The Transom Review
Volume 5/Issue 2
Alex Blumberg |
Alex Blumberg & His Class
(Edited by Sydney Lewis)
Intro from Jay Allison
We're trying something a little different. Our Guest this month is not only Alex Blumberg, but also his entire class of students at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
Alex is a producer at This American Life, responsible for many great radio stories, and he's also a wonderful explainer (see his manifesto below). He and his class are setting up shop on Transom to sort out the basic, important stuff that somehow tends to get overlooked in radio journalism, like what makes a good story and what doesn't. They'll be posting the audio from their class assignments, and along with you, critiquing the process and the result.
We invite you to join us for this master class within a master class.
Alex Blumberg's Manifesto
The most embarrassing non love letter I ever sent was to the staff of This American Life. I sent it in 1997, and thankfully, it's been lost by now. Knowing how things worked around there in 1997, there's a high probability it was never read or even opened before becoming lost. But still, just thinking about it sends a flush up my neck. It was a pitch letter. And because I was trying to wow them, it contained not just one story idea, but maybe 10. They were all grouped thematically, with helpful suggestions for what to name the show they would fit into. And they all, I know now, sucked. The story pitch that makes me cringe the most was on community gardens in Chicago. Not A community garden, mind you. Community gardens in general, as a civic phenomenon. I don't remember what, if anything, I wanted to say about them, or who I wanted to interview about them, or even what I wanted to ask whoever I did find to interview. And I also don't remember why I possibly thought This American Life would want to devote any part of its hour on the air to a "story" without characters, ideas or conflict. But I do remember what I thought they should call the gardening-themed show that I thought my community garden story should go into. I thought they should call the show "Flowers from the Dead Earth." I thought this was a line from the Wasteland, a poem by T.S. Eliot which I'd never actually read, and which it turns out, I'd misquoted. Badly, actually. Eliot's wording was "lilacs out of the dead land," which means I'd gotten exactly two of his original six words right: "dead" and "the."
There are many lessons contained in this story, about the advisability of fact-checking, the danger of mixing pretension with ignorance, and the importance of trying, in some rudimentary way, to match the sensibility of the organization you're pitching to. For example, a casual browse through the This American Life archives should tell a person that lines from classics of modern American poetry don't ever become show titles. But for me, this story is mostly about how hard it is, when you're just starting out in radio, to figure out what, exactly, constitutes a story.
A big problem that a lot of radio beginners have is the problem I had with my pitch to This American Life: confusing a story setting or premise with an actual story. Community Garden is not a story. It's a setting, or maybe a topic to investigate, but to do a story on the radio about it, you need some specifics. And by that I mean, a character to talk to, and a situation to talk to them about. For example, maybe there's a Haitian immigrant who left his family back home until he can save up enough money to bring them to the US, and he gardens because it's the only place he can sort of imagine he's back home. Or maybe there's a community garden made up entirely of people who've never left their city neighborhoods, and then they went on a school trip to a farm and the were so impressed they decided to start their own garden when they got back home. Or maybe there's a community garden where there's an ongoing war between the flower people and the vegetable people. Or maybe there's a community gardener who's just so unbelievably charming, or funny or fascinating that she can sustain a story just by pure force of personality.
For the last two years, I've taught a documentary radio class at the Columbia School of Journalism, and one of the first things we try to focus on in class is simply recognizing what's a story and what's not. This April and May my class and I will be taking on the guest-host helm. So before I continue, let me introduce my co-guest hosts:
They're all graduate students, mostly in the journalism school. And they're all learning, very quickly the proud teacher in me feels compelled to add, how to produce good radio stories.
You can tell a lot about whether something's a story entirely from the first question that occurs to you. And this is something that I try get my students to think about when considering a story idea. You're the reporter, you get your recorder together, go to the site of your story, find someone to interview, and what do you ask? It may seem basic, but I find it very helpful to think about, even today. Literally, what's the question that I want to answer, or the story I want to hear? If the questions seem obvious, chances are it's a story. For example, here are the main underlying questions posed by several story topics the students chose for their first pieces this semester:
How did you end up homeless on the streets and then how did you eventually get off the streets and into your job as a well-adjusted mental health professional?
What did you think about Israeli Jews before you went to the Arab/Israeli peace camp, and how did your thoughts change by being at the camp?
What exactly is the difference between punk rock karaoke and just plain old punk rock?
Wait, tell me again how you ended up making out in the dressing room with the internationally famous Senegalese pop star Youssou N'dour?
