Editor’s note: In her second dispatch from the recent Third Coast audio storytelling conference, radio producer Julia Barton looks at the approach the producers of StoryCorps, the non-profit oral history project, take to invisibly piece together their compelling … Read more
Editor’s Note: Every other fall, hundreds of radio producers, journalists, documentarians and other audio artists gather in Chicago for the Third Coast conference to examine, explore and celebrate the world of audio storytelling. In the first of a … Read more
A story without sound lies too dead on the page. Imagine “Mrs. Kelly’s Monster,” by Jon Franklin, without the pop … pop … pop of the operating-room sensors. Or Tom Wolfe‘s “The Girl of … Read more
Back in the distant 1990s, This American Life host Ira Glass described a recurring dream of NPR’s Scott Simon: Simon would shoot a basketball over and over, but then it would disappear. The ball never landed. That, … Read more
When Florian Thalhofer shows one of his interactive documentaries in theaters, he arms the audience with laser pointers. Whenever there is a choice of which clip to watch next, the crowd votes by aiming a glowing red dot, … Read more
Editor’s note: Our Work the Problem series has covered story regret, with Esquire‘s Tom Junod; self-editing, with Pulitzer winner Amy Ellis Nutt; and prospecting for narrative, … Read more
Fast Company‘s Chuck Salter recently came up with an innovative way to address the unfolding narrative that is Detroit. The city, long depressed, is now bankrupt. Unemployment stands at double the national rate; buildings have been famously abandoned; dozens … Read more
“Snow Fall,” the widely celebrated New York Times multimedia narrative on a deadly avalanche in Washington State, won a Peabody this week (and would later win the Pulitzer) for being “a spectacular example of the potential of … Read more
The news business is rarely funny. Much of what we do every day is report on devastating acts of nature, the plight of those without voices – the problems of the world. For most of those stories it’s best to rely on … Read more
Until about the past decade, making films or videos required thousands of dollars of equipment, years of experience and an outlet, be it a theater or a TV station. Now we have cheap and good cameras that most of us … Read more