Radio Is Life

Re Sound

Those of you that follow this on Facebook may have noticed my status update yesterday about life coming tumbling down around me. I’ll admit, some shit went down and I came out the sore looser in the circumstance, that’s really all I need to say on the matter. My good mate Zac seems, often, to know how to say what I need to hear in these moments and this time around was true of that again. all Zac really said was, ‘go make some great radio and be inspired’.

I haven’t had the time, the energy or really the motivation recently to make anything so I took the advise in another way and decided to scroll through the list of inspiring podcasts from around the world that I listen to regularly and see what I could find. One of the most amazing podcasts that I frequent is ‘Re Sound’ the podcast put together each week by the team at Third Coast International Audio Festival each week the podcast focuses on their favourite recent pieces of radio that have been produced around the world. By that fact alone it is already an amazing thing but when you then add a particular show like the one they had this week, it becomes one of the most inspiring, intellectually challenging, thought provoking podcast radio programs available to your ears.

Before I go any further perhaps a little more insight into what the concept of third coast is, the international audio festival invites people from around the world to submit their stuff for air play in America via NPR and of course around the world via the podcast. The producers put together a weekly show with a theme and play either excerpts or entire pieces by different people which have a connection too that theme. The guys from This American Life and Radiolab who I have mentioned before on here have both had stuff played, as well as a decent amount of stuff coming from Radio National among others. Aside from the weekly podcast, each year the team also invite a panel of judges and a live audience to a conference where winning pieces are given awards in different categories. The ceremony also includes guest lectures from well respected producers.

This weeks re sound podcast was the one that is attached to the awards ceremony where they played excerpts of the speeches given by the guests. Among the guest speakers this time were Nancy Updike (producer from This American Life) and Robert Crowlich (Co presenter of Radiolab). The information, advise and just general education that is given on the topic of radio in these lectures is amazing.

At one point one of the guests plays a fantastic example of how to deal with what is a common place problem in the field of radio interview… how do you get a phd level scientist to give you their information in a way that can be understood by the lowliest of dip-shits that may be in the audience, how to hold their interest? A piece of audio is played as an example, the audio is an interview being conducted by NPR environment reporter John Neilson. In the piece Neilson is talking to a staff member from a zoo and he is asking the guy what they have done to make their public safe from bird flu, why should the public feel ok about coming to the zoo at this time? The guest, the expert from the zoo, starts to ramble on about research that makes no sense. Neilson stops the guy and says… ‘nah hang on, picture this, I’m the lonely drunk at the end of the bar and I’m an absolute dip-shit and I’m convinced that I’m going to die if I go to the zoo… now re assure me’ the guest stops and then with an amazing ten second grab of audio clarifies everything that I, as a listener, want to know.

That simple example of making great radio is among a number of others in what I believe to be one of the most informative and encouraging pieces of audio I have listened to in a number of years.

when I was 13 the owner of the local book store recommended that I read ‘Tomorrow When the War began’, the first in a seven part series of books by Australian author John Marsden. The books follow the lives of 16 year old Ellie and her six friends who decide to go camping for the weekend instead of going to the show with the rest of the town. when the kids get back to town after their weekend away things in town have changed and the lives of these seven teenagers are, in that moment, changed for ever.

When I started reading the series the first three books had been released, I was so engaged in the story that I read those three books in the space of five days. What was going to happen next, where would they go, how would they survive. On another level I also felt some kind of excitement and engagement in the story in that I too was a teenager growing up in a country town, I understood the idea of having friends who lived in very remote locations, I got the idea of knowing the back roads, paddocks and river beds better than anyone because you lived and breathed it day in day out.

After the five day marathon I hit a major hitch in my adventure… The next book wasn’t due out til December, ahh, that’s 11 months away. So I waited, and waited. Between 13 and 18 I bought the next book, read it in two or three days and then waited again and slowly but surely worked my way through the series. I remember the day the last book came out, my family were on Holiday in Canberra, I spotted the book in a shop the first day we were there and then didn’t leave my room for three days.

I lived and breathed these books for those few days and then waited and waited til the next installment in the series would arrive and then do it all again.

The most amazing thing about these books is that they are written by an older man who manages, in the most amazing way, to create the lives and personalities of these young people. More than that, the story is told from the perspective of a 16 year old girl and done so very well.

