Reality radio: telling true stories in sound

Abstract

Ira Glass, the Kitchen Sisters, and others write about their audio craft. Over the last few decades, the radio documentary has developed into a strikingly vibrant form of creative expression. Millions of listeners hear arresting, intimate storytelling from an ever-widening array of producers on programs including This American Life, StoryCorps, and Lab, online through such sites as Transom, the Public Radio Exchange, Hearing Voices, and Soundprint, and through a growing collection of podcasts. Reality Radio celebrates today's best audio documentary work by bringing together some of the most influential and innovative practitioners from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia. In these nineteen essays, documentary makers tell - and demonstrate, through stories and transcripts - how they make radio the way they do, and why. Whether they call themselves journalists, storytellers, even audio artists - and although their essays are just as diverse in content and approach - the contributors to the volume all use sound to tell true stories, artfully.