In this week’s episode of HowSound, Rob Rosenthal talks with Transom Story Workshop alum Kolin Pope about the process of producing a personal story he worked on during the workshop.

During a class, Kolin happened to be discussing his piece. Fortuitously, guest teacher Ira Glass was on hand and gave him a great suggestion: if you have a strong sense that your interviewee might respond to a certain question, make sure to phrase the question in such a way as to prompt the response you’re expecting.

Kolin was a bit skeptical; it seemed ethically out of bounds. He explains how he tried Ira’s approach, got some great tape, and dealt with those ethical concerns.

To hear their conversation, click here:

To hear Kolin’s piece, I Want To Believe, click here.

Produced in collaboration with the Public Radio Exchange, HowSound delves into the ins-and-outs of radio storytelling in conversations about everything from fieldwork and recording techniques to narrative and ethics.

Each episode highlights the work of producers such as Alix Spiegel, Roman Mars, Joe Richman, Kelly McEvers, and Anna Sale. HowSound also features work from new producers, including students from the Transom Story Workshop.

Host Rob Rosenthal launched and directed the radio program at the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies for eleven years. He’s an audio guy through and through, producing documentaries, features, multi-media, audio tours, sound art, podcasts, commercials, and public service announcements as a freelancer.

Since the fall of 2011, Rob has been the lead instructor of the Transom Story Workshop, teaching eight-week workshops twice a year in Woods Hole, as well as weeklong workshops around the country.

Ten years ago, producer Sylvia Ryerson left Cambridge, Massachusetts, and wound her way to Whitesburg, Kentucky, for a summer internship at WMMT-FM 88.7, a community radio station in the heart of Central Appalachia.

WMMT-FM is a part of the media arts and education center Appalshop. She was drawn there in part because of its groundbreaking work as a rural organization challenging the prison industrial complex then making inroads in the area.

In a new feature for Transom, Sylvia describes her efforts over the intervening years to help prisoners and their families stay in touch, through radio. She offers audio samples, photographs, and more, along with ideas for how this kind of endeavor can be replicated elsewhere.

Click here to learn more.

Sarah Bentley fell in love with audio storytelling –– radio, podcasts, you name it. Eventually, the love she felt for the craft morphed into the need to learn how to do the thing she loved and she applied and accepted to the 2016 Transom Traveling Workshop in Big Sky, Montana.

She entered with her own assumptions about the rules of telling stories, and came away with more realistic ones. In one week she managed to establish strong rapport with her interview subject, compile and use archival tape, music, her own self, a strong narrative, and her love for the music of John Denver into a fine first story.

Click here to hear the piece and read about her experience while making it.

Atlantic Public Media’s Executive Director, Jay Allison, has this to say about an excellent new Transom article by our TOOLS guru, Jeff Towne:

Our team at Transom (Atlantic Public Media) produces The Moth Radio Hour, and we get a lot of requests for help with recording live events. Request fulfilled. Jeff Towne has created a wonderfully comprehensive guide, with a focus on live storytelling. He runs down microphone options, placement, routing, mixers, audience micing, mono, stereo, redundant recorders, the works. It is destined to be a go-to guide for this kind of audio gathering.

To check it out . . . click here.

Sarah Koenig of the podcast Serial has made time in her schedule to share some of her wisdom about telling stories in sound in a new Transom Manifesto. It has diagrams, and maps, and lots of sound, and…well, we’ll share a bit of Jay Allison’s introduction to give you a better sense…

“By deconstructing the Leakin Park episode, by explaining all the things her team was unable to get to create the story, she reveals exactly how they did create it. This, fundamentally, is how non-fiction narrative works. You try to get what you want, but ultimately, you work with what you get. Sometimes the obstacles make you jump even higher. Sometimes they’re just obstacles.”

It’s fascinating. To read more, click here.

Rob Byers

Transom has a series on Podcasting Basics that’s covered everything from recording gear to distribution. In Part Five, NPR Production Specialist Rob Byers looks at the differences in loudness when mixing for podcasts vs. radio.

He explains how to achieve both standards and why the two are different in the first place. Trust us. This is the kind of knowledge you’re now expected to have.

Click here to learn more.

Alice Wong in the studio being interviewed by Lateef McLeod at KPFA radio, Berkeley, CA

Alice Wong is a radio producer who lives with a neuromuscular disease called spinal muscular atrophy. In her manifesto, Alice writes, “On radio, I want to hear people who lisp, stutter, make noises when they talk, use computer-generated speech, communicate, enunciate, and pronounce differently.”

She calls us out on an important omission. When we talk about diversity in radio we often talk in terms of race or class. Less often do we talk about how to be more inclusive of people with disabilities.

In her Transom manifesto, she shares examples from her own experience and issues public radio a challenge: Open our ears and our newsrooms to people with disabilities. Consider how we might make the tools of making radio more accessible. Alice asks, how inclusive are we? Click here for an important addition to the conversation on diversity in public media.

Barb Anguiano, Abdi Iftin, Annie Sinsabaugh, Ellery Lamm, Ryan Sweikert, Peter Bresnan, Scott Christy, Elizabeth Nakano, Shelby El-Otmani

Application deadline for the Fall 2016 workshop is May 27, 2016.

To learn more about the workshop application, click here.

Samantha Broun and Ernest Preate

Transom has posted a new SHOW, a Transom Special, produced by Managing Editor Samantha Broun, with Jay Allison, Executive Editor/Producer.
Jay describes the piece: “This is a story about a terrible crime and everything that followed. It’s an intensely personal documentary, but it extends into public life and into the heart of our political and correctional systems.

Some stories take a long time. This one is an hour long, and took two and a half years to produce, after twenty years of living with it.”

This hour may be a little difficult to hear, but the clarity and courage with which it was produced make the listen well worth your time. Click here to hear.