When I finished the seventh book I remember feeling a sense of dread at the thought that at some point it would, more than likely, become a film. What would they do to the images of my teenage imagination, what if I had not pronounced the name of the town properly or thought of the show ground and ‘hell’ in completely different locations to what Marsden was thinking. Would these changes ruine the story for me. More importantly, how would the actors manage to capture the personalities and relationships of these seven young friends as created by the author, I dreaded this idea.

I heard rumor of the film going into pre-production while I was at uni in 2006 and the fear set in, what would they do to this amazing story. Earlier this year I spotted the preview on youtube and I freaked, not only was there a good chance that they might destroy this story but now I could see that two of the main characters were being played by cast members from ‘Home and Away’ and ‘Neighbours’….Noooo!!!!

I went to see the film on the first day it was showing, I had to see it as the story had been such a big part of my life. If there was a good chance of it being terrible then I’d better just get it over with sooner rather than later. I talked to my mum minutes before I went in and told her that I was feeling sick because there was every chance that the imagination of my childhood may well be about to be destroyed.

So to the film, in all honesty my jaw dropped and I was engaged and amazed from the very first scene, the personalities of the characters have been captured pretty much perfectly. The film sticks really strongly to the narrative of the first book, the pieces of dialogue that are into the narrative of the book are often spoken by Ellie in the film and in fact some lines by other characters are across into the film very well too. The landscape and layout of the region is pretty much identical to what I had pictured and most importantly the relationships between the characters are portrayed in near flawless style. The actors have clearly done their research very well, the director has worked brilliantly to adapt the story to film and most importantly, I believe, the film shows you just how skilled John Marsden actually is and setting a scene portraying an image and developing a story and its characters.

Quite honestly, having seen it twice now, I would go again and I have every intention of buying the DVD. 4 and a half stars from me. As for floors in the film, personally the only issues that I have with it is that I wanted it to take me back to the time when I was reading the books so I was a little disappointed to see the kids with mobile phones and fancy new laptops. Other than that some of my friends were a bit saddened by the fact that this story that they had such pride in because it was a group of young victorian teenagers in the books, has been made into a film set in NSW.

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock for the last few weeks, you are no doubt aware the FIFA world cup is currently under way in South Africa. This weekend the ABC is showing a documentary called ‘the team that never played.’ The documentary looks at a group of friends who played soccer within their segregated communities. Sanctions put in place by apartheid for a long time in the past meant that people of different races, among other things, could not play with (or against) each other on the sporting field. These sanctions were also the catalyst for South Africa being banned from the world cup for some years. As the doco points out these community soccer teams may have been good enough to not only qualify for but maybe even win the 1974 or ‘78 world cup Francis Green, Producer of The Team that Never Played spoke with Indigo Wood.

“ Hell yes Tim…I wants to just curl up and hide… Dear Semester 1 of uni. Please be over REALLY soon. Love tim.

— hellobrett

I took this pic on my phone, standing on the historic Tathra wharf looking back at the beach.

I Am

I am what I guess I would refer to as a hybrid.

I’m part country hick who loves to wander around bare foot and part latte sipping city slicker who lives to go out to breakfast with my friends on the weekend.

27 years ago my parents packed up their lives in Melbourne, and their one-year-old son (me) and headed bush, when I say bush, I mean really bush.

The Bega Valley is situated eight hours north of Melbourne and six hours south of Sydney.

Oh the middle of nowhere you say, yep, now head an hour north of Bega up the highway, turn left and travel an hour up a rough dirt track. There, an hour from the nearest seeled road and two hours from the nearest town you would find us.

We lived with the six others who all owned shares in our hundred acre block, surrounded by national park.

Mothers with toddlers in cloth nappies washed in the creek, the only source of water, growing all our own fruit and vegies (eating what wasn’t stolen by wallabies or possums). Dad’s building huts out of mud bricks and fallen trees; we lived an existence without the need to go into town. Some times we would go three weeks without seeing anyone who didn’t live on the property.

You can understand then that, when, a year later, mum had a two year old and a new born, living in a tent with no power, she packed up and got the hell out of there. From that day forward, for the next 18 years, the four of us lived in a little town near Bega called Tathra.

Home for me, from the time of my first memory onwards, was a house on a half-acre block 100 metres from the ocean. Mum made sure that she was nice and close to everything she needed, shops, the beach, work; No more of this being completely removed from society shit.

