Corrected Links to Podcasts

I didn’t realize that linking to a podcast’s location in iTunes was a problem. Here are links to my two podcasts’ websites:

Nordic Drones

Orson Welles On the Air

Links to Podcasts

Here are links to the two podcasts to which I subscribed last week.

Orson Welles on the Air
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=267928081

Nordic Drones
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=273570047

Okay, I Get It

This week’s readings convinced me that podcasting really is an important new phenomenon, not just a fad or simply “audio on the Web.” Seeing people walking down the sidewalk with wires dangling from their ears, I always blithely assumed they were pounding their brains with rap or death metal. Now I realize that they might be learning Japanese or working their way through Moby Dick.

The spoken word certainly does offer advantages over text, as the readings point out, because of its ability to convey inflection and emotion. There is also a great deal to be said about the authenticity of conversational speech versus both text and written speech. As a video producer, I used to write a lot of narrtions and hire professional announcers for the soundtracks of my programs. In recent years, I’ve almost entirely abandoned this practice, turning instead to casual interviews for telling my stories. This requires a lot of work (especially in editing) and gives me much less control over what is said, but I find that the end products speak to audiences in much more convincing, exciting ways than most written narrations.

Although I’m certainly excited about the possibilities of video podcasting, I can see that audio podcasting is probably the most versatile form, simply because it allows for multitasking. You can’t (or certainly shouldn’t) read or watch a video while driving a car, but there’s no reason why you can’t listen to the radio or a podcast. For boring tasks where people can work “on autopilot,” listening to spoken words is actually a great way to stay alert and energized.

I remember working as a filing clerk in a bank in Manhattan many years ago. If it hadn’t been for the ability to listen to Pacifica Radio on a headset, I probably would have dozed off, no matter how much coffee I consumed. I listened, fascinated and muttering under my breath, to live broadcasts of the Iran/Contra hearings and the confirmation of Judge Bork, while I sorted and filed thousands of little yellow pieces of paper that had no meaning to me whatsoever.

Perhaps one of the biggest arguments for the effectiveness of podcasting is its ease of production. It may take longer for people to listen to a podcast than to read the same words, but for most people it’s a heck of a lot quicker to say something than to sit down and write it. As one of the writers pointed out, corporations can simply use the telephone to gather media and shoot it right out onto the Internet in a matter of minutes: a huge savings in time and cost over, say, producing a newsletter or even an email blast.

I do worry a little, however, about the accuracy of information contained in podcasts. People are not only more casual in their style of communicating when speaking; they can also be very casual or even careless with their facts. I think we all have a tendancy toward broad generalization when speaking spontaneously and certainly favor colorful anecdotes over solid arguments. Recently, while researching a paper on media law, I transcribed parts of two podcasts into my notes and was struck by several innacuracies and careless statements that I doubt the speakers would have made if they had been writing on the same subjects.

Podcasting & Radio

I must admit that I’ve been a bit perplexed by all the hype about podcasting. I used to think you had to have an iPod to listen to a podcast. When I realized this was not true and finally got around to listening to my first podcast (Garrison Keillor, telling a good old Lake Wobegon story) it just seemed like a re-packaging of radio.

Since then I’ve slowly started to realize the power that podcasting can bestow on us humble folks. Like blogging, podcasting gives almost anyone the chance to speak to the world: to have their own radio station, virtually for free, with a broadcasting range far greater than the most powerful radio transmitter! But the fact that people can listen to a podcast any time they want, as Kathy said in our first class, is really the point at which podcasting parts company with radio.

There are similarities, as Kathy points out, between the early days of radio and poscasting in it’s current, nascent forms. Last night I got a little crazy and made a little movie (or should I call it a “video podcast?”) about this subject.

STORYTELLING TECHNIQUES

It is wonderful that we are focusing on storytelling skills for digital media in class this quarter. In a field crowded with technical terms and technical-sounding words like “functionality” and “metadata,” it is refreshing to be talking about a folksy, old-fashioned idea like storytelling.

I love telling, reading and listening to stories. I think all of us do. Whether it is the plot of a film, a joke or a piece of gossip, we all sit up and pay attention to a good story. Strangely, however, it is very difficult for me – and for most of us – to explain what makes a good story or even define what a story is.

Perhaps the reason for this is that stories, like art and music, speak more directly to our emotions and instincts than they do to our logic. Yes, there are definitions, limitations, structures and conventions that are used to create stories, but when you encounter a good story, none of these are apparent. Likewise, I believe that a lot of good writers and storytellers are not thinking about rules and structures as they weave their tales.

When you do start thinking about story structure, as we will be doing in this class, it is surprising to discover how many conventions we use routinely when we create stories and how similar seemingly different stories really are. Once learned on a conscious level, these conventions can certainly be useful as guidelines for good writing. If taken as more than guidelines – if applied as inflexible rules or in place of intuition – conventions can, however, impoverish storytelling and therefore impoverish communication.

