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NPR’s Latino USA has several shows with special themes coming up in the next few months. They are:
We’d love to hear your story ideas for these themes or anything else that you may have in the pipeline.
Please send queries to pitches@futuromediagroup.org.
And here’s a link to our reporter guidelines: http://latinousa.org/about/contributors/.
If you’re pitching for the first time, please include a few sentences about your experience and a couple of samples of your work.
Anyway here are some of the themes we are thinking about – forgive the haste of the descriptions but we wanted to let y’all know what’s in the hopper as it’s hopping. Let us know if these themes jangle any of yo' bells.
Fear:
This is a show that looks at the way that fear affects our lives. The big ways that it affects us, and the small ways that it affects us and shapes what happens in our lives. We are looking at all kinds of fear from all kinds of angles, so if you have a story which involves someone facing up to a major fear, or someone realizing something about their fear, or something who learns something from an experience they've had with fear – or something who just has a great story about something that was genuinely terrifying to them – write us about it. At the moment, this is what we have: a story about a man who is biologically incapable of fear and how that affects his life. A sprawling (slithering?) story about fear that looks at fear bunch of different angles – including fear on the molecular level and the pentagon researchers that are putting it in a bottle, and also snakes. Also a “mapping fear” story about criminologists who look at how long fear lingers in a place after a death. Send your fear stories.
Struggle:
This show is trying to look at struggle. The main story is about a man who was born blind into a borderline abusive family, and how he believes struggling through that situation actually enabled him to become the bike-riding, free-walking, running, hiking blind man that he is. In other words, according to him? Struggle = good. No struggle = bad. He’s at the point where he believes helping disabled people is essentially like enslaving them. We’ve got a story about cross cultural struggle – how when a kid struggles intellectually in the West, people think the kid is weak because the kid doesn't have talent – but in the East – if you struggle you are just seen as strong – the WORST soccer player gets the award! — because greatness is seen as coming less from talent than from how hard you work. So we are looking for stories – which contradict the first story – maybe someone who was forced to struggle too much and gave up. Or a story where help… was really profoundly great and necessary for getting over a hump. Or maybe a story of how hard it is to watch your kid struggle and how you want to help them. Or any other story about struggling that you can think of – maybe you have a neighbor who went through unbelievable struggles (an immigrant) to come here, and now then set out to save their kids from struggle – and what they think of it now that their kids are grown up. If you can think of anything let us know.
100 Miles Apart:
There’s a strange thing in quantum physics where two particles, even if they are 100 miles apart, are still sort of… the same thing. Touch one, and the other one reacts in just the same way. It’s nearly impossible to comprehend… they are the same thing, the same particle, hopelessly and literally ENTANGLED… even though they are a hundred miles apart. Do you have anything that could fit thematically into this?
How Technology Changes Us
Alright. Maybe you’ve heard this topic on every show, magazine, and news program already… BUT! what story do you have about it? What’s the thing under your skin or that you’ve noticed or heard about as a result of the tide of computers, smartphones, internet, and apps taking over the way we communicate with each other. We’ve got a trilogy of cell phone deaths, how anonymity coaxes out our dark side, the weird things call centers are recording you do. What weird thing (good, bad, hopeful, unknown) have you been thinking about?
Maths
Or maybe “Paint by Numbers.” Stories of people putting numbers to the living world. If it can be done, what they can find out, what they can’t. Why you can’t divide by zero, but how, if you could you may gain entry to a secret universe– but really, a real one. How algorithms are controlling your world. Math stories in non-living world is ok too.
Storyhunters (When stories harm – medicine, reporting, therapy, trauma. When stories help.)
Grief Show (5 stages: denial – anger – bargaining depression – acceptance. Which one you got a story about? Doesn’t necessarily have to be about death.)
Upside-Down Show (there are more bugs than humans, there's a disease where a symptom is happiness, there is a town where the weird-crazies aren't weird or crazy. they are the norm!)
Alcohol Show
We are also looking for any absolutely fantastic story you know. With the one condition that it is fabulous.
