Reality Radio: Telling True Stories in Sound (Documentary Arts and Culture) - Softcover

This book is valuable for those who believe radio's future is in the art of storytelling and can be a particularly good resource for students enrolled in radio narrative or radio/audio documentary classes, and a valued tool for faculty teaching documentary, narrative, audio drama, and radio writing.--Journal of Radio and Audio Media An incredibly important contribution to the field of public media, one that will invite introspection, spark creativity, and hopefully teach people that the first step in learning is listening.--Public Radio Makers Quest 2.0 Biewen . . . chronicles this rebirth of the documentary . . . profiling a new breed of radio producers who . . . are willing to get involved with their subjects, reveal parts of their own lives, and paint vivid pictures with sound.--Duke Magazine What is striking about this collection is how clearly the reader can 'hear' the diverse voices and stories, despite the print medium. . . . A wonderful and accessible read. . . . Highly recommended.--Choice [Biewen] offers a lively history of creative documentary radio in his introduction to 19 passionate, instructive, and unexpectedly moving essays by innovative audio journalists and artists who use sound to tell true stories artfully. . . . Invaluable and many-faceted coverage of a thriving, populist, and mind-expanding art form.--Booklist

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 ""Radio 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.