I had never heard of the “inverted pyramid” theory of newspaper writing before, but I have certainly experienced it. It makes perfect sense, in a newspaper and in many other formats, to tell the most important part of the story first, and then gradually proceed to more and more detailed and (ostensibly) less and less important information. I found it fascinating to learn that this structure evolved to accommodate typesetters, who never knew exactly how much space they would have for a story and so needed to be able to cut it off at any point without leaving the reader hanging.

But the inverted pyramid is certainly not the only, nor the best writing structure available, as Roy Peter Clark suggests in his article “How to Write a Good Story in 800 Words or Less.” He encourages writers to experiment with conventional formats and he quotes Rick Zahler of the Seattle Times on “thawing out” the “Who, What, When, Where and How” of a story – in other words to bring some human warmth and passionate heat to the bare bones of a story.

Clark’s most important pieces of advice about writing are “focus, focus, focus,” and “revise to eliminate that which fails to support the focus.” Asking good questions, he writes, is the best way to find focus. Personally, I write in an almost entirely emotional manner, with virtually no idea of where I am heading, so I frequently get into a briar patch. The best way I have found to get out of trouble is to stop and ask myself what I am really trying to say, and then simply write down my answer.

I am glad that Kristen Zibell pays tribute to the wisdom of George Klare’s 1963 essay on “Useful Information for Communicators.” Ironically, however, I find that writings from communications scholars and like Zibell are often among the driest and least effective pieces of communication I have ever read. Zibell uses what I consider to be the most over-rated and least imaginative writing formats in existence: “Say what you are going to say, then say it, then say what you have said.” Sure, I understand that this format makes it easier to skim an article; it helps the reader understand where he is and how much further he has to go; and that repetition helps to drive ideas home. Maybe this is the best format for scientific articles and other stuff I don’t plan to read, but when I am subjected to this kind of article or lecture, I find it as boring as a ritual incantation. Where is the drama? Where are the surprises? These are very important elements of storytelling and for keeping the audience engaged. Isn’t this what we want to do? I have read academic papers that were as thrilling as detective novels, and you can be sure the authors did not give away their surprise endings in their opening paragraphs by using this tired writing formula.

I was not especially impressed with Jacob’s Neilsen’s “F-Shaped Pattern for Reading Web Content.” Of course people are going to scan websites in an F-shaped pattern, because that is the way most websites are designed! Most web designers put a header running across the top, a navigation column running down the left, and the most important content running horizontally just above the middle of the page, so naturally most people’s eyes are going to go to those places first. If trends in web design change and important content migrates to different places, I predict that people’s scanning patterns will change accordingly.

Nathan Wallace presents some very good pieces of advice in his weblog post on “Web Writing for Many Interest Levels.” His main theme is that web writing needs to be structured so that it is equally accessible to everyone from readers with little interest to those with great interest. He also presents some intriguing ideas on making web pages as IN-ACCESSIBLE as possible to readers who have no interest. This concern seems odd at first, but Wallace points out its economic importance, writing that accidental visits to websites by people with no interest in the subject matter “wastes valuable bandwidth and server resources.”

The techniques Wallace presents for making sites accessible to multiple audiences include the use of descriptive headers, summaries and highlighting of important information within paragraphs. These techniques, he writes, allow readers who are in a hurry or have limited interest to quickly scan a website or an article and get basically the same information as a more dedicated reader, only with less detail. This may be true, but personally I find this method of presentation (which he utilizes fully in his own weblog) to be annoying if I am fully reading, rather than skimming, a piece of writing. The headers, summaries and paragraphs are often redundant, and the use of highlighting and frequent headers and paragraph breaks I find distracting. Rather than a nice flow of text with a few headers down a page, the type in Wallace’s format looks to me as if it had been splattered onto the page. My eye jumps all over the place involuntarily. While trying to read a paragraph, the next header or bolded text is always calling to me from my peripheral vision, keeping me from concentrating fully on what I am reading.

I suppose this reaction marks me as being of an older, non-multitasking generation of dinosaurs. I get distracted easily. I mean, I can’t even watch television any more because of the station logos broadcasters have started superimposing in the corner of screens during programs. Every time the logo fades in, my eye goes to it. I read it, I think about, and I can no longer fully enjoy the program. Then, if the station starts scrolling advertisements for upcoming shows across the bottom of the screen, I completely lose all concentration or enjoyment. When I was growing up, words scrolling across the bottom of the screen meant that a world leader had just been assassinated or something like that.

Now that everyone is so overloaded with information, I guess it is necessary to make our writing scannable and grab people’s attention by the scruff of the neck, so to speak. I guess we have to think of readers and website visitors as people walking through a carnival midway being shouted at by vendors on every side. We need big signs that flash in neon colors while we shout “Pea-NUTS! Step right up! Get yoooooooooor RED HOT PEA-nuts!!!!!” I guess it is important to pay attention to studies and eye movement charts and follow the guidelines of writers like Wallace. But I think that it is also important to remember that we also have opportunities, as writers and designers, to be leaders: to create new and meaningful ways to capture and hold our readers’ attention, rather than being slaves to trends or using cheap, manipulative techniques. If we create good content, perhaps we can draw our readers into our pieces without having to simultaneously present them in Cliff Note form.