Third Coast Pocket Conference

The world of podcasting has become a crowded one. With a bevy of competing styles and purviews, having a unique voice is an increasingly valuable commodity... both artistically and financially. But finding that voice is easier said than done, and requires a willingness to take risk. So how do we take real, calculated risk? In this session, Love + Radio's Nick van der Kolk will examine methods for taking chances, maintaining a sense of play, and experimenting toward new forms and new ideas.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

For some people, making great radio is easy. Ben Calhoun has no idea what those people are talking about! For him, making radio is hard, beset by self-doubt -- and he finds it’s often easy to get stuck. As a former This American Life producer and Radiolab contributor, and WBEZ's current VP of content and programming, Ben’s had a chance to watch a lot of smart people beat back the forces of creative despair. In this session, he’ll share a few strategies he’s hatched, many he’s stolen, and pass on some concrete tools for un-slumping your situation. Recorded at the 2016 Third Coast Conference.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Never underestimate the power of a finely crafted intimate narrative. These “small stories” of everyday life have the potential to bring listeners in close to reveal the complexities and ambiguities of the world around us. Celebrated author, filmmaker and radio journalist Alex Kotlowitz will share tips on finding compelling narratives, interviewing subjects to elicit unforgettable tape, and crafting a seemingly small story that speaks to something so much bigger. Recorded at the 2016 Third Coast Conference.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

A session about the joy and fear of pursuing stories without any idea of how they're going to succeed, or if they're going to succeed at all. Reply All’s PJ Vogt shares some tricks for making these kinds of off-the-map stories work. He’ll talk about how you gather tape for a story you don't yet have a map for, how to include your original sense of wonder and discovery in your final script, and how to take stories that feel ordinary and insist on them becoming more strange. Recorded at the 2016 Third Coast Conference.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

You’re sent to cover breaking news – a natural disaster or a large-scale accident or crime. You don’t have much time, or much warning. How do you bring back sound-rich, interesting tape, that makes listeners perk up their ears? The Northwest News Network’s Phyllis Fletcher manages breaking news coverage as an editor for reporters throughout the urban and rural Northwest. Phyllis walks us through a triage system she’s developed to partner with her reporters, and plays excellent examples of telling breaking news stories in sound. Recorded at the 2016 Third Coast Conference.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Can a documentary make you dance? Turn you on? Make you jump in fear? We get under the skin of documentary's visceral possibilities, exploring how we edit to impact the listener's body as much as their mind. Falling Tree Productions' Eleanor McDowall delves into audio erotica, unsettling horror and dynamic action sequences to examine the creative possibilities of playing with the physical impact of audio. Recorded at the 2016 Third Coast Conference.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In this session for editors - or anyone who wants to help someone else shape a story – Gimlet Media’s Jorge Just explores the delicate art of making good things better. Jorge walks you through various editorial processes (group edits, one-on-one edits, even walking edits), and plays samples from pieces at different stages of evolution to demonstrate the editor's role in how stories are conceived, developed, and sometimes killed. Learn techniques to help others make their very best work. Recorded at the 2016 Third Coast Conference. Follow along with the slides from Jorge's session: https://goo.gl/iUqcUy  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

A bonafide Third Coast tradition, this session pulls back the curtain on one of the most difficult and important skills every producer needs to master: how to pitch a story. AIR’s Pitch Panel puts producers directly in front of editors, selling their stories with a little help from hosts, WNYC’s Emily Botein and Katie Bishop. Recorded at the 2016 Third Coast Conference.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

A bonafide Third Coast tradition, this session pulls back the curtain on one of the most difficult and important skills every producer needs to master: how to pitch a story. AIR’s Pitch Panel puts producers directly in front of editors, selling their stories with a little help from hosts, WNYC’s Emily Botein and Katie Bishop. Recorded at the 2016 Third Coast Conference.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Reveal producers Ike Sriskandarajah and Laura Starecheski will show you how they create gripping radio out of stacks of documents and endless columns of numbers. You don’t have to be an investigative reporter to come away from this session with some jewels of knowledge to set in your radio crown. You just have to be someone who’s ever stumbled across a shocking statistic, had your mind blown… and then struggled to turn it into a sound-rich radio story with characters and a narrative arc. Recorded at the 2016 Third Coast Conference.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Audie Cornish and Sean Cole came up in radio together — smoking on the front steps of WBUR in Boston, puzzling over stories. Now Audie is a co-host of NPR's All Things Considered and Sean is a producer at This American Life. But they still talk all the time about different ways of making radio, and how the divide between "newsy news" and "fun storytelling" might just be in our heads. They bring that conversation on stage and play samples of their favorite things for each other, and for you. Recorded at the 2016 Third Coast Conference.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In this session, Nikole Hannah-Jones (The New York Times) and Chana Joffe-Walt (This American Life) talk about how to build a story structure that will make listeners care about even the most familiar, entrenched social problems. They discuss the narrative and reporting techniques they used to help resurrect a long-dead discussion of school segregation in their Peabody-winning This American Life collaboration, and how to translate longform print journalism into the language of radio. Recorded at the 2016 Third Coast Conference.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

You don’t want your audience to listen half-heartedly – you want them to be so deeply engaged, they’re a little surprised when they bump down to earth at the end. So how do we create audio that doesn’t just entertain, but enchant? UK producer Cathy FitzGerald shows how she hooks her listeners: head, heart, guts and soul. In this session, she offers practical tips on creating an intense, tangible world through scripting, structure and surprise – and then considers the magic that happens when we take a step back and let listeners make sense of it for themselves. Recorded at the 2016 Third Coast Conference.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

With the ink on the ballots still wet, Third Coast dives into the past year of political reporting. How were journalists most - and least - successful covering the presidential election and its voters? And: where do we go from here? Bob Garfield ( On the Media ) moderates with panelists Zoe Chace ( This American Life ) Maria Hinojosa ( Latino USA ), and Sam Sanders (NPR). Recorded at the 2016 Third Coast Conference.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.