My Letter to David Candow
The “Host Whisperer” taught me everything I know about radio journalism. Then one day, he asked me for some advice.
In February of 2010 I started a new job as the senior digital producer for the public radio program Marketplace. I was definitively a print journalist at the time, having spent more than a decade writing for magazines, newspapers and online outfits. The language of radio journalism was foreign to me. “Theater of the mind” as they call it was a different beast than print entirely — bury the lede, don’t include the numbers, write in the present tense, introduce a source by name then follow with the quote.
I could have drowned in the journalism culture shock had it not been for David Candow.
My first month on the job I had the rare opportunity to participate in a week-long radio training bootcamp with David, who was better known in the business as the “Host Whisperer.” You probably have never heard of him, but his legacy in public radio runs deep. His storytelling and voice-training techniques are practiced by nearly every public radio host and reporter on the air.
Today I learned on Twitter that David had passed away. I think of him often in my life and work, and so it prompted me to dig up an old email exchange we had in which he solicited me for advice about what a radio reporter could learn from digital.
——-Original Message——-
From: David Candow [mailto:dcandow@cogeco.ca]
Sent: Sun 4/25/2010 5:23 PM
To: Berger, Matt
Subject: The Web
Hi Matt,
I hope this finds you well!
I wonder if you had a chance to consider the points which you took from the course that would work if I had a room with Web and Radio people in the same room?
Any pointers you could give me would be most appreciated!
Best regards,
David
From: “Berger, Matt” <mberger@americanpublicmedia.org>
To: “David Candow” <dcandow@cogeco.ca>
Sent: Monday, April 26, 2010 12:09 AM
Subject: RE: The Web
David:
I can’t thank you enough for all that I learned from your radio training course. I couldn’t have imagined a better introduction to public radio journalism for a print guy like me, and it helped to be in the company of so many talented colleagues.
So in return, I hope the following will be of some service to you as you travel to more newsrooms around the continent where digital journalism is becoming ever more important and essential to their success.
To begin, it’s important to remind radio journalists what they are up against in the digital age. They are competing against newspapers, television, magazines, online-only start-ups with deep Silicon Valley pockets, and an army of bloggers capable of building a media empire from their basements with free software and a little ingenuity.
To that end, radio can’t survive on the Web if it doesn’t adapt to the medium and really bring something unique to the table that makes it stand out and get noticed. That means in addition to producing great story telling with audio, they must also apply those skills through text, photos, video, and social media.
Before I get to that, let me share something even more important than telling a good story with multimedia. That is getting someone to see it. Google and search engines account for the majority of traffic to news websites, and your content has to show up in a search result if you want it to be read. Headlines have to be clear and straightforward and written just as a person would type it into a search box. Even more important for radio journalists to remember: Google can’t listen to audio or watch a video, so those must be accompanied by text with relevant keywords and phrases to be seen by search engines.
Once you’re online content can be found, then it takes the skills you taught us to engage a reader so they’ll spend time with your content and come back to it.
The radio technique I found most relevant online is the practice of speaking with a volume and tone targeted to an audience six feet away. Online audiences seek that same authenticity and personality from their information sources. If you succeed, audiences will do more than just talk about your story at the dinner table. They’ll post a comment, or respond to it on their blog or Facebook wall. They’ll share it with a friend at a dinner party on their iPhone. They’ll recommend it on an aggregation site like Digg or Huffington Post and drive thousands of other readers to your site.
The next technique I took from your course was more practical, and I hope it will play out in the Marketplace newsroom immediately. That is to train reporters to carry cameras (or freelance photographers) on their reporting trips. You noted that this helps a radio reporter capture the details for colorful storytelling. On the Web, good photographs provide a much richer package and allow editors to promote a piece prominently on the homepage. The same goes for a video camera.
Another technique that I plan to take advantage of with Marketplace reporters is the focus statement. You taught us to use this technique to quickly capture the essence of your story from beginning to middle to end in a short declarative statement. With the addition of a few more paragraphs, I call this a blog post.
On the topic of blogs, you taught us another technique that relates, and that is to write your emotions into your script. In a blog, this is not only accepted but encouraged. I don’t mean that you should keep the four-letter words, but a good blog post should be passionate and real. If you don’t care about what you’re writing, then let someone write it who does care, because that’s what people want to read.
There’s definitely more to all of this so if you have any comments or questions don’t hesitate to continue the conversation.
Cheers,
Matt Berger
Sr. Web Producer, Marketplace.org
Years after I sent David this email it came back to me in a round-about way from a colleague at a public radio station in San Diego. Apparently, David had been forwarding my note to radio reporters who were making the switch to digital. That, like David’s mentoring and advice, means a lot.