Childhood memories for me were all about billy-karts down dirt hills in the bush behind the house, BMX’s, running around on the beach, surfing and camping.

And then reality hits, what the hell do we all do once we finish school. Suddenly those of us who have aspirations to further our education don’t have any choice but to leave town.

Even in the 12 months after I finished school where I decided to have a gap-year the region turned into a crèche come retirement village. Everyone aged between 18 and 35 just leaves town.

The trend seems to be leave town, get an education, meet someone, settle down then bring them back to the region because it’s a great place to bring up kids. Anyone aged between 35 and 45 have young kids around and so don’t have a great social life, so suddenly you feel like your surrounded by people who wear nappies.

My aspirations to work in radio brought me to Melbourne. Wow was I out of place. A different state, different sizes and kinds of beer, I had no idea what the difference between a latte and a flat white was and I think I’d had Maccas once as a 12 year old.

Anyone who has moved to a new life they don’t understand will no doubt know that the transition takes some time. I got busted for J walking across Flinders lane (I didn’t even know what J walking was). A couple of weeks after I arrived I got done for fare evasion, how cool I thought, trams are free.

The other part of it was of course I hated having to wear shoes everywhere I went, I could smell and feel the smog in the air and I got sick three times in the first winter, I honestly think it was a reaction to fumes.

St Kilda, to me was the worst kind of torture that existed, I could smell the salt air, I could hear the Sea Gulls, I could see the water and the sand but there was no way in hell that I was taking my shoes off down there, getting in the water? No way. I’d heard all the worst stories, friends of friends had trodden on needles, mates had seen poo floating in the water, it was all kinds of wrong.

I moved into my first share house, uni started, I got into a routine, now I look up and we’re seven years down the track (do they even use that turn of phrase in the city?)

I don’t think I would really even notice the change in me if I didn’t go back to Tathra a couple of times a year to visit family. The last time I went back, Christmas, I got so frustrated with the driver in front of me that I nearly got into a fight. Country drivers will literally sit at an intersection until there are no cars as far as the eye can see before they pull out. I know for a fact that I use to do that too. (I caused major congestion at the end of my street the first time I drove a car in Melbourne)

Nobody in Tathra knows how to make a good coffee (no one in Melbourne knows how to make decent Fish and Chips for those playing at home). On a weeknight all the local watering holes will close by 10pm. On the weekend after a night out, when the venues are all done by 1am, the town is dead. There are no convenience stores at all and if you were thinking kebab or felafel, you better change that to thinking Peanut butter or Vegemite on toast, at home.

So who the hell am I, I go mental if I spend more than 6 months without walking in the bush or jumping in the ocean, I still say things all the time that my friends don’t understand because I’m a country kid. On the other hand, When I do go home to Tathra, I’ve been known after 2 weeks in town to make the 2 hour trek north to try and find decent coffee and I get laughed at at least once every trip for suggesting a late night sev elev mission.

I’m a hybrid, are you?

Pomo What?

Lucy’s article on what ever it is actually on has some interesting points none the less. I’ve done cultural studies subjects in undergrad and great slabs of discussion were had in classes about post modernism and I still don’t quite get what Lucy is on about.

He begins however by suggesting that the role of a journalist is not dissimilar to that of a photographer. He is perhaps suggesting that we as journalists are required to capture the moment or the incident but not personalise it in any way, that is not our role or responsibility. As I’ve made clear elsewhere I question that whole idea a lot of the time, there are no doubt times when Lucy’s claim is very much valid.

Two of the examples that are provided in this article are perfectly good arguments for this claim. When it comes to moments like the public questioning whether Henson is a photographer or a perv or again asking were the children thrown over board or did they jump to safety. In both these situation it is indisputable that the actions of the media around these events were fuel to a rather dangerous fire.

So how does one deal with these situations as a journalist. The reality, it would seem, is that the media didn’t need to play any part in the initial concerns over these events. The Henson exhibition was in the public eye any way and discussion was going to happen in the form of letters to the editor, talk back, tweets, facebook status updates and god knows what else. The Children over board debacle was caused by the government of the time releasing the photos to the media, that proved worth while to them didn’t it.