So if something here hits a chord with something in your head or something you encounter in the world seems relevant, let us know. We are still figuring out how we might work with independent radio producers (actually we are still figuring out everything about what we are doing) so please have patience. I think that's all. Send ideas to Lmiller@npr.org and aspiegel@npr.org
Thanks and be good!
Lulu
Lulu Miller
NPR Science Desk
Dear Radio People,
I'm offering my Soup-to-Nuts weekend again in the San Francisco Bay Area on:
October 26 & 27, 2013.
Please see the flier below.
AND... check out my website! <<claireschoenmedia.com>> Under “Teaching” you can find feedback from previous “Soup-to-Nuts” students. Under “Biography” you can find out more than you’d ever want to know about me. Under “Productions” you can listen to the past 25 years of my audio work.
If you are interested in attending, please let me know asap, as the class sometimes fills quickly.
I hope you can join us in October.
Best, Claire Schoen
Claire Schoen Media
======================================================
A 2-day intensive
on
documentary radio production
Logistics:
This seminar will be held October 26 & 27, 2013.
Each day's class will run from 10 am to 5:30 pm,
including 6 hours of class work, plus lunch and breaks.
It will be held at Claire’s studio in Berkeley, California
Class will be limited to 8 students.
The cost of the 2-day seminar is $250.
The Course:
Through lectures, group discussion, Q & A, written handouts, and lots of audio demos, this two-day class will explore the ins and outs of creating a long-form radio documentary. Designed to meet the needs of mid-level producers, this seminar will also be accessible to individuals who have little or no experience in radio production.
Compelling audio documentary incorporates a creative weave of elements including narration, interviews, music, vérité scenes, character portraits, dramatizations, performances, archival tape and ambience beds. Students learn how these elements serve to paint a picture in sound.
Emphasis will be put on the production process. To this end, the class will examine the steps of concept development, research, pre-production, recording techniques, interviewing, writing, organizing tape, scripting, editing and mixing required to create an audio documentary.
Most importantly, we will focus on the art of storytelling. We will discuss dramatic structure, taking the listener through introduction, development and resolution of a story. And we will explore how character development brings the listener to the heart of the story.
The Teacher:
Claire Schoen is a media producer, with a special focus on documentary radio. As a producer/director, she has created over 25 long-form radio documentaries and several documentary films, as well as numerous short works. As a sound designer she has recorded, edited and mixed sound for film, video, radio, webstory, museums and theater productions. Her radio documentaries have garnered numerous awards including the SEJ, NFCB, Gracie, Clarion, PASS and New York International Festival. She has also shared in both a Peabody and a DuPont-Columbia award.
Claire has taught documentary radio production at U.C.
Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism, Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies, AIR's mentorship program, the Third Coast Festival Conference and other venues.
To Register:
Contact Claire Schoen
cschoen@earthlink.net • 510-882-6164 • www.claireschoenmedia.com
Scholastic Auditorium
557 Broadway, NYC
Saturday, October 19th
Celebrating its 3rd year, Radiovision celebrates radio's future as it takes on new forms in the digital age for the medium's fans, tinkerers, and future thinkers. It includes a day of talks, panel discussions and performances, featuring keynote speaker Laurie Anderson.
Programming highlights: New Streaming services and Community platforms – Native advertising and content creation – New funding models for radio and independent producers, plus sessions on radio essays, comedy podcasts, DJ tools and more.
