Conversation pt. 2

Jonathan Schienberg - June 20, 2005 - #42

Although I came into the class with no previous radio experience and whined a lot about Pro Tools, I couldn't have chosen a better way to go out. Our class was full of great human-interest stories and the interviewing techniques and writing techniques you taught helped me a great deal.

Seeking out anecdotes and building scenes are elements that transcend all journalism mediums and the class helped me to significantly develop those skills (especially when I would be 2/3 done with an 8 minute piece and realize I had no real anecdotes or scenes)…

kimberly kinchen - June 20, 2005 - #43

First, this class, like most of my classes here, had the effect of making me feel like - damn, I learned so much, and damn, now there's so much more to learn…

I don't remember you, Alex, talking a lot specifically about interviewing during the class. Early on, you did talk about how to think about the questions you wanted to ask, and how to organize those questions, and some of the standards you can always use - "talk more about that" etc. Maybe once you actually said, here's how to conduct an interview.

But now I realize you were talking about it almost all the time, and you did it by talking about what to listen for in the tape, what to try to elicit, and by always always always, in excerpts you brought in and in our listening sessions, pointing out pieces of good tape, of the different kinds of moments that make good tape - basically all the stuff you write about above in Part II. And I think now more in terms of moments, whereas I used to think in terms of words, facts, whatever…

So I think the way I listen is changing, or I'm trying to change the way I listen, and I can't ever imagine this NOT being useful whether I end up in radio or print or wherever. A moment can contain a fact, can convey a fact, but a fact can rarely convey a moment, or the idea that a moment reflects.

The idea that you can actually AUDITION people was revolutionary to me…

Michael Rice - June 22, 2005 - #48

…As for what I learned in class (in addition to how to record narration under my down comforter), I think the most important lesson was recognizing what a radio story is not. Manifesto Part 2 is a good summary of the points Alex emphasized in our last weeks of class. Auditioning your subjects to find the ones who can speak in anecdotes and framing your pitch by saying, "My story is about ‘x' and what's interesting about it is…" (that is, looking for the unexpected) were all valuable take-home lessons. Almost as valuable as Alex's credo: "If it's not from Kentucky, it's not really bourbon."

Vivek Kemp - June 23, 2005 - #53

Before Alex's class, an "actuality" was merely a fact…Radio was foreign.

But eventually I learned that I needed the selfsame ingredients to tell a story with sound as I did with written words. I needed stories over subjects and topics, characters over generalities, and anecdotes over statements. Then blend, being sure to add a dash of narration.

I blended alright.

My final story was about what motivated people to become subway performers, a story ripe with sound. After I had collected all the sound I thought, "This is going to be great, I'll lace the entire 10 minutes with subway-music, and churning MTA cars."

"It'll be like producing a hit record!" I was zealous with sound. While editing I ended up overdoing it.

Alex listened graciously. Then calmly exclaimed that my story encountered just about every production problem it could have. Who knew a radio story could have too much sound. But as he told me once: people learn the lessons they need as they need them.

Kristen Gillespie - June 26, 2005 - #58

Even though I will probably never end up doing TAL-style stories, what I will take with me back into the work world is what Alex hopefully pounded into my head: the elements of a good story, and how to tell it. Of course this also means I will become an even more prickly media consumer.

Some of the debate above touched on story-telling. My (professional) radio reports are capped at a maximum of 30 seconds; I work for all-news radio and am based in the Middle East. But what I learned in class is that even the shortest pieces can be stories. It's all about how you tell them. Beginning, middle, end. Find what everyone can relate to - issues of heart, health and pocketbook, as another radio professor liked to put it.

That's not always an option; time constraints and poor pay usually drive freelancers like me to constantly produce. Sometimes a dearth of information can kill creativity - in Iraq, an American soldier is killed almost every day by a roadside bomb "while on routine patrol." That is often the only information available, and along with a body count, there is not much opportunity to make a report more original.

A few notes on radio: as a "print person," delving into the meta and bringing the reporter into the story, at first, felt horribly wrong. But in radio, it can and does work. A most liberating revelation. Of course, when I finally got the consumer debt story together, I realized I had almost no natural sound. When outlining the story, I did not add the element of sound in my plans. BIG MISTAKE.

As I pack up to move back to Jordan, I wonder how many of Alex's lessons made it into the hard drive. Will I remember to find the surprise in a story? Go against expectation? Lay out the story the right way? ALWAYS GET ANECDOTES? Find compelling characters? And one of Alex's most valuable points: don't let your interviewee push his/her talking points on you. Include what you didn't expect them to say, and pursue that route.

