Lessons in sound journalism

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Monday, August 9th.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: And I’m Paul Butler.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: voices from the past.

Many of the voices you hear today have been on the program from the early days. But some of our old friends have moved on to other things. In honor of our anniversary celebration, we invited several of them to come back and share reflections of their time at WORLD Radio. Today, we’ll hear from four of them.

REICHARD: First up, our very first staffer who has some fond memories of one of her first field assignments, interviewing Senator James Lankford.

DARNELL: I’m Christina Darnell, and I was one of the first WORLD Radio team members. I was hired out of the WORLD Journalism Institute. I had just graduated with my Masters in journalism and I was excited to be doing one of my first field assignments in Washington, D.C. At that point, I had been working mostly from home. And the work was professional, but the clothes, are not so much. So, I was excited to be in D.C., I was dressed up. I was wearing a suit. I had these black boots with heels. And it didn’t take me long to realize that I had not thought that through all that well.

And Lankford was a busy man. He didn’t have time to sit in his office all day and record interviews, so we had to walk and talk. And I remember walking out onto the tiled walkway and the click and clack of my boots echoing through what felt like the entire building. And I panicked, knowing that sound was going to record louder than anything else. And so I had to bend my knees, almost like a squat, and angle the heels up and walk on my tip toes. And so here I am, trying to maintain some shred of dignity and professionalism, asking serious questions along the hallway of some of the most powerful politicians in the world, looking and feeling like a toddler stumbling around in her mother’s shoes.

And Lankford, thankfully, took it in stride, didn’t miss a beat in answering questions. But I also distinctly remember him trying not to laugh. And I learned that day that professional is good but practical is better. Also, that sound is one of those senses that we tend to underestimate and undervalue the impact that it has on our lives. I think people who are in the audio industry probably have a better grasp of that. But I think that it’s relevant for everyone.

COCHRANE: I’m Michael Cochrane, and I was one of the first members of the WORLD Radio team. It’s hard to believe it’s been 10 years. I remember attending the November, 2011, WORLD Journalism Institute in Asheville, North Carolina. Mary Reichard and I were both in the same class and both of us had a keen interest in WORLD’s new weekly radio program. Joseph Slife, the founding producer of The World and Everything in It was there in Asheville to talk about his and Nick Eicher’s dream of producing a daily radio program. Creating content for a daily news and features program was a huge task and Joseph was looking for recruits from our class. I eagerly signed on as WORLD’s first technology reporter. But with only a week’s worth of formal journalism training, and zero experience in radio production, I had my work cut out for me.

The first thing I learned is that sound is really important in radio. That may seem obvious, but a good radio feature shouldn’t consist solely of the sound of my own voice. It needs to be full of sound clips that paint an audio picture for the listener. A good produced piece will have, not only clips of people speaking, but even sound effects. For a piece I did in 2014 about the exploration of a 2700 year old Pheonician shipwreck, we found a background track of a scuba diver’s bubbles that really made it come to life. In my time with WORLD Radio, I’ve reported on more than 150 technology stories, ranging from flying cars to advances in medicine and even contemporary linguistic phenomena such as up-talk and vocal fry. And in all those years of reporting, I worked with and learned from some of the most amazing and talented colleagues. Mary, Nick, Joseph, Kent, Carl, and so many others. So, happy 10th anniversary WORLD Radio. I can’t wait to hear what’s in store for the next 10 years.

OLASKY: I’m Susan Olasky. For about a decade I was a reporter and story coach for the podcast. I remember the first time I did a feature story. It was 2012. Nick gave me a mic, a recorder, some operating instructions, and sent me on my way.

The story was about our international Hope Award winner in Ghana. I took that recorder everywhere. At night, I would upload the sound to Dropbox using the hotel’s very slow internet. I brought back great ambi: car on a bumpy highway, a woman talking about her Tupperware business, singing, sewing machines starting. But I messed up on recording voices. I didn’t get the microphone close enough to people’s mouths.

That’s one difference in writing for radio. Tech matters, and bad sound makes for bad radio. We were blessed to have talented technical people, who made lemonade out of my lemons. And gradually, I improved. After a while, I began editing feature stories for others and then began recruiting writers from our mid-career class to join the gang. The podcast is more polished now, but I remind myself not to despise the day of small beginnings.

SMITH: I'm Warren Smith and I was one of the first members of the WORLD Radio team. I vividly remember meetings—sometimes harried and frantic meetings—with Nick Eicher, Joseph Slife, Kevin Martin, Marvin Olasky, and other members on the WORLD team in the months before we launched. Many of us had previous radio experience, so we thought we knew what we were getting into, but we came face-to-face with the old saying, “You have your whole life to get ready for the first broadcast, but only 24 hours for the second one!”

We made a lot of decisions in those first months that we had to revisit. A lot of change, adaptation, and flexibility ensued. We had to learn new processes and technologies. We had to adopt a schedule and pace that was far different from that of the magazine and the website. But I’m also amazed that some of the decisions we made then have stood the test of time. A commitment to Permanent Things. Ideas, biblical ideas, that don’t change. A relentless commitment to a biblical worldview, and to serving you, the listener, with content that you simply can’t get anywhere else.

It’s been one of the great privileges of my professional life to have been a part of WORLD radio from the beginning and to continue to be a part of it—through the “Listening In” podcast—today, a decade later. Please pray that we will remain faithful to the biblical foundation on which WORLD Radio rests. And here’s to another 10 years of WORLD Radio, all for the glory of the great and good God we serve.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.