MORE INFO:
TICKETS:
http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/424428
GUESTS INCLUDE:
Laurie Anderson, Alexis Ohanian (Reddit), Julie Klausner (Comedian), Ken Freedman (WFMU), Starlee Kine (This American Life), Alex Blumberg (Planet Money), Jonathan Goldstein (WireTap), Rob Walker (Author), Tom Scharpling (Comedian, WFMU), Jake Fogelnest (Comedian), Elena Razlogova (McGill University), Jon Ronson (Radio 4), Diana Kimball (SoundCloud), Liz Berg (WFMU) & More to Come!
pitch: Send all pitches in email form to: autry@urrepublic.com
The Asian American Writers' Workshop is looking to hire a freelance
WordPress/PHP Developer to troubleshoot and maintain the backend of our
three sites: The Margins (aaww.org), Open City (opencitymag.com) and
CultureStrike (culturestrike.net). See full description here.
link:
We plan to be sending out a more comprehensive email listing themes-in-progress in a few weeks. That list will have the shows we're planning for late fall and winter. But in the meantime, there is one show we're so excited about that we'd like to begin the work on it immediately. The show – tentatively titled "The Things You're Not Supposed to Talk About" – is being put together by TAL producer Sarah Koenig, so I'll just let her take it over from here.
You can reply to Sarah at this email address or sarah@thislife.org
Here's Sarah:
My mother lives by a set of rules about conversations. Things you're not supposed to talk about with anyone outside your immediate family – or even, sometimes, inside your immediate family. The list has eight topics on it, chosen not because they're taboo, but because they're potentially boring.
We'd like to do a radio show where we prove this list – and this mother – wrong. Our challenge is to find such interesting, entertaining stories on each of these supposedly off-limits topics, that by the end, the list and its limitations will seem feeble.
Here is the list of things you're not supposed to talk about:
1. Sleep. As in, how you slept the night before. "…Oh, I slept so horribly. I got to sleep easily, but then I woke up around 2 am because there was a dog barking and then I couldn't get back to sleep so I took a pill, but then… " You get the idea.
2. If you're a woman, you don't talk about your menstrual cycle. Nobody cares.
3. Your dreams. Again, no one but you finds them interesting.
4. Your health. Big, serious health scares are OK. But talk of aches and pains and the common cold and "oh, I just don't feel so good today… " – that stuff is deemed whiny and uninteresting.
5. Money. This one, as opposed to all the others, is because of old-school taboo, not because it's necessarily boring. Money talk is just not done; it's vulgar. So you shouldn't talk about how much you make or how much your house or your car costs or any of that stuff.
6. Route Talk. This is the number one off-limits topic for my mother. Any discussion of how you got somewhere – no. Especially how you got to where you've just arrived. As in, "Sorry we're late. We planned on coming in on I-94, but there was a detour because of an accident, so we took route 79 instead, and then got off on exit 12, which wasn't quite right because we ended up just north of…" etc. Again, it's just boring.
7. Weather. Just regular what's-it-like-out-today weather discussion. Once again, boring.
8. Your diet. What you're eating or not eating; your weight-loss regime. No one cares.
So that's the list. We already have a pretty good one for the menstrual cycle example, so we probably don't need pitches about that, unless they're really, really good. But for all the others, we need your stories! Again, we want stories on any of these topics that are the opposite of boring; they're so gripping or funny or surprising that you can proudly tell them at any dinner party — at which you can imagine my mother sitting, one of the guests, rapt. The stories can be serious, too – funny is great, but certainly not mandatory.
Thank you so much for your pitches and suggestions.
Best,
Sarah Koenig
This Work Study Program provides the opportunity to assist in the development and production of new radio programming at The Banff Centre.
Duties will include program production from concept to capture and delivery. The participant will assist in the cataloguing and digital transfer/ingest of recorded music, live concerts, and archival materials. In addition, you will work with other Banff Centre digital media assets including digital photographs, animations, videos, and archival sound recordings.
The participant will liaise with multiple Banff Centre departments and receive combined mentorship from our Executive Producer, Audio Programs and our Senior Audio Broadcast Producer.
The Work Study participant will develop research, communication, collaboration, and interpersonal skills through his or her work with Banff Centre staff, faculty, and artists. The participant will have the opportunity to engage in discussions about key trends in broadcasting, audio production and radio journalism; attend various seminars, workshops, and cultural events; and expand his or her personal network through participating in community outreach initiatives and project committees specific to audio content creation and broadcast.
Strong interest in music and audio
Strong oral and written communication skills in English and French
Excellent diplomacy skills, with a high level of confidence