world.
It's wonderful to come to a place like Third Coast as a student (like I did last year) and feel that even the most talent and accomplished producers are accessible and approachable as mentors...and on the dancefloor. But it is wise, I think, to be wary of cherishing our intimacy and shared vision to the point of preciousness.
And, as much as I admire the work of many of this year?s panelists--and I do. deeply--it is a bit worrisome to feel like, two years into this business, I already know most of the voices by heart.
Over and over, people say that they come to Third Coast like to an oasis--to be reminded, after a long and difficult year of grant deadlines and station politics, that we do this work for love. And that it is worth the effort. But in order to remain inspiring and vital, I feel like Third Coast will have to continue to seek new and different voices, to incorporate perspectives from other countries and other disciplines--in perhaps a more aggressive and proactive way than it has in the past. Or risk being bored to sleep by our own loveliness.
Thanks, Julie. for being gutsy enough to toss this one out, to invite the critique and the change.
Long live (the ever-evolving) Nerdatorium!

I was talking with another producer who has also been going to radio conferences for a while and we agreed there used to be somewhat more awareness of the non-American work, not at conferences necessarily but just generally.
As for the "social effect" angle--that might have to do with: public radio in this country was established as an alternative to the dominant commercial radio and has variously held onto that mission; non-commercial radio was dominant in Europe for decades, with resources and creative room to build a tradition of radio as an allied art to literature, essay films, etc. but without(?) implicit social agendas.

The point is well made that European radio has better resources, which allow for more artistic expression. I worked at a Features department in Berlin for a couple of months, and I was blown away by how artful their pieces are and how elaborate the division of labor is to produce a single piece. But when I tell colleagues here in the states about those pieces, many say, "yeah, but who the hell listens?" and they brush those pieces off as self-indulgent. And there's the added assumption that those pieces aren't as socially minded as ours. I think there is a real bias in America that if you're not doing something to change the world, it's not worth spending the time on.

Hmmm.. I was actually thinking that the conference spent far, far, far too much time on radio "art".

This line of emails completely mystifies me. Why would "being obsessed with social change" ever be taken (or given) as an insult?

I've been to plenty of international conferences, and I'm happy to report that US documentary radio is doing GREAT. Really, really, really great.

If Third Coast has any interest in inspiring a new generation of serious producers, I'd suggest you be careful not to turn the festival into a pretentious, irrelevent & incomprehensible snoozefest...

David!!

do you mean to say that you have never heard any radio art that is not "pretentious, irrelevent & incomprehensible" ???

people. haven't we learned enough in the last few days about dividing things into clear cut sides? i mean, we all know that the whole red state/blue state shit doesn't acurately describe what's going on in this country right?

because ben i think dave's right in one way. coupling the word art with the word radio does sound kinda pretentious. even if that's not the intent. whatever you want to call it, sound or radio art isn't inherently pretentious. but talking about it endlessly as art sure makes it sound that way. we make things for people to listen to and we try to make them sound as interesting as possible. sometimes that interesting means challenging. does that make it art? god, i hope not.

hey shapiro. i think that "sniper" piece addresses this issue perfectly. is there anyway for people to hear that?

wow. love the dialogue. firstly, jonathan - the sniper piece- i do think it's a great example of a beautiful, delicate, hard-hitting, political and informational piece. we've been wanting to feature it on the website for a long time, always troubled by rights issues. this is a perfect incentive to figure out what we need to figure out to get it up on the third coast site. so stay tuned on that front.

i can assure everyone - we have no interest in spending a year planning a pretentious snoozefest. the truth is - every year we hear about an equal number of comments asking for, for the sake of simplicity here: 'more theoretical/ artsy stuff' and 'more practical/how-to stuff.' it's maybe the biggest challenge - coming up with two days of sessions that will have something for everyone, given the variety of people who come. (but don't get me wrong, we cherish this variety.) so obviously, some folks are gonna take more from certain years than others. but hopefully everyone can take _something_ from EVERY session, even if they?re not expecting to.

i agree totally that the semantics involved here are like quicksand - 'art' dictates certain expectations, 'social change' invites others.
the less defined the divide between the two - the more meaningful i think radio becomes.

want to point out also - i really don't think the original comments i shared were meant insultingly or disdainfully - for several international guests this may have been a first real immersion into american radio, and i think it?s more an active curiosity than anything. am i guilty of oversimplification to get my point across? maybe a leeeetle bit. but nice to see people respond so vocally. and i'm interested in this discussion - personally and for the festival's sake.

