Ira Glass: This American Sermon

When "This American Life" host Ira Glass (pictured) talks about storytelling, we listen.

Huffington Post's religion editor Paul Brandeis Raushenbush has resurrected an interview that he conducted for BeliefNet.com in 2008: "Ira Glass, Religion and the Empathetic Power of Storytelling."

Religion?

Yes -- when Raushenbush first stumbled upon Glass's award-winning radio show, he reveals, "the tone and content was so unlike anything else on the dial. For the next hour I was immersed in stories from other people's lives that were compelling, funny, tragic and -- to my religiously tuned ear -- sacred."

Though Glass was raised Jewish, he purports to be an atheist. But as you'll see in this excerpt below, he acknowledges that his goal is to create mini-sermons.

Q: What is the value of telling stories?

GLASS: The story is a machine for empathy. In contrast to logic or reason, a story is about emotion that gets staged over a sequence of dramatic moments, so you empathize with the characters without really thinking about it too much. It is a really powerful tool for imagining yourself in other people's situations.

The mission of our show [is] to take the people and present them at exactly life scale. So when we do a story about sailors on an aircraft carrier that is flying missions over Afghanistan in the early months of the war on terror, we didn't only go for the heroic gung-ho men and women who are traveling in harm's way, we go for what it is actually like for the majority of the people there. In the show we did, the first person you meet is a woman whose job it is to fill candy machines on the ship with candy. That's her job in the war on terror, which she laughs about.

Most people on the aircraft carrier don't fly planes, or shoot guns at bad guys to make the world a better place. They do laundry, they check the radar, they fix the intercom system. That's a lot of what it means to be in the military.

Q: How do you tell a story well?

GLASS: There is a kind of structure for a story that was peculiarly compelling for the radio. I thought I had invented it atom-by-atom sitting in an editing booth in Washington on M Street when I was in my 20s. Then I found out that it is one of the oldest forms of telling a story -- it was the structure of a sermon.

I actually realized it when I went home for Yom Kippur in Baltimore. We have a great rabbi. He is one of those guys whose sermons are the total entertainment package. There is one anecdote after another and then, of course, the Torah portion for that week. He then ties it all together with some heartfelt emotional moment.

So I'm with my sisters and my mother and he is giving the sermon and doing his thing, and I thought, oh, that's the structure of my radio show.

Q: Does every story that makes it onto "This American Life" have a moral?

GLASS: A moral overstates it. Every story has some thought about the world...

Read the whole terrific Q&A with Ira Glass here. There are lessons aplenty for visual journalists.

20 Free Multimedia Resources

Tim McLaughlin (right) is the Director of Multimedia at the Maine Media Workshops and Maine Media College. As a self-described "multimedia documentarian" he has worked with MediaStorm, the Eddie Adams Workshop, and the Rocky Mountain News.

Tracy Boyer's Innovative Interactivity blog invited him to contribute his list of "20 educational (and free!) multimedia resources."  It covers photography, audio, video, post-production, and Web design.

Read it here, or download a printable PDF file here. Lots to learn -- get clickin'!

5-Star iPhone App: 'This American Life'

True, you can hear each weekly episode of Ira Glass's This American Life on the radio, or subscribe to its podcasts, for free. And if you want to hear past episodes, going all the way back to its launch in 1995, you need look (or listen) no further than its online archives -- also free.

So we've never fully understood why folks would pay 99 cents per episode to download them on iTunes -- though we certainly wouldn't begrudge the esteemed public radio program any well deserved income. The economics of purchasing what you could just as easily procure for free makes no sense, but the sentiment we can certainly understand.

But now there's a new five-star 'This American Life' iPhone/iPod Touch app that makes sense both financially and pragmatically.

You get all the episodes (past, present and future) with lots of bonus goodies, for a one-time flat rate of only $2.99, or the price of only three individual episodes on iTunes. Yes, that's still more than "free," but when you see what a nifty portable package this is, you'll realize it's the bargain of the century. Heck, it's almost worth buying an iPhone just to get this app!

Now you can listen not only while you're driving, but when you're taking a stroll or working out or... But that's not why we're plugging it here.

We watch a lot of videojournalism stories to find the creme de la creme for KobreGuide.com. What we find, over and over, is that there are many that represent good video technique and journalism principles, but that they are deficient in their storytelling qualities. They may be decent reports, but that's what TV newscasts are for.

By contrast, videojournalism features beg for a central character and a dramatic arc -- not just soundbites and B-roll. That starts with fashioning story ideas that go beyond showing up and shooting an event. And it entails conducting interviews that compel subjects to relate a narrative, not just answer questions.

