How to Pitch an Audio Documentary and the Unusual Origin of a This American Life Story

This transcript was auto-generated from an audio recording. Please excuse any typos or grammatical errors. 

Elaine Appleton Grant

Hey, storytellers, guess what? You don’t have to be big to do outsized work. When it comes to creativity, size doesn’t matter. 

Consider the success of a true crime podcast called Bear Brook. It’s been downloaded more than 21 million times and named one of the best podcasts of the year by the New Yorker. And… it comes from a small public radio station in the heart of northern New England…where some of the most innovative work in the country is being done on longform audio documentary journalism.

If you have any narrative ambitions, you have to listen to my conversation with Katie Colaneri. She’s the thoughtful, fast-rising editor at the head of NHPR’s audio documentary team. She spent the last year crafting one of the clearest greenlight processes in public media and podcasting. She spec’ed out what pitches this station says yes to, what it says no to, and along the way, what makes for suspenseful, impactful longform storytelling – storytelling that matters in New Hampshire, across the country, and even across the globe. She shares that pitch process with us. 

And  – we dissect a This American Life story that started in a one-room New Hampshire school house. 

Welcome to Sound Judgment, where we investigate just what it takes to become a beloved host by pulling apart one episode at a time, together. I’m Elaine Appleton Grant. 

Katie Colaneri, I am very excited to have you here on Sound Judgment. 

Katie Colaneri

Thank you so much for having me. A pleasure.

Elaine Appleton Grant

Katie, you were assistant news director at WHYY in Philadelphia for about five years. And you built the first podcast to come directly from the newsroom. And then you went to New Hampshire Public Radio in February of 2022. So just a little over a year ago, to lead the document team. And this is a new role. So talk about what this role and this team was conceived to become. 

Katie Colaneri

The original idea behind the document team was, we've got incredible talent in our newsroom, people who have done really excellent, high quality long form narrative journalism already. How do we keep this going? So that would be the Senior Producer reporters, Jason Moon and Lauren Chooljian, both of whom, you know, just in one person have more talent than I've seen in my career in like five people. They're both just so incredibly multi talented, and excellent journalists, but also really excellent storytellers. And just that that firepower combination is, you know why the station decided to say, okay, they've been beat reporters in our newsroom, let's dedicate them to doing this kind of really impactful long form reporting all the time. So the Document team was created, the Document feed is the podcast where most of their work until this point has appeared. 

Enter me as their first full time editor. My charge has really been to help to create the vision for the team going forward. When they first got started, the idea was like, Hey, let's just try some stuff. Let's chase down some of our first leads. Once we get the editor, that's when you know, kind of the future planning visioning begins. So I've really been working on a lot of that over the last year. Part of that work was also creating a greenlight process where we could say, somebody's got an idea, what's the process by which we sort of run through that and vet it and get to an answer, you know, is this the right thing that we want to pursue next? And how do we evaluate that. 

It sounded simple enough. And it actually was quite a complex process? 

Elaine Appleton Grant

Well, exactly. And that was one of the reasons that I wanted to speak with you is because you did create this very structured greenlight process. When you decided we need a greenlight process. I believe you went looking for one at another station or at a podcast network to see what existed. What did you find? 

Katie Colaneri

I asked around, I talked to some folks at CBC, I talked to folks at This American Life. I got some really excellent advice about the kinds of things that they think about when they think about show development. I also talked to another editor at WNYC. But nobody had a document that they could point me to. And so I felt like I was floundering a little bit. I sort of had this kind of loose collection of ideas. I'd also looked a lot at some really excellent materials on the NPR training website, they call it their their podcast blueprinting process, and that gives a really great guide. It fit elements of what I was going for but not the full picture. 

Elaine Appleton Grant

What did you do next? 

Katie Colaneri

Yeah, so I stumbled upon some, like a version of a kind of general greenlight process that some folks who had left NHPR, were writing for just special projects. I liked that they had this structure of sort of like a step by step process, you know, step one, here's what you do. And here are the different possible outcomes. And it really gave just sort of a clear sense for people who are going through that pitch process of oh, well, like, once I have this idea that I've communicated, here's how that's going to be evaluated. So it felt like it gave me something that I could work with, to try to adapt. So I tried to use that format, and created a three step process that begins with the pitch, talking about what we're looking for in that pitch. And then the next two steps of the vetting process, are really trying to get at two questions. The first one is, must we, the Document team, make it? Is this something that's really a good fit for the kind of work that we do? 