anyway, for those of you who are hoping to hear more international work and different voices and new perspectives and radio basics all in one weekend - please know that?s exactly what we?ve already begun discussing. this afternoon, in fact, at my house as we debriefed over tea, cookies, and the intrusions of a meddlesome cat.

and we?d love to know more specifically who and what you want to see/hear from next year. info@thirdcoastfestival.org with yr ideas, please...

on my commute home today i came across this quote in an article that was in part about the upton sinclair and his views of being a "proletarian writer...a writer with a purpose."

the author of the article calls that notion a false dichotomy and then says this, "tell me that the grapes of wrath is not both politically motivated and well-painted. beauty without conviction is a beer commercial; conviction without beauty is a pamphlet."

Whooaaa menjivar

The hicks may have just taken the white house but I am not going to hand over the idea of art to them too. Art is not a pretentious word, really it is just a word that we use to signify a creative and original way of dealing with the human experience - that's all (at least this is what it means to me). And I was just trying to ask David whether or not he had the opportunity to hear any radio art at third coast. I personally think a lot of David's stuff is radio art and I personally think there is some pretentious audio crap out there in the world masquerading as art. But I ALSO lament that most radio producers think the "good" radio stories are all somehow related to social issues.

Take the third coast audio festival winners - they are all Triumph over Tragedy stories "T & T" What about radio that is of the "T & A" variety??

Hey there

Interesting exchange. I would have posted earlier but I got distracted by the online poker offer which has resulted in the repo man just leaving now with my car and rolex... so, back to business.

Julie's original summation of the comments of a couple of European conference-goers: "By god, Julie, you Americans are obsessed with social change, and the good deeds you're doing in the world." OK so maybe as Julie says this is an "oversimplified" summation, just a bit... but it provokes a couple of thoughts from me.

First, I'm wondering how much irony was intended. I mean, here we are, a nation that is more despised around the world than it ever has been, and forging ahead to widen the gulf between "us" and "them", and here are a few producers in Chicago talking about all their award-winning good works. Is that part of what informs the observation? I don't know, but if so I can see the irony and how it would be perceived from afar.

Second, I understand Dave Isay's concerns about a future, more internationalized conference being a "pretentious...snoozefest," and I do think there's a distinct line, from what I know about European (and to some extent Canadian and Australian) documentaries and their focus on "smaller" stories, which to my mind can SOMETIMES be too ponderous for my ears, too self-reflective and not connected to narrative as I understand it or the real world around us. But I also don't think it's too useful to say that what "we" are doing is "great" and what "they" are doing is the equivalent of an irrelevant snoozefest. I mean if in this little world of ours we don't find someting to learn from eachother, we're more fucked than I thought.

Toward that end I would agree with suggestions to nternationalize the conference a bit further -- maybe having a big session on forms of narrative, with a European, US, Australian, Canadian etc producer.... compare and contrast, that's useful. But I don't think artificially inserting an international person onto every panel is a good idea. It ought to be organic, not forced. And I don't think Third Coast should turn essentially the same thing as the International Features Conference.

One other thought, which overlaps with the above: I know from my own conversations that some of the non-U.S. participants were a bit put off by what they perceived as the inherent self-promotion of a lot of us U.S. producers. (This is not directed at anyone in particular; I am including myself in this perception.) This is simply a cultural observation -- neatly summed up by Kim Normanton on Saturday, when she said she could now call herself an award-winning producer, but that she wouldn't because the English don't do that sort of thing. I got a few other echoes of that later on at the party.

I just think it's good to be conscious of these perceptions we have of each other, and I understand why someone coming from, say, Spain, or the Netherlands, or France, might be struck what they perceive as a self-promoting subculture of do-gooders within a larger culture that is spreading more damage in the world than ever before. I mean, this is not to decry what any of us do; quite the contrary, I think it's necessary to keep on. I'm just riffing here, trying to imagine how it looks to an increasingly alienated rest of the world.

Anyone?

