Forthcoming Story Update

Two new assignments for Justice Talking, one for mid-November, the other to air early December.  I’ll begin Public News Service stories for commercial radio in New Mexico on Monday. Locally, I’ll have a few stories in Enchanted Homes here in Taos and the local winter tourist guide. Look for a story on a major water rights settlement here in New Mexico in the next issue of High Country News and a profile of musician Michael Franti on The World from BBC and WGBH in the next week or two. You can hear and read my interview with Franti right now over at AdventureLogue. I still have stories for NPR and Weekend America that have been in limbo for two months now, but are finally beginning to move forward again. They should see airtime before Thanksgiving, hopefully. Also, yesterday NPR called to ask if I could cover a press conference about the confidential documents that were discovered at the home of a former Los Alamos Labs employee. Unfortunately, I was unable to travel the 75 miles from my house to LANL in time to make the press conference, which was set to start in just ten minutes from the time I got the call.  There was a bit of time zone confusion from what I could gather.

Coming to a commercial station near you (in CO & NM at least)

Yesterday I was officially hired as a producer for the Public News Service, probably one of the most prolific producers of radio news that you’ve never heard of. PNS is a progressive news service that operates a growing number of state-based news services, focusing on a progressive, non-profit beat. These are the short, local-interest stories that you hear at the top or bottom of each hour on many commericial radio stations.  I was pretty surprised by how far their reach is, the number of stations taking PNS stories in New Mexico pretty much blankets the whole state. It’s a really great gig, with some pretty neat people involved. I’ll be working from home about ten hours a week and filing 10 – 12 stories a month for New Mexico to start, and if all that works out, I  may soon take over Colorado, too.

Today in New Mexico, for example, if you hear your local DJ read a story about International Day for the Eradication of Poverty with sound clips from Kay Monaco at New Mexico Voices for Children, you’re hearing a story that I wrote (with some help from the other people at PNS).

Super Marathon Man on VOA

I first came across this guy’s story working on my other blog, www.adventurelogue.com. He’s an ultra-distance runner who is running 50 marathons in 50 states in 50 days. I originally had planned to interview him while running in the New Mexico Marathon in Albuquerque. I got dropped off a bit behind the racers on the very last mile, and quite embarrassingly, I wasn’t able to catch up with them, even though they’d already been running 25 miles! The sounds of the race finish you’ll hear in the story was literally recorded as I was running up behind them.

Listen to the story on Voice of America Here.

CBC Comedy Proposals

Back in July, my friend (the illustrious Renny MacKay of Wyoming Public Radio) and I responded to a call for proposals for new comedy programming from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Renny’s a sneaky Canuck in case you’re wondering what the connection is. Anyhow, we received a phone call last week from a very friendly woman at the CBC requesting a bit more information on our ideas and some samples of our work, so I met Renny in Denver this weekend to flesh things out a bit more and try and get the CBC a more concrete concept by the end of the month.

This is all very preliminary, but it was encouraging to hear from the CBC, particularly since the original proposals we sent were much heavier on silliness than substance. We’re working to remedy that today.

Pit Bull Story on Western Skies

This story originally aired on Justice Talking back in August. It was repackaged a bit for a local audience and went out on KRCC’s (Colorado Springs) twice-weekly Western Skies. Gravy. Eric Whitney really does a great job with this show.
Listen Here.

Nuclear Weapons Story on Justice Talking

This was a last minute assignment to fill a hole on JT’s Nuclear Weapons show. As it turned out, I was fortunate to find a panel on Los Alamos’ new nuclear weapons program being held a few days before deadline. I also spoke with activist and priest Father John Dear. It took a couple of tries to get an interview with him though, the first time I tried to track him down he was staging a sit-in in the elevator leading to Senator Pete Domenici’s office in Santa Fe. The police weren’t to keen on letting me do my interview there. Did make a nice unexpected story for KUNM’s newscast that evening though.

You can listen to the Los Alamos Story on Justice Talking here.

Stories still forthcoming…

Still waiting to verify some final figures for an NPR story about Radon, a Weekend America story that was originally assigned in May is awaiting another rewrite, a story on a 40-year-old water settlement for High Country News (also assigned in May) has been pushed back again to the end of the month. 2-3 stories for Good Dirt Radio that I began work on in August are now set to be recorded next month. See a theme yet? It is really amazing how much turn-around time on these stories can vary.

For example, my first Weekend America story was about 10 days from assignment to air. Originally they had needed it within 72 hours, but then held off a week.  The circumstances for each story can be wildly different.

A few fresher stories that look (fingers crossed) to be moving a little faster include an “Americana” feature for Voice of America which I’ll edit tomorrow and an artist profile for PRI’s The World. That one will take me to Salt Lake City for an interview next week.