In radio, Studio 360's Kurt Andersen, Fresh Air's Terry Gross, and This American Life's Ira Glass lead the pack as masterful interviewers. Videojournalists would do well to listen carefully and learn from their example. (Fresh Air and Studio 360 can also be heard on their respective Websites and via free podcasts.) But This American Life goes beyond interviews and crafts non-fiction dramas -- with engaging protagonists (and antagonists), rising action, conflict, suspense, climax, resolution, and a moral.

So plunk down three bucks and treat yourself to hundreds of hours of invaluable tutelage from the master himself. But don't take our word for it. Let Ira explain it all for you:



Among the many "extras" you'll enjoy: audio of Ira Glass interviewing Terry Gross (and vice versa). "Nervewracking!"

'Anvil!' & 'Salt' Win Top 2009 IDA Awards

The International Documentary Association awarded 'Anvil! The Story of Anvil' (pictured) the top prize in its Distinguished Feature category. The documentary about a struggling heavy metal band, directed by Sacha Gervasi, last week won the IDA's Music category as well.

'Salt,' directed by Michael Angus and Murray Fredericks, took home the prize for Distinguished Short film. It documents photographer Fredericks' annual solo pilgrimage to the heart of Lake Eyre in a remote corner of South Australia.

It is a piece on the personal journey of the artist, the creative process and the landscape itself. Alone on the most featureless landscape on earth, Murray’s personal video diary captures the beauty of this bleak, empty and desolate environment – and provides the catalyst for an unexpected personal transformation.

The awards ceremony was hosted by Ira Glass ('This American Life' host/producer). "Watching the documentaries being honored tonight, I was struck over and over with how rare it is to enter the lives of these strangers so intimately," he said. "The filmmakers spend so much time with these people, it's rare to get so far inside somebody else's experience."

Complete list of IDA nominees and winners here.

Ira Glass Teaches Storytelling (4-part video)

The problem with many attempts at videojournalism is that they are passable reports, but are deficient in the storytelling department.

TV newsmagazine afficianados know that what engages an audience is more than merely an assemblage of facts and figures. We all respond better to a central character, dramatic conflict, and a sequential series of events that actually lead somewhere.

Nobody tells stories better than Ira Glass ("This American Life"), who clearly embraces the essential building blocks of storytelling -- on radio (audio) and television (audio & video). So who better to teach you the art of storytelling?

Here's a four-video series brimming with his excellent advice and tips:

Part 1:



Part 2:



Part 3:



Part 4:

The Ethics of Mixing Music and Videojournalism

Regina McCombs, a Poynter Institute visual journalism instructor, has created a powerful illustration of how soundtracks can affect a video story -- illuminating the debate as to whether they have a proper place in videojournalism.

In her article, "See How Music Changes a Story," she shows three versions of the same video story, "Mom Goes to War" (featuring a pilot preparing for her second Iraq deployment and her young son). The first is with natural sound. The second adds a slow, somber keyboard track. The third features an upbeat guitar/percussion track. (Both scores are GarageBand loops -- demonstrating how easy and accessible it is for even someone with a tin ear to provide professional sounding music background.)

McCombs poses the all-important question: how do the alternate versions change the way you react to, and feel about, the story?

The ethics of adding music to a nonfiction video story has long intrigued us. Is objectivity compromised? Is reality warped? Are emotions being artificially manipulated? We've posed these questions previously. It seems to be a gray area: "60 Minutes" would never do it, but the New York Times has.

McCombs advice is to use it sparingly, not as a crutch. In her helpful guidelines, she proposes that "music should be used to enhance or further the narrative, not to compensate for incomplete reporting." Further, she notes that "music is not a universal language. A breathtaking aria to one person is grating noise to another." And she makes an excellent point by noting that the art of scoring is an esteemed professional pursuit that should not be undertaken by amateurs, no matter how simple the software.

McCombs has gone the extra mile and researched and provided a set of ethics policies regarding music in news stories that have been adopted by leading media institutions, including the New York Times, National Press Photographers Association, CBC, Radio-TV News Directors Association, and American Press Institute.

Amy O’Leary, a multimedia producer at The New York Times, offers an in-depth look at how that newspaper got past those issues to mix music and journalism in two notable video projects: “Choosing a President,” and “Choking on Growth."

(Full video and transcript on Harvard's Nieman Journalism Lab.)

O'Leary says she learned everything she knows about journalism soundtracks during her stint as a producer at radio's "This American Life," but acknowledges the difference between that show's subjective first-person perspective and the Times' quest for objectivity: "The Times has long traditions and standards that they’re trying to figure out how to apply to the new media landscape. Music is one of those tricky areas."

Also from Nieman Journalism Lab, these invaluable basic audio tips from O'Leary, including what equipment to use when conducting interviews, and the proper way to use it.