First thank you for the conference. I wrote Julie by snail mail because I couldn't think of what I wanted to say on the 'fill in the spaces' form, which you should get tomorrow. And I think I was struggling with how to ask or say what Elizabeth has done so nicely. As a Brit/American now (who voted for the first time in my life) I struggle with the seemingly endless social concience of America in radio. I cann't put my finger, or ear, quite on it but there seems to be a scripted journalistic box around much of the documentary work I hear that explains so much that the actualites became as the pictures in a children's story book. To my ear these pieces often sound slick and a lesson after which I rarely choose to do my homework, that is to actaully think about what I have heard. Erik Bauersfeld said that the greatest compliment any one could give him was to turn the radio off after his piece so they could sit in silence. I don't think this is a realistic goal of NPR but reflective silence is a true compliment to any artist. And radio art, as well as radio journalism is a way to help our listeners think and there to maybe act.
What are the pieces I am still thinking about? Jude Fletcher'ss Morte for sure and a couple of pieces from Matt Hulse, one with no dialogue at all.
I loved the time and place at the conference to just listen and absorb other works, time to reflection, and time to clarify my own voice. Thank you,
Muriel Murch

As a newcomer to the inside-radio universe and a public radio listener (U.S. and U.K.), I agree with the "Euro-view' voiced at the outset of the discussioin.

(And so this may be where members of this newfound "universe" swiftly kicks me back into space...but read on?)

Maybe, as suggested, the issues that seem like "do-gooder" or socially-minded in our radio pieces are the product of the commercial/public media divide...but I'm going to posit that they're also the product of our general inability to deal with those social justice issues in any complex (functional?) way in our daily reality.

I heard some amazingly good pieces at the conference. What typified some of those pieces and other U.S. media is a self-satisfying tone that, perhaps, assuages conscience. Because it is so difficult to work for social justice in a sprawling country like ours, we may be finding other ways to showcase these issues. That's one laudable element of change.

And, yet, there seems to be a feeling that the showcasing is, in itself, enough. I often detect that sensibility as a kind of satisfaction in our self-representation in this country--particularly in public radio.

I realize that this sounds highly critical. I've spent a career studying American media, so I'm likely to sound off on this topic. It's possible that the Euro-view voice here picked up on something that we so are familiar with that we often cease to notice it. At the very least, noticing it (whatever the writers/producers/editors reading this determine "it" is) and deciding whether it's a strength is good (and rare) practice.

Thanks to everyone, especially Julie, for the discussion.

ingrid

Firstly, a very thought provoking and enjoyable conference - ta Julie.

The question of the Internationalists vs the Americans is not to me as interesting as asking 'why do radio in the first place?' Radio producers of all nations vary. To me the great divide is between those who use radio and those for whom radio is an end in itself.

If you are really obsessed with social change, and I mean you really do want to change the world, change America, ask yourself a simple question. What are you doing in radio? This was amply demonstrated by the TV documentary about Jasper which was far more effective and memorable than any radio heard in Chicago. And TV is seen by undecided voters, public radio by those who already vote for the angels. If you want to preach to the converted there is no better place to do it than public radio.

Ok a few prisoners were pardoned, that was great, a truly good thing, then what? 4 more years. And ask yourself another difficult question 'are you any good at affecting social change?' are your programmes really effective. To me, a pretentious European, I got the distinct whiff of propaganda. What some producers hailed as 'focus' and 'brilliant storytelling' was actually leaving out awkward details that got in the way of the message.

2 examples: When a delegate questioned why a radio producer in his item had not followed up why the woman of the projects actually wanted to push her man out of the window she was dismissed airily 'it was not part of the story'

A man robs a dry cleaner at gun point. What a hilarious bungler! But what about the woman at the other end of the gun. Not part of the focus. Or maybe?if we put her in, the story then it becomes a little more real, we will lose sympathy for the bungler. But we don?t want to lose sympathy for him because we are using him to prove a wider point we are making about money in the USA. The bungler was 'cleaned up', whitewashed.

When one analyses what 'focus' means, or 'story' they turn out to be nothing more than the prejudices of the radio producers.

People who do not already share your views, the people you need to get to to effect social change, can see through your propaganda for what it is, and switch off. Just like you can see through theirs. But you say 'in a short item there is no time to develop other characters.' Why not drop the awful tasteful music that is meant to make us feel safe that we have chosen to listen to public radio? Safe that we share your beliefs implicit in all the awkwardnesses you have left out.

I would like to make a plea for awkwardness, for things not fitting, for characters who are neither good nor bad, for inconsistency, for the greyness sometimes known as art.

Stories that set out to move people oddly in the end do not change people. Maybe it is because they leave no room for the listener. Frightened that the listener will switch off the producer hustles them through the story remorselessly. Manipulating them like Spielberg in his weaker moments.

What does change people is not politics, or social commentaries, or news, (stuff that happens to other people), it is art. Stories and storytelling were invoked again and again in Chicago - with a smug assumption that we are the storytellers. But great stories are told by the person who listens to the story, they tell it to themselves. If we are so great at telling stories why is George W Bush back in power? Because he is a far greater storyteller, particularly of ghost stories, than we are.

