Live listener feedback

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Friday, October 25th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. It’s time now for listener feedback.

And we are recording live in Asheville, North Carolina.

Managing editor J.C. Derrick is going to circulate the microphone.

J.C., hello!

DERRICK: Hey, good to see you guys. And great to see this awesome audience we have here tonight. Looking forward to our first question here.

EICHER: John Burke of Dallas, Texas.

BURKE: Thank you. Yeah, I have two. One is a comment. First of all, I really like it when Mary and Nick cross-examine John Stonestreet on Friday. It adds a little bit more tension to the program. So I really liked that, encourage that. And the other question, I always wonder what time at night or in the morning do you record the program? And there’s people missing because there’s more people involved and I hear other voices.

EICHER: There are enormous numbers of people involved.

DERRICK: Actually they are all in the room pretty much, uh, just spread out at the different tables.

But it really depends on what part of the program, uh, we’re talking about. So generally the later in the program, the earlier we can work on on it. So segment four is generally commentary that’s done, uh, days, sometimes, sometimes a week or two in advance. Segment three, how about it Paul? Sometimes it’s, it’s real early. Sometimes it’s a little bit last minute, but with those features, it varies how much we can get those done in advance. 

The prime part of the program that really has to be done kind of last minute is the segment two and obviously the newscast. So, um, throughout the day we’re, we’re sifting news. Our news editor, Leigh Jones and Kent Covington, our anchor, are the prime people who are leading that… the sifting the news. And then they produce the newscast and um, Kent voices that generally around seven o’clock in the evening or so. And then basically that’s the last thing. Generally that’s come in and from seven to midnight is when our audio engineers, uh, Johnny Franklin and Carl Peetz are putting together the program. So you’ve heard us say they stay up late to get the program to you early. So generally here on the, uh, on the East coast it posts a lot of times between midnight and 1:00 AM.

EICHER: And, and Mary, what about your cross-examination skills?

REICHARD: Yeah, yeah, that’s really fun. You’re talking about with John Stonestreet, right? I like to kind of put John on the spot, if possible, in not throwing softballs. So if that’s what you mean. Yeah.

DERRICK: Well, she also does a good job of trying to push him down the ladder of abstraction. That’s one of Marvin’s terms. Rather than talking up at what we call suite level, trying to give me an example.

REICHARD 2: Yeah. Tell me what to say to people. You know, I need, I need practical help. I also want to give a little shout out to Kent because even though the tech guys might be working on it. Kent’s a night owl, and if sometimes there’ll be things happen overnight and you’ll hear it on the morning news. It’s because Kent stays up really late.

DERRICK: That’s right.

THOMPSON: Hi, my name is Donald Thompson. I live in Bristol, Tennessee. JC, you guys appeal to a relatively broad audience or at least you hope to. Um, you have some pretty challenging comments with Culture Friday as we’ve heard with movie reviews and significant hate mail that comes in. I’m wondering how you tease out the issues. First of all, where you want to go and then how do you present, dare I say balance? Do you want to present balance or what is the, what is the lodestone on which you operate?

DERRICK: You know, events kind of dictate what we cover. Uh, what’s going on, what people are talking about, the cultural trends, the news of the day, you know, we do try to keep you…we want people to be able to listen and feel like they have a good sense of what’s going on. Obviously we can’t cover everything. Uh, but one thing that really helps us in terms of our approach is something Marvin, um, has, has created for us. Uh, it’s a “rapids classification”– a way of classifying the news. And so if something is, if the Bible has something clear to say about it, then that would be what for us is a “Class One Rapids” and it’s based on the whitewater rapids metaphor. You know, it’s, this is smooth waters, you know, the Bible is clear. Um, and that would be something like, uh, for example, there’s this idea in our culture where open marriages might be a good idea.

The Bible is pretty clear about adultery, you know, we don’t, we don’t really have to parse that out too much. Um, and then there’s a spectrum of things in between there and a level six, which would be something like say a specific trade deal that the Bible doesn’t necessarily say how we should, how should we should approach an issue like that? Most of our issues, many times land in the middle. Sometimes stories have multiple elements of, of various levels of the Rapids. But that’s something that really helps us to, you know, identify what’s important in terms of where can we bring the Biblical worldview to bear on particular stories. And then a lot of times those stories will, will receive priority since they’re distinctive from what you would get in the rest of the media. Not to say we don’t cover those obligatory stories obviously, but that’s where we put a priority.

EICHER: And there’s a difference too between balance and fairness. And balance, not necessarily, but fairness, absolutely and always. Yeah. So another question?

ALMAGUER: My name is John Almaguer from here in Asheville. And um, during the editorial retreat this week, I noticed, um, some discussion about like, how we handle (it) when different writers disagree on things. And I would like to just maybe, um, love it. I think a lot of other people build it. I would love to hear about that. If you guys would mind expanding on that a little.

EICHER: We can love each other and disagree on things.

DERRICK: We can. Absolutely. And we do. We do. And I think that’s healthy to have a range of opinions and approaches to, uh, the news and our opinions. And, uh, like I said, that the, the rapids system really gives us a, a framework to engage. And I think that’s, that’s the thing I love about it. It gets us out of the right-left paradigm that we so often see in the news and just in our lives. And it gets us into thinking, okay, take a step back. What does the Bible have to say about this? Does it have anything to say about this? And that’s how we engage when we may be coming at it from different angles. We can engage on that same ground because we all believe that the Bible is God’s inerrant word.

EICHER: We have time for one more.

HANNAH: I am Hannah from Hendersonville, North Carolina. And with The World and Everything in It traveling to different places, is there going to be a schedule online so people can see you guys live.

DERRICK: Yes, absolutely. That’s a great question. Um, our website is worldandeverything.org. That’s worldandeverything.org. And if you go there and click on the, uh, at the top there’s a banner that says “engage.” And on the drop-down menu, it says “Live Events.” And so our next one is in Nashville. Thank you for asking. It’s a great segue. So, if you’re near Nashville, anywhere in that area on November 21st next month, we will be in Nashville for our next live event.

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