And then step three being, can and will we make it and that's sort of a higher level strategic conversation that gets beyond the editorial and looks at you know, are there potential exciting partnerships here, that we could leverage? Is there a collaboration? Did we just get grant money to explore this very thing that we could put towards maybe getting an extra producer to help us turn this around in X period of time? Or on the maybe more negative side for the person who's doing the pitching, you know, is this maybe not somebody who we can spare from the newsroom for three months to work on this because their beats are critical right now. Middle of COVID, we can't dedicate the health reporter to doing this podcast series yet. But the whole thing is really designed to answer those questions. Try to keep it really transparent, so that it's equitable, and how people understand you know, these are these are all the factors that we're going to be evaluating before we get to yes or no. 

We also tried to create a maybe. To have some places where, if the idea isn't quite in the right place, we could send it back to them. And then they could like, reshape the idea and bring it back to us. 

Elaine Appleton Grant

Okay, what I want to do is have you go through what this greenlight process looks like,

you know, at a high level, not in enormous detail. But who is it for? Is this a completely private document? Is it public?

Katie Colaneri

So yes, right. Now, it's internal. But I think it's the kind of thing that eventually we could branch out a bit. And we could go to even other stations in New England and say, you know, Hey, I saw your reporter has that great line of coverage that they're doing about x. And we really think it has narrative potential, and it's got resonance here in New Hampshire, could we talk about a collaboration. And I think it speaks to the fact that there's a lot of power when you write things like this down. When you really distill what your show or your team does, writing it down forces you to really have to think very specifically about that. 

Because you want to give people something to pitch to that was actually a piece of advice I got from a colleague, Taylor Quimby on the show Outside In. He said, look I'm reading this, it's a great process, but I don't really understand what Document does. I can't think of an idea that I might have that I think could be a fit, because you haven't really described for me what Document is and what you do and what you don't do. Oh, that just blew my mind. It was so obvious once he said it. And then I really ended up spending so much more of my time less on the process itself and more thinking about, what do we really do, and what could we do? But also, what don't we do? And I think that that's a second piece of the equation that shows, many newsrooms teams, just, they don't want to go there because they're afraid of missing something.

Elaine Appleton Grant

Exactly. And I think it's a really, really good point. And I was really impressed when I saw that in the green light document, which he very kindly shared with me. And it's something that I talk to new show developers about all the time, which is getting really, really kind of strict guardrails, what do we do and what don't we do? And people, especially newer podcasters, hate the idea of saying, well there's nothing I don't do? Well, of course, there is. There has to be.

But it does also get to some bigger strategic questions, especially right now. So as I'm talking with you, it is Monday, March 27. And at the end of last week, NPR laid off 100 people or so. Yeah, yeah. And which is horribly sad. Yeah. And so right now we're in this media environment, particularly in Public Media, where people are saying, well, my resources are very slim.

And there are a lot of stations who are saying we don't have the resources to do a podcast, or there are stations that have been around trying to podcast for a long time. But they've been doing it without lessening the load on reporters. So yeah, get all your regular work done and do this podcast on the side when you feel like it, which is a losing proposition. So talk about where NHPR fits in this current mood and what your goals are, for now, having long form narrative shows. 

Katie Colaneri

Yeah, it's been said of us, and I think this is really an apt description, that NHPR punches above its weight, especially when it comes to long form narrative podcast work, the willingness to invest in that to recognize that, hey, we've got really talented people here who not not only have shown just like a passionate interest in this, but they do it and they do it incredibly well. 

Elaine Appleton Grant

I mean, Bear Brook is a great example. 21 million downloads, I could not believe that number.

Katie Colaneri

Yeah, exactly. You know, and just the fact that that was, I think, just an incredible combination of like the right super talented storyteller with the right story with the right support at the right time. Because it's so much harder to have a hit now. But the fact that the station as a smaller market station, compared to others where I've worked, is willing to go all in on that is really incredible. That said, the more that I'm under the hood, the more that I see that the talent itself is also really critical. That makes a huge difference in what you're able to accomplish. And those talents also exist beyond our team in the newsroom, too. 

But it also is a question of balance, because the Daily News needs of the state of New Hampshire are great, and the ways that NHPR works so hard to fill them, it has to meet a high bar if we're going to take a reporter out of the newsroom. And so I think that's part of why my job on day one from my boss, the news director Dan Barrick, was to create this greenlight process. So we have this ability to decide what's going to meet that threshold. And how do we vet these stories? And how do we decide what's really going to be worth all of this time? Because it's a lot of time, and not just people resources that go into it?

Elaine Appleton Grant

Absolutely. And anybody who's ever done any of this kind of work knows that it's a tremendous amount of work to do long form narrative audio documentary work. So after Taylor Quimby said to you, well, I need to understand what the Document unit actually does before I know what to pitch. That's a problem for creators throughout the entire podcasting and public radio sphere, anyway. 