Democrats in America complain about the great divide between themselves and the right. But I detect in the democrats the same intransigence to accept the greyness of life that they ascribe to the neo-cons. I repeat if you want to change the world please, please, get out of radio. Radio is not a place for changing the world. It is an artistic, poetical medium for evoking odd dreams, unsettling fantasies and unfamiliar feelings inside the heads of unsuspecting members of the public

You may think me pretentious but the most moving single moment for me in Chicago was listening to a wordless recording of a nautical beacon in the Matt Hulse's session. During that moment I vividly experienced the tragedy of travelling between this world and the underworld. Or was I just remembering an old French movie?

Matt Thompson

Matt writes,

"Radio is not a place for changing the world. It is an artistic, poetical medium for evoking odd dreams, unsettling fantasies and unfamiliar feelings inside the heads of unsuspecting members of the public."

Heck, I like that.

My best radio experiences have been when I was unsuspecting.

Something to think about.

I've been reading all of your missives, quiet till now because I'm wary that what I write might may be interpreted as THE agenda of the Third Coast Festival.

So as context I should say that I'm a big umbrella type, I see a place for all the work we've presented at the TCF conference at live events etc, that transom showcases here, the art, the journalism and so much more. I like when we all rub up against one another at the conference and the excitement, turbulance and art that creates.

Still, I think I should stand up for the incredible work done by radio producers who care about the social fabric of America. Few of these folks dip in for a good story and then leave once they've won a few awards. These producers have spent whole careers, Studs Terkel comes to mind, giving voice to people who are otherwise remain silent in our society. Do they radiate smugness? I've never thought about it that way. But it's possible that they feel very good about their work for lots of good reasons.

But getting back to Julie's original comments, I agree we hear alot about social (and individual) change by doc producers in America...and much of this work is powerful...but why does it dominate so? I'd still like to hear more thoughts about that.

Johanna Zorn

CROFTING

European and International producers do not always realise how privileged they are. For instance the BBC spends over a billion dollars a year on radio alone. I was surprised at how fragmented the US situation is and it seems at times like a cottage industry with individuals in their wee crofts spinning their digital looms.

An American radio conference is always going to fulfill a very different function - a gathering in a safe place, a place to reaffirm you are doing the right thing to 'still be doing radio', part religious cult, part political convention with the spectacle of witness and confession. When you are marginalised to the extent you are in the US I think anything that holds you together - a shared social mission springs to mind - should be seized on.

In Europe we have the luxury of being part of the mainstream, a fifth of the population regularly hears our programmes, we are reviewed by all the newspapers, we have room to breathe. Or if you like, to be complacent. We don't need glue. It is wrong to expect a US radio conference to be anything like the International ones as our concerns are so very different.

That doesn't mean we don't have things to learn from each other. As experts in the art of listening radio producers are sometimes surprisingly adverse to opening their ears. Sometimes this means being patient, sometimes it requires an allergic reation, always it involves letting go when passing through the revolving doors of a Holiday Inn in Chicago.

Johanna says "I agree we hear alot about social (and individual) change by doc producers in America...and much of this work is powerful...but why does it dominate so?"

I don't think Third Coast ever set out to promote a theme of social and individual change but rather that the theme emerged throughout the sessions and now it's opened up this fascinating debate. So did it dominate at the conference because it dominates on the airwaves? It's perhaps difficult for the non-American contingent to answer this question because we probably don't listen to enough American output on a regular basis but I'd like to hear what the American production community thinks - does it dominate on your airwaves or did it simply emerge at the conference and we've all jumped on the bandwagon?

As to the debate on radio as 'art', I think it's fair to say that it's a relatively small proportion of BBC radio output that could be described as pure 'art'. Sure, we have a few slots dedicated to experimental production which allows for creative ambition. But story-telling is at the heart of what we do and whether or not it's dressed up with all sorts of bells and whistles in post production isn't that relevant. As a public service broadcaster, we need to tell powerful stories in a way that will make the biggest impact on our audiences. No, we're not going to change the world in a short doc, but we may pop out of the wireless in the corner of somebody's living room and make a little difference in their life.

Crikey - an adult and intelligent discussion thread about radio! How inspiring! Rather like the conference itself (thanks Julie and Johanna).

I wanted to add one thing. There's been a returning series on BBC Radio 4 of interviews with people coping with various disabilities. It's called "No Triumph, No Tragedy." I think that's a brilliant title and one that is closer to real life than a lot of the subtly engineered stories we usually tell...