This week was a great opportunity to learn a lot in a short amount of time. I also got the chance to tell another story, something I love doing that is so valuable.
There’s a lot from this experience that I will be taking forward with me. One of my favorite parts was sitting down with Selena as she was doing my mix. I was blown away by her teaching and what I learned, such as which settings to look for and what sounds best for radio. I also learned more specific things about EQing, noise reduction and ducking out audio, as well as even the Franken edit!
Additionally, I learned more about what kinds of questions you need to ask in order to get the descriptive, place setting sound bites for radio. Before I got to that point though, it was a lot of wrangling my equipment and learning about the processes I had not gone through before. It was great to see the workflow for the audio and web processes since it was my first time seeing professionals do that.
However, there are a few things I would do differently if I did this again. For example, I would have liked to test out and familiarize myself more with the audio equipment beforehand. I might have had a more normal workflow for the week, but these kinds of things happen and I adapted in order to still produce a story. Things fell through with the interview I scheduled, but I was happy to spend that morning calling dozens of groups to solidify an interview for later that day.
Moving forward, I will be using the knowledge I gained to train someone at my college newspaper about podcasting. I plan to keep using social media as a tool to bring people into my reporting process and to utilize all the new connections I have made through this project.