Why do you love radio?

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Permalink Reply by Emily on July 1, 2010 at 10:54am

I used to be known as "Cello Emily." I had started violin at age 5, picked up the cello around age 8, graduated from music school was teaching cello students and playing shows. Only because I lived in Los Angeles, that meant spending 2, 3, 4 hours a day stuck on Los Angeles's maddeningly gridlocked freeways getting from student, to student, to venue, and back home. It wasn't long before I discovered KPCC. And it wasn't long after that before the cello lessons and club gigs felt more like an excuse to get in the car and do what I really wanted to do: listen to the radio. Suddenly storytelling seemed so much more tangible, immediate, and powerful than anything else I could do, and radio -- disembodied voices -- the most compelling medium. I had to figure out how to make this stuff.

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Permalink Reply by Genevieve on July 1, 2010 at 11:24am

There's a lot I love about public radio. I have a soft-spot for well-reported journalism that isn't commercialized and segmented; I love great stories told by genuine people; I think there's inherent value in keeping pubradio alive and getting young people involved in it.

I'm not a producer, but I work for PRX, so I consider myself a "mover" of great radio. I get to listen to TONS, highlight it for our home page and newsletters, talk about it, and work with producers and stations.

I always wanted to work in some kind of cause I believed in and in communications in some form, and PRX combined those fabulously. Before I got here I intern-reported at Talk Radio News Service/College Media News in D.C., where college-age students gather audio and are reporters on Capitol Hill. A couple years later I interned at washingtonpost.com in their City Guide (now Going out Guide) section, where I gathered info and fact-checked events and locations throughout the D.C. area. I also worked for my college theater/film/dance department and for a technology start-up. It was a good mix for working in public radio -- most of the pubradio people I know are well-rounded, have artistic interests and unique experiences.

My advice is to snatch up any internships you can get! My parents encouraged (aka "made me") apply for internships during college -- and I'm so glad they did. It made all the difference in getting a job quickly and in getting a job in a great field.

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Permalink Reply by Molly Adams on July 1, 2010 at 12:20pm

As a maker I love radio for a few reasons that are different from why I love it as a listener.

As a maker: Radio has so many constraints that it forces you to be creative. Technology is a big one, learning all your tools, this huge obstacle of not being able to literally show anything, and then (well, it used to be this much more, but thanks Internet) distribution, moving your work outside of where you were making it. So I like having to constantly be problem solving and paying attention to details.

As a listener: I really have to say the cliche thing (because cliches are true!) that radio is so open to imagination. You have all these constraints making it, but then as soon as it is set free, it becomes the property of listeners and they will see what they will in it. But it has so much room for ambiguity! And to me, ambiguity is at the heart of what makes something have an impact in an artistic, emotional way.

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Permalink Reply by Brit McGinnis on September 11, 2010 at 9:01pm

I love that radio that truly shows the essence of storytelling. Storytelling is all about conflict, we heard this all through middle school. Conflict itself, physical or mental, is the most beautiful thing in the world to me. It's flashes of real, raw feeling hidden weirdly among commonplace habits and facades. Cinema has taken the art of television even further, drawing people in with greater and greater conflicts between greater and greater bodies and groups. Radio does this too, like it or not. We're all still human; nothing works so well at drawing us in than conflict. But radio takes conflict in as PART of it's conflict. It is in no way the main course.

Here's the beauty of radio. In every medium, we're presented with Dick, Jane, Johann, and Din Jong as human beings in conflict. Television and cinema would exaggerate the conflict to no end. Conflict and turmoil are interesting. They're guaranteed an audience. But radio is the one medium that focuses on the four. The people of radio see conflict as one part of these four peoples' stories. And so we listen, because this is truly what we're after. Radio gives us what we actually want. Not conflict itself, but the stories of people strong enough to come through conflict.

I've only become a part of radio in the past year, though it's always been present in my life. I'd mix play-lists in my head, give commentary on the side of the playground while watching kickball games. My love of radio truly stems from my love of stories, and my utter failure at writing fiction stories. Radio is news and information told in a purely human voice. It's addictive.

I keep "making stories" not of my own free will. My life would be far easier if I could walk around without watching and listening to wee children, go to university without wondering what the person next to me is thinking, attend classes without personifying the numbers on the page. But that's my life. I have an ending curiosity into everyone's life, in all new circumstances. Because every circumstance is new to someone.

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