Anaheed Alani - June 21, 2005 - #44

I love the way John Nielson re-approaches that guy. But the quote he gets, even after all that, still kinda sucks. "Community," "citywide," "region-wide"--none of those are words most people actually use in conversation. NOT TO BE A HARDASS OR ANYTHING.

Also, this?

Stop them and say, "I want you to answer that question again, but this time use the word sad instead of lachrymose."

I would feel really uncomfortable saying something like that as an interviewer, because I would feel really uncomfortable as the interviewee. Suddenly it's like you don't just want me to talk and say what's on my mind. You want me to say it YOUR way…

Alex Blumberg - June 21, 2005 - #45

"sad instead of lachrymose."

Well, that line was sort of facetious. But yes, if someone was using a word I was afraid no one would understand, I'd ask them to say it again. But you're right, you definitely don't want to make people more uncomfortable than they already are. And I'm certainly not advocating interrupting people all the time about their diction. It really depends on what kind of story you're doing. If it's more intimate emotional tape you're going for, maybe you don't interrupt them at all, but just circle back and ask the question again. Maybe you model the kind of language you want them to use in your follow-up question: "That must have really sucked for you, huh." Maybe they're the kind of person who says lachrymose and you want to include that in the story. Maybe you hold yourself up as the dumbshit: "lachrymose? what does that mean again?" and just let that exchange play out in the tape. My point is just that you can be more assertive than you think you can. Being clear about what you want from people and working with them to try and get it is always fine.

Mark Brush - June 24, 2005 - #55

I think taking the dumbshit approach is a good one

My first thought re: your post about asking someone to say 'sad' instead of 'lachrymose' was "isn't that a little unethical?" I'd prefer all the other solutions you mention over asking someone to say something on tape.

And I felt the way Nielsen tried to get that guy to rephrase what he said was a little over the top. Maybe I'm just too wimpy, and I don't know the extent to which he went to get the scientist to speak normally (he sounded pretty frustrated), but wouldn't a "what do you mean by that?" or a "what would you say to someone who says that going to zoo could kill you?" or "what? I don't understand what you're saying" or several of those questions over and over again be a better approach? I fear that you might push someone too hard with the other approach - esp. if your trying to get them to talk naturally - seems like the pushy approach might make them more nervous - or worse - offended enough to stop talking to you.

If you act like a dumbshit (or better yet, if you are a dumbshit like me!! , then their internal dialogue might be, "Holy crap! This guy's an imbecile… I'll have to break it down in simple terms for him."

Alex Blumberg - Jun 26, 2005 - #60

Mark Brush, you raise an interesting point…I agree completely. You never ever want to alienate your interview subject. But letting them stray far from the question, or letting them go off on boring tangents, or letting them go on and on when they've clearly misunderstood your question is not the same as not alienating someone. My point is a small one: you can be a little more assertive than you probably think you can. Not everyone has to go all John Nielsen on people. Be charming about it, for God's sake. Just know that you're in control of the conversation.

Now, the dumbshit method is time-honored and one of my personal favorites. In fact, i use it pretty much all the time. Or more precisely, I AM it, and I don't go out of my way to disguise it during interviews. But even if you're using the dumbshit method, you're directing the interview. You'll get someone to tell something again, by saying, "i didn't get that thing you were saying back there ..." or you'll even cut people off if they start to stray: "wait, wait, wait, I lost you there, you were talking about ..."

As for sad vs. lachrymose. It's just, if people use jargon the rest of us don't understand, it weakens the meaning. It's the difference between "this product will cause a negative and likely terminal health outcome" and "this product could easily kill you." I don't think it's unethical to make people talk clearly. As long as you're not changing the meaning.

laura b - June 23, 2005 - #54

It's Laura, the TAL intern. So I opened a submissions envelope the other day and found this guy's life story. Which, in most cases, is not a promising thing to find. But this guy's life has been fairly amazing: his parents were Communists in 1940's LA, and ended up sending him to an orphanage from the time he was 3 until he was 6. He ran away at 13 and hitch hiked to New York, and then eventually made it to Tonga, where he started making recordings of everything around him before he was kicked off the island for dating a princess. He sent a tape of some of the oldest recordings and some basic facts checked out google-wise, so I called him. And he is not an anecdote kind of guy. Questions like what it was like to see his parents when he came home from the orphanage didn't really go anywhere. The story about dating the princess went something like "So I was dating the princess and then I realized that I had to get off the island or I'd get in trouble." I kept pushing for details and stories, but without much success.