The reality of this industry however is that sadly in a lot of cases it’s a numbers game. As we saw in State of Play, when we make the decision to wait on a story and try and get the story straight the other teams can destroy you by deciding not to wait… suddenly you’re behind the eight ball and your editor is ready to fire you. So, do you act now and come across as the opinionated person who is creating the news and leading the pack or do you wait and pick up the pieces. Can one actually cover these kinds of stories from the head of the pack without looking like you are putting a spin on the issue

What is it that makes this one small video so entertaining that the kid and his family can live off the proceeds. That is one question, the other (more interesting) question I have though is what makes an entertaining and, granted, funny, video so influential that an Australian broadsheet news paper on the other side of the world thinks it is news worthy.

The development of online technology means that everything we do on the net has immediate consequences and can be interactive. What we as journalists need to begin to understand is that what one ordinary every day person does online these days is not news. What society as a whole needs to begin to understand is that your actions online have an immediate outcome but just as quickly as you create that moment of entertainment someone else can copy it some how.

Does David’s father have the right in this situation to put a copyright on this video, I personally would argue no. The person who made the star wars parody of this video or any of the others who have taken the piss have as much right to fame over their work as David’s father does. Considering all David’s father did was pull out the camer while his son was off his face I’d question his right to be making a living off it any way.

As for Hesse’s “article” I’d suggest that it is more likely an ad for the video which in the end will just result in the family making more money on T-Shirt or sticker sales. Thankfully some of the money is being given to dental hygiene. I should be a little transparent here and point out that as a journalist I do this too but at least I’m just encouraging people to get involved in a survey which is not going to make me or the Foundation for young Australians any money.

The Minister, the money and Ms Liu

I find Baker and McKenzie’s article difficult to read. The piece reads as a list of the facts that they have found on this issue, there is no personality in the article. Perhaps I’m wrong about that perhaps there is personality in the piece (that of Ms Liu and I clash with her.

The question comes up in my mind, how does one tackle a big and difficult issue that may have legal concerns in a print form without seeming dry and boring. The usual approach to this kind of story would be no doubt to collect statements or brief interviews from those involved or effected. This feels to me more like suddenly some small amount of new newsworthy element has come out around this story and the journalists have felt the need to notify their readers of the update. Why then have they reiterated the whole story. In a broadcast context this may have worked because the quotes can be recorded and played throughout the story, this written structure of small quotes throughout the text seems to me to kind of distract from the flow of the story.

although I now know this story having read this article, had I not been required to read the whole thing for class I would have stopped two pars in. Too many words without really giving us a great deal of detail

Serving in Florida - journo in the first person.

Ehrenreich’s article is another great example of the first person style of journalism. I argued here that I believed that the questioning nature of this style of writing put it into a framework that defined it as journalism, The same principals are evident here but at an even stronger level.

In this article the author raises awareness of and in an indirect nature questions the value of paying wait staff the hourly wage they get. Are these people not an integral part of our society and so should they not get a more significant wage.

I would be willing to go further than just saying that I believe this is journalism, My personal belief about this first person style of journalism is that it is extremely powerful. As a young person and a budding journalist my self I take this first person writing perhaps more seriously than I do the more traditional style of journalism. The heartfelt and personal nature of first person writing and the fact that they are immediately involved or effected by the story leads me to connect to not just the author but the issue. I am encouraged to reflect on what the author is saying and perhaps relate it to my own life. I understand the concerns of bias or influence that are raised around this style but I believe that it should not always be up to the author to provide both sides of the story.

As a 22 year old, desperate to get into the media degree at RMIT (having written application for the course every years since finishing school at 18) I was interviewed by two of my soon to be lecturers. As a part of the interview I was asked to tell them who some of my favourite journalists were, I mentioned one name, Michael Moore. I was met with a look of shock from the two people in front of me, then I justified myself. As a member of Michael Moores audience I understand completely that he as a writer and film maker portrays one very biased opinion of his stories. I understand that it is my role as an audience member to find the other side of the story if I want to ( and I did) As long as I approach this style of journalism knowing that there is more work to do than just read or view this then I can in fact get more from it than I can from someone who tries to fit both sides of the story into the same amount of space.

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

Foundation for young Australians “Tell Us” Survey

What do school students want to see done to their education system? This is the question currently being asked by the Foundation for young Australians. The Foundation currently has a survey on line called ‘Tell Us’ which surveys students on what they think needs to happen to the education system. In a time when the governments is talking of an ‘education revolution’ the foundation says that students have not been included in this campaign at all. The Wire’s Indy Wood spoke to Bryce Ives a spokesperson for the foundation for young Australians about the survey.