I’ve got three new stories up today. First, for Plenty Magazine, a story about a guy whose car runs on wood – turns out he’s not alone.
And, today’s news service stories: Blatant Big Money in politics two days before New Mexico’s primary and the latest in spelling bee news….
Wow, this really got away from me. Almost a year since the last post. 30 second update: since then the wife and I have spent a month in Central America, bought a house, put another month into remodeling, and had a beautiful baby girl!
On the work front, much of the above took me away from doing more freelance projects, but I’m now covering Colorado and New Mexico for the Public News Service and working as an editor for the other states. There’s also the occasional grant writing… My own grant project, Blue Highways, is coming together finally. We have two 30-minute pilots near completion that will hopefully be sent to public radio stations across the country by the end of the year. Somewhere along the way I also signed with a literary agent who is currently pushing a non-fiction book proposal for me, but it’s stalled at the moment.
I’ll do my best to keep this up a bit better from now on…
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.
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).
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.
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.
I’m going to try and start posting a little more regular and in a more normal blog style. I’ve also created a Digital Archive page, which is probably the easiest place to find and listen to my stories, something which is probably only if interest if you are my mother.
Today, KRCC out of Colorado Springs aired a version of my Kit Carson No Child Left Behind story on their twice-weekly magazine, Western Skies. I feel a little weird about this one because this is the fourth time I’ve been paid for the story. First by Weekend America, then by NPR, who both killed the story. Then a few weeks back by Free Speech Radio News, which aired it, and now KRCC. There’s nothing illegal or unethical about the whole thing, but it certainly is strange. There were some major logistical difficulties which resulted in my not gathering very ‘passionate’ interview audio, to quote a few editors. So basically, this was not my best work, but I still felt it was an important story that should be heard, so I kept shopping it around, and ended up making more off of it then I have for far superior stories I’ve produced. Weird. Anyway, feel free to listen.
