Category: Podcast

I am about halfway through the draft scripts.  I’m pleased with our first attempt at this type of writing, but a few trends have become clear.

1. Read your writing aloud at least once and revise it before you record it.  Everyone’s prose is clunky the first and second draft and you will need to do several revisions.  Make at least one revision based on the sound of the prose spoken aloud (which will be the eventual form it takes).

2. Get more specific and detailed to give a sense of the human drama, individual agency, and contingency in our situations.  In some cases, discussion of the experience of a situation will make it more compelling — the setting, for example.  In other cases, knowing more about the individuals who are making the decisions and taking the actions within an organization is the key.  In some cases, the context is key.  I’ve said before, this should not read like a term paper that we deliver aloud.  This is an audio story — it’s a different type of writing and we are going to have to go over it a few times to get it right.

3. Keep your segments short and your audio varied.  Just about everyone is going to have to revise and edit to keep things moving.

4. Get your interviews done as soon as possible and get your transcripts done so you can fill those [interview here] gaps in your script.

5.  Also, data.  I want numbers.  How many people?  How many votes?  How did the people translate into votes? No generalizations — give me data!

5a. On the data: no election stands alone or can be interpreted on its own.  If we are making claims about a statewide election, we need to compare our race with other statewide races or previous/later races for the same office.  Was it a larger margin of victory?  Smaller?  Make sure you tell us.

 

Please let me know in the comments if you have questions or would like issues resolved, and I can add to this as necessary.

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The tone should generally be professional and exploratory, not scholarly or pedantic. No jokes. You are making an argument and telling a story with a viewpoint, but you should maintain some basic neutrality and respectfulness — the neutrality of someone still trying to learn about a topic and explain it to an audience.

Make sure any voice you bring in is clear to the audience. Anyone who speaks in the podcast episode (interview or archival tape) should be identified.

Ambient voices or historical clips should be identified. Do not assume your audience will recognize a voice, even Barack Obama. You need to do a little bit of basic exposition and should assume your audience doesn’t know much coming in.

When you introduce audio from a scholar the first time, make sure to use their full name and institution. If they have a book on the topic, note that, as well. For example, “I asked LaDale Winling, a historian at Virginia Tech who wrote the book Building the Ivory Tower, about campus planning.” If their work is articles or they have a teaching expertise, you don’t need to mention that specifically. Subsequent times you should strongly consider a simple re-introduction, such as “Here’s Winling again,” if the quotations are not continuous.

Introduce a participant differently. Explain why they are in the story (now or in the past). Scholars/experts have an authority that is easy to grasp. The importance of someone we identify as a participant is less clear and you need to gear up the audience a bit more.

Generally, keep things moving faster than you would initially expect. More varied sound, less extended quotes.

All have been assigned their basic topic for the podcast project.  The next step is beginning the research that will allow you to write the script and find the informants to interview.*  You should begin that now.

Several books that may be useful: V.O. Key’s Southern Politics in State and Nation, Ronald Heinemann’s Harry Bird of Virginia, Ronald Eller’s Uneven Ground: Appalachia Since 1945.  In addition, there are a few pieces in our Canvas site.

You should develop a bibliography of some historical work, some poli sci work, and potentially some journalistic work, and discuss it with me prior to February 9th.

* In many cases, interviews require approval by the Institutional Review Board.  In this case, I have checked with the IRB and, because this is a more journalistic enterprise in a class, rather than a research-oriented oral history, it does not require IRB approval.