So the possibilities are A. He made the whole thing up and is actually a man who just saw a Discovery Channel show on Tonga
B. He is not an anecdote kind of guy, and I'm not quite sure how to get non-anecdote people to tell good stories

Do you have any more advice for getting good tape from non-anecdoters? Or is there a certain point when a person's non-anecdote telling trumps the interestingness of the story that they have to tell?

Alex Blumberg - June 26, 2005 - #59

Wow, you're confronted with one of the most extreme cases of a good story happening to a bad storyteller that I've heard. And I would agree with your possible diagnoses.

I believe that sometimes, no matter how depressing it is to realize this, if someone's a very bad storyteller, it can trump a great story. It sounds like the Tonga guy is one of these people. There's nothing much you can do. He needs to feel SOMETHING about it, you know? Or have one anecdote. Or some thought about what he went through. You can help people, definitely, but only to a certain extent. They have to give you something. That being said, there are questions you might ask him, to flesh things out.

1.) ask about details: what's the most vivid memory he has from dating the princess? does he remember the moment he realized dating her might get him in trouble? what's the first thing he found strange about Tonga?
2.) ask about the bigger idea: why does he want to tell this story? What did he learn from living through it? How does he feel different from other people, who haven't lived his crazy background.

one more thought occurs to me: there's sometimes psychological reasons people tell stories badly. one element of good storying is being emotionally connected to the words you're saying, but if people are in denial about something, or suppressing the emotions involved, the story can sound somehow flat and affectless. So it's possible that the whole "my parents sent me to an orphanage when i was three" part of the story has interfered with his ability to actually connect with what he's saying. And in fact he might be telling the story as a jaunty adventure tale as a way of denying his true feelings about what he went through. In other words, the real story is one that he doesn't actually want to tell, or hasn't even admitted to himself, and so the tonga story sounds dull because it's a fake story, designed to normalize an extremely messed up and painful personal history. or, as you say, he could have made the whole thing up.

William Wolfe - July 14, 2005 - #63

About the interviewing tips, I kind of liked the part of the nielson tape where he sort of takes on the persona of a loud belligerent drunk (who happens to have really strong opinions about the local zoo). It was a little awkward even pushy, but it clarified the question, in giving him a starting point for argumentation it helped the scientist guy make the point he was trying to make anyway, and even made him sound a bit more engaged I thought, like he was actually at a bar talking to some jerk.

I've listened to a lot of the TAL episodes over the past six months or so (by the way your testosterone show was great, entertaining and really interesting) and I've got a question: In some of the pieces, by some of the contributors, I'm thinking of Scott Carrier in particular but I'm sure there are other examples, the style of the interviews seem (to me) to contradict some of the things you've been saying here. For example there is one in which Scott stops to talk to some old guy sitting by the side of the road whittling (sp?) and selling sticks. There aren't really any interesting anecdotes, like the plot, plot, reflection, plot, plot, reflection form, the whole conversation never really leaves the realm of whittling and why this guys likes it so much. In sticking to the finer aspects of whittling Scott seems to be leaving the control of the conversation mostly up to the old guy. It seems like a perfect example of something that just isn't going to be interesting, like your community gardens idea, 'so... how about these flowers?', 'you really like gardening huh, that's fascinating', 'those are nice sticks, what kind of wood are they?' 'what's so great about whittling anyway?' A lot of the interviews in the piece are this way, and yet in the end it's engaging and enjoyable to listen to. Another example of this same thing is in the old fall clearance show from like 1997 or something, where Scott (or Mr. Carrier or whatever) tells the little Haiku stories, about rock climbing and mighty mite football and so on. It's kind of like he's interviewing himself, or at least that's how I'm thinking about it, and though the stories generally have that anecdotal quality about them, there are no real climaxes to speak of, or at least not the kind that leads to readily apparent conclusions that should be drawn from the anecdotal events.

So I guess saying that the stuff you've been saying has made a lot of sense to me and so I'm thinking that there must be a relationship between the ideas you're relating and the kind of stories that I've mentioned, but that I just can't quite formulate it. Any ideas?

Alex Blumberg - July 26, 2005 - #69

…When you're Scott Carrier, the normal rules don't really apply. That's why people like him, and David Sedaris and Sarah Vowell, are both the boon and bane of my existence as a radio teacher. On the one hand, they inspire people to want to do radio stories. On the other, they're almost impossible to imitate.

I try to be aware of that as a teacher, though. I call the things I teach "rules" and I believe in them whole-heartedly, but in the end, it's really just a theory of journalism. If someone comes up with another theory, and that theory produces good radio, all the better.

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