Voice to the Voiceless: Part 7

A Look at What I’ve learned & How It Impacts My Podcast

The last six weeks, I’ve been busy researching popular podcasts and analyzing how they are put together and where they put emphasis on their story facilitating process. This research has been completed in order to answer the questions: How is my project unique? And why hasn’t it been done before? This week, I will be reviewing all I have learned and how it has impacted my project.

From the The Society of Professional Journalists, I learned:

1. Seek sources whose voices we seldom hear.
2. Give voice to the voiceless.

These directives drove me towards my target interviewees and gave me a vision for what my project was to be: Senior citizens.

No-one else is focusing directly on them. StoryCorps, The Story Trek, and Scene On Radio all have a target demographic that is extremely wide, allowing for anyone of any age to have a part in it, but at the same time not focusing on any single people group. As much as I believe what they’re doing is beneficial, it leaves a hole, which my project can fulfill. My project searches for the people who likely cannot get out to tell their stories and therefore cannot be reached unless I find them and give them the opportunity to tell their story.

From StoryCorps, I learned:

1. People like to be heard
2. People like to participate in making history
3. People like to listen to stories they connect with emotionally

These lessons furthered my reasoning to interview senior citizens because unfortunately, senior citizens are often forgotten.

Many people by this age are in senior living facilities in which they are often rarely visited by anyone at all. This makes my interaction with them as important for them as it is for me. They are frequently more than happy to share their stories because they enjoy participating in history, and they enjoy passing on their experience and advice to the next generation. They like to be heard, and so if I can provide them with a listening ear, the experience becomes as much a gift to them as it is for my podcast audience. And after 80 years of life changing events, surely they have had so many emotions, struggles, and contact with other human beings that anyone can relate or at least empathize with their stories.

From The Story Trek, I learned:

1. Be flexible and listen because some things are better unplanned.
2. The stories can change the interviewer, as well as the interviewees and audience.
3. Anyone can have a story, regardless of age, occupation, or mental ability.

These ideas reminded me to see this project as not just for another audience, but to understand how it was impacting me.

I have to remind myself that the project is not simply the finished podcast, though that’s what most people hear and understand. The project starts even before I enter the room with my H4N Zoom Digital Voice Recorder and my notepad. It’s happening as I ask the questions. My interaction with my interviewees is as important — if not more so — than the editing I do later for the final draft. I have to remind myself to listen, to interact with these people, and sometimes to go off script, to feel their emotions with them, and to just let them tell their story because they all have one, regardless of age, occupation, or mental ability.

From Scene On Radio and John Biewen, I learned:

1. The hard questions are the ones that need to be asked.
2. Sometimes telling the larger story is just as memorable as the individual’s.
3. Do what you’re passionate about.
4. Make sure the podcast has a strong focus.

Though the format of this particular podcast is a bit different from my own, I still found some helpful suggestions, especially along the line of interviewing techniques.

Sometimes I am concerned that what I am doing is of little consequence because I’m just one guy from Eugene, Oregon. But Biewen helped me realize that whatever I’m able to accomplish is both part of telling the larger story of America, as well as doing something I’m passionate about: telling the stories of people who couldn’t otherwise. And with that, comes the responsibility to find the best story, even if it means asking uncomfortable questions. I shouldn’t be concerned with how many people are listening, or reading, or watching. The only things that really matter are the people on the other end of the microphone.

So Why Hasn’t This Been Done Before?

I don’t completely know. I do know that sometimes finding the right people to talk to in a senior living facility is difficult, but not much more so than finding people from any other walk of life. And their stories certainly aren’t any less important. In some ways, it makes the stories they tell that much more essential to record.