I thought that several ideas and tips in the article “Sound in the Story” were helpful and thought provoking. It was an interesting discussion about the subtle ethics involved in collecting audio that don’t apply to other areas of journalism such as photography and reporting for print media. Page 5 of the article states, “You crop a picture, but only from the sides. In audio reporting, you often have to take pieces out of the middle of sentences, and you almost always have to add sounds in to recreate the experience of a situation.” This made me think of how much goes into creating a Soundslides project that seems really natural and has the ability to make the audience share in the journalists experience. I remember Mindy emphasizing the importance of editing audio without altering the ideas and expressions of the interviewee. This emphasis on ethics in audio reporting was further made clear in the next paragraph of the article which read, “Readers may not believe what they read in the paper, but listeners tend to think of audio as ‘photographic proof’ of what a person said. They don’t even think about what skillful editing may have done.” This made me think about my one trust for audio. Have you ever been around someone who was telling someone else about an interview with an important or famous person? Many times I have heard people exclaim, “But he said it with his own mouth!” or “Those were her exact words!” The article helped me realize how much power and responsibility journalists have.
The article also warned journalists against staging events. I remember considering this issue when I was collecting sound for my first Soundslides project. The article says collecting “wild sound” is the “audio equivalent of candid photography.” I liked this analogy. While I was collecting audio, I remember thinking about whether I should ask my subjects to start their scooters for me so I could get good sound or if I should just collect the sounds coming from scooters in a parking lot or riding by on the street. The article makes it clear that it would have definitely been poor ethics for me to, for example, ask a bunch of people to ride by me again and again on their scooters so I could record. So I decided to record a continuous sound bed on campus and catch scooters as they naturally flowed through traffic.
The final thoughts that I will take with me from the article are concerning the Interview stages: development, pursuit and mop-up. This section of the article helped me to remember the effort I need to make to develop a successful story. According to pages 9-10 of the article the development stage happens off tape and is informal, the pursuit is on tape, and the mop-up is a phone call or follow-up conversation after the taped interview. I really think this was helpful to me because I always look forward to the interview, but not the follow-up process that is usually helpful.
