Claudio Sanchez  On Radio


STORY TIME ON NPR

I think, without time, you can't tell the story. Your average stories these days on your network evening news are two-and-a-half to three minutes. We're able to tell stories in twice, maybe three times that amount of time. It's not that much more time. But it's enough time to get us to tell people about conditions out there in schools, at least in my case. Well, for people who meet over the radio, people that they otherwise never would have met, and for them to tell the listeners what a particular issue is, why the problems in a given...in the community are so complicated. And you need time to do that. The writing around these interviews, I think, just fills in the rest of the story. But the storytellers themselves are the people you go out and interview. And the people out there who aren't used to certainly having a microphone in front of their face, they struggle often to really simplify and to tell something that makes sense, in that amount of time, and to share that with people, but then that's when the editing process comes into play, and so you try and get that craft to its best, because it's the only way you're going to have people able to relate a story in the amount of time you have, but with a little bit more time than the commercial outfits usually give you.

Some of the best stories are very short, subtle, and succinct. I remember just telling a story in three-and-a-half minutes with a high school kid reacting to President Bush's message to say no to drugs and it was a monologue. It was just one kid saying, "I live in another part of this city that Mr. Bush will never see." And it's a kid telling a story of how that previous night, prior to the president's message to high school kids, she had been forced by her mother to go out and hold on to some bags of crack in order for her mother to sell this stuff. And the life that this girl described in no more than 30, 35 seconds was just amazing. It was the story, it was the reaction, it was a reaction piece as we call them, to the president's message. Which was quite powerful. Of trying to get kids to understand that drugs are not going to get them anywhere. But the reality of the situation for at least this girl was so extraordinary, that it kind of, I think, helped listeners say kids' lives are very complicated today. And it's not as simple as just say no. It's really a matter of extracting these kids from these conditions that is going to allow them to say no.

CROSSING OVER FROM PRINT TO RADIO

I think that the thing to keep in mind, and it was really the transition for me was one of, how do people tell their stories, rather than me telling their stories.

The transition for me in writing for print versus radio was having people tell their stories, versus me telling the stories. And in print, you of course look for the same things that you look for in a broadcast interview, except you write it down and you complement it with perhaps a tad more analysis, or perhaps more of an umbrella type of approach. You're trying to condense a very complicated issue. The summary lead, for example, of coming in and saying, "Here's why this story's important, and here's what people are saying about this particular issue." But in broadcast, I think you always want to get to the tape very quickly. You begin your story with a very simple, hopefully well thought out sentence about why this story is important, or what's at stake here, what the debate is, what the nature of the discussion is. What the most compelling aspect of a report is. And then you get to the people that you talked to about this. Very quickly. I hate going on for more than two or three sentences before I have someone come in and explain what this means to them. Hopefully your strongest tape, strongest part of an interview you did is usually way at the top with, again, someone who is able to draw your audience into the story. And have it mean something to them. In print, you do that in many ways, but you find yourself having to explain a lot more, and a lot earlier. Because people can't hear. They can only read in quotes what a person has said. But when you hear people, it conveys 10 times, maybe 50 times, more because of the temperament of the person, because of the tone, because of the way this person pauses, and that adds very subtly to the entire meaning of the story. I find that I do very little writing when my story is good. I find myself using my best tape, and having them tell their story.