Katie Colaneri

Yeah. And a lot of times you think you might know what your audience wants or needs, but you're kind of going on a guess if you haven't done a lot of audience research. And a lot of times I find people don't like the answer that they get. That can be tough, it can be tough to pivot, once you see what people really want, versus what the creator wants to make. So yeah, that really was kind of a big part of the process was really thinking about, Okay, what do we really do? How could I really describe it? At that point, we had a body of work, but there's so much more potential that's untapped. At that point, it had been a lot of issues around stories with issues around criminal justice and substance use disorder. So I said, well, we're not a criminal justice addiction podcast, how do I think about something that's going to encapsulate what we've done, but also what we could do on other topics. 

And really, I kind of wrote myself into it, I kept writing and writing and running all these different mission statements. And then finally, I kind of was like, oh, you know, we're the newsroom's documentary unit, which really boils down to, if there is a story that's happening right now that we can follow over time. And time really being that essential ingredient in long form, that there has to be enough time so that different things happen. People who are involved might change in the sense that you're giving people, hey, this thing happened but maybe you didn't hear the whole story. So now we're going to try to tell you most of the story here that maybe you didn't hear. And that's really sort of what the team's work has really centered on. And so I started to think about, okay, how would I describe, you know, if I'm trying to break down those different ingredients to get people to that kind of work? How do I describe that? What are the questions that they want to think about? 

And that really became the guide for the pitch part of the greenlight process. What are the things that we're asking people to think about? 

Elaine Appleton Grant

There are a lot of things, given infinite resources, where you can say, well, we want to do an education audio doc on this topic. We want to do a substance abuse one on this topic we want to do something about, I don't know under funding the arts or the change in the legislature or anything that really does unfold over time. And so what are the questions that you came up with to help narrow the scope? 

Katie Colaneri

Right. I think the big thing that you're sort of getting at is how does something come from just like a general topic area, or an idea to like getting to the heart of a story. And that's actually where a lot of reporters just in general can struggle, even ones that are really experienced. So we try to get people to think about who are the main people that are involved in your story? What kind of roles are they playing? I'm trying to be intentional about not saying characters, I've used that word a ton. And now I'm realizing oh, it can be kind of problematic, and you might lose some of the nuance of that person. But you know, so who are those people? What are they doing in the story? And what access do you have to them? What are the surprises? As we like to call it, the holy shit moments, every Document story has several of them, just the things that make you Oh, my God, you're never going to believe blah, blah, blah. The thing about this story is this. So we want people to start to think about what are the things that have surprised them that have ever either happened or about the people who are involved? Is the story going to peel back a layer of something that maybe people thought that they understood before? And explain it in a different kind of way? Really, at the end of the day, it's also what's the story? A lot of times when I'm talking to reporters who come to me sort of informally with like, maybe a loose idea, I'm like, okay, but you know, I don't want to hear about the context. I don't want to hear about the issues just yet. All of that is extremely important. Tell me the story. What do you think the story is, and if they can get me something that has like a beginning and a middle, at least, you know, we want to hang on to the end, I think that that means that there's some narrative potential. Stuff has to have happened. And it needs to be happening now. And we need to be able, and this is for our team, specifically, we need to be able to be there as it's happening and watching it unfold. And that's what makes it a Document story. 

Elaine Appleton Grant

Now, a couple of years ago, I served as a blue ribbon panel judge for The Podcast Academy. And it just so happens that one of the categories that was assigned was the documentary category. One of the problems I think that people run into, is whether or not something is noteworthy. What is the lens that you look through to determine is this worth our limited resources and the audience's attention and time? 

Katie Colaneri

Yeah, I think it kind of gets to that question of like, does the story itself help raise questions about something else, that maybe people who don't live in New Hampshire are thinking about. Because the other thing that we thought was important for people pitching our team to know is the fact that 90% of our listeners are outside New Hampshire. That's meant that every Document story really has to have beyond the local story, it's got to raise questions about something much larger. And often, that means that the reporting is going across some state or maybe even international lines. We're gonna go seeking the pattern that maybe we're describing, you know, see if that's happening elsewhere, or we might seek experts or other people beyond New Hampshire. But the root of that story is still very much local, because we're still trying to serve a local audience, while bringing in people from outside the state into what's happening here. 

Elaine Appleton Grant

People listening to this podcast, as opposed to watching it, could not see the look on my face when you said 90% of the audience is outside of New Hampshire. That is very unusual for a statewide news organization that's focused on local news. And there are some leaders of public radio stations that would say that's not the function of local public news. But that is a really remarkable number 90%. 

Yeah, so to illustrate how this greenlight process works, I am very excited to dissect a story that started at NHPR and wound up as a This American Life story called A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the quorum. The story is set in Croydon, New Hampshire population 801. As of 2020, it's the tale of how Free Staters and budget cutters attempted to cut the school budget more than in half. This is the very beginning of the story. And as I said, the reporter is Sarah Gibson NHPR Education reporter. 

Clip from This American Life:

Sarah Gibson: This story starts at