Now, these stories may or may not have completely succeeded in the end, but they all satisfy the most basic prerequisite. There's something to talk about. Let's compare that to the community garden story. You get to the community garden, you find a gardener, what do you ask? What are you growing? Boring answer. How long have you been gardening? Boring answer. Why do you garden? High probability of a boring answer -- probably something like "I feel peaceful out here in my community garden," or "can't beat the taste of a homegrown tomato," or "where I'm from, we garden a lot." Given the choice between the question suggested by a recent story in class, a story which you can hear below -- "What was it like to be a female pimp at age 16?" -- versus "How long have you been community gardening?" which story would you prefer?
Of course, satisfying that most basic prerequisite is just the first step. Just because something's a story, or takes the form of a story, doesn't mean it's an interesting story. And so the second thing I try to tell me students is, don't choose a story just because it sounds like a story you've heard before. In fact, just the opposite. Choose a story because it's surprising. So consider the homeless story idea above. It's very possible, even likely, that the answer to the question goes something like this: "I became homeless because I was addicted to heroin and then I got off the streets when I finally got treatment for my heroin addiction. Let me tell you all about my 12-step program ... " Now as person who's seen the benefits of 12-step programs on my own friends and family members, I am in no way commenting on their undeniable social benefit when I say that they do not make for very exciting radio. This is a story we've heard before. And it's not at all surprising.
Does this mean that my student shouldn't do the story about the homeless person? Not necessarily. Maybe there's a corner of the homeless person's story that isn't so familiar. It's worth poking around to see if there's something there.
I've developed a mathematical test to tell whether you're on the right track. It's called the "and what's interesting" test. You simply tell someone about the story you're doing, adhering to a very strict formula: "I'm doing a story about X. And what's interesting about it is Y." So for example, again, taking the homeless story, "I'm doing a story about a homeless guy who lived on the streets for 10 years, and what's interesting is, he didn't get off the streets until he got into a treatment program." Wrong track. Solve for a different Y.
Y = "... and what's interesting is there's a small part of him that misses being homeless." Right track.
Y = "... and what's interesting is, he developed surprising and heretofore unheard of policy recommendations on the problem of homelessness from his personal experience on the streets." Right track.
Y = "... and what's interesting is, he fell in love while homeless, and is haunted by that love still." Right track.
Y = "... and what's interesting is, he learned valuable and surprising life lessons while homeless, lessons he applies regularly in his current job as an account manager for Oppenheimer mutual funds." Right track.
In other words, who the hell knows what you might find out. Just don't settle for the story you already know. Find the exciting or surprising or unusual moment, and focus the story on that.
There are two things to keep in mind here. First of all, a lot of times, your subjects themselves will be trying to tell you the boring parts. Sometimes the boring part is the one they find the most exciting. And sometimes they think the boring part is the part they're supposed to tell the person from the media. After all, they're media consumers too, and they've heard the story they way it's generally told, and they want to conform to that way of telling it. You're allowed to stop them. You're allowed to say, "actually, I don't want to hear about the 12-step program, tell me about whether you ever had a relationship while you were homeless." Or something. I tell my students to try and pay attention to their own boredom. We public radio people are so used to being interested and curious about everything. And that's good. But if you, a person with boundless natural curiosity about the world, are even slightly bored listening to someone talk, chances are the listeners will turn off the radio.
The second thing is a naive and dangerous belief of beginning public radio producers everywhere, the idealistic notion that everyone has a story, and a skillful public radio producer can bring that story to life and make it sing on the radio. I would agree that everyone has a story, but it's not always that interesting a story, or one that they're particularly adept at telling in other words, one that millions of people need to hear on their radios. If you want to do a story about the formerly homeless, and you're interviewing a person who can't tell you anything interesting or remember any good stories, find another formerly homeless person. I mean, give it the old college try. But don't be afraid to give up and move on. I audition people for my stories all the time. And the difference between someone who's a very compelling and honest narrator of their own experience, and someone who's not that articulate about it is huge.
So, now you know basically what my students did, when they completed the first assignment in my class, a 4 to 6 minute profile. Students chose their own subjects.
The first story, a profile of a rare book dealer, produced by Mara Altman, is interesting in that it breaks, basically, all the rules I've outlined above, and yet, somehow, still works.
The second story, by Theresa Bradley, is a perfect example of a story that at first blush might seem a little familiar, but then becomes very surprising.
The third story, by Nazanin Rafsanjani, started out as an investigation of people trying to live on minimum wage. As Nazanin was talking to her subject, Evelyn Camargo, they got to talking about other jobs Evelyn had had. And that's when they stumbled onto the subject that Nazanin focuses her profile on.
My students and I will be back with more to say about these stories, other stories in the class, and radio in general. But for now, we'd love to hear what you think about their work so far.
The Alex Blumberg & Class Review
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