Whenever we look through a family album of old photographs, most of us ask "Who is this?" not "Who was this?" Photographs are always present tense, and so are all the elements of life the enrich us. This blog considers music, film, books and other communications that call out to me always in the present tense.
Hey, look! There's a fly on the wall!
What do these people have in common: Baseball Hall-of-Famer Joe Cronin, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, Titanic explorer Robert Ballard and bluesman Taj Mahal? These are all folks whom I interviewed for newspaper feature stories … long rambling interviews that filled notebooks.
Some interviews were a hunt, a search for specific information about specific topics. But some interviews were to gather, just a bit of prodding to lead the subject to reveal himself and his story. Those rambling interviews always seemed the best. You never know what’s inside someone’s head. For a man like Joe Cronin, who spent his life in a baseball dugout, spinning yarns came as naturally as breathing. Hearing him speak of Jimmie Foxx and Ted Williams and Lefty Grove was like watching a movie.
If the editor gave me enough time, I’d spend an afternoon with the subject, and we’d talk for hours. Then, back in the newsroom, circling the good stuff in my notes with a red pen, I’d discard 99 percent of the material and make a readable story. The story was all about them, the interview subjects. It was their story, their voice … I was non-existent, a fly on the wall.
Then along comes podcasting. In comparison, interviewing for a podcast feels like showbiz, except that – thankfully – you don’t need makeup.
My first attempt at a podcast interview was a debacle.
I thought I’d have a nice, sit-down interview with an interesting subject and clean it up a bit in the editing process. Despite reading how-to guides for creating podcasts, when the moment came, I simply fell back into the old newspaper habits and let my subject run on … for 90 minutes. Afraid to interject and talk over the recorded interview, I lost control and, even though it was a very interesting chat, I lost the project.
After three hours of editing, I learned that you can’t edit 90 minutes into 20 minutes so that it maintains continuity, that thread of give-and-take that makes podcasts so engaging.
So I asked town selectman Seth Taylor if he would return, to which he graciously agreed. I hadn’t blown an interview … well … in this millennium, but I also have shoes that older than podcasting.
I briefed Seth about what I messed up the first time, and off we went. The interview took on a podcast cast. Yeah, there's a strange croaky-creaky sound early in the interview, and, yeah, I couldn't manhandle the HTML enough to put a nameline under Seth's photo in the podcast widget. But this is progress. I can’t wait for the next one!
