Jay Allison’s Brief But Spectacular Take on Finding Stories
OK, we’ll admit that we are pretty rabid fans of the PBS NewsHour and one of our favourite segments is Brief But Spectacular.
This evening’s edition featured award-winning independent broadcaster Jay Allison. Jay talks about his work being like a biologist: he goes out into the world, collects his material and then heads back to the ‘lab’ to figure out how to best present the story he has found. Like all experienced and talented practitioners of any art, he makes it look easy. It’s actually incredibly hard.
While Jay talks about finding and presenting stories for radio, virtually all of his thoughts apply equally well to podcasts and in particular those which feature two-way interviews. Like ours for example: The WorkNotWork Show. So much of what Jay says reflects our own experience in trying to ‘collect and prepare’ compelling stories from those with unique, fascinating professions.
Mr. Allison is Producer of The Moth Radio Hour and Founder of Transom, so his experience in the field is immense and his thoughts well worth your time. If your viewing is like ours, the all-too-short video will trigger at least a couple of “yes, exactly!” moments. Sometimes, though, it takes somebody as articulate as Jay to say really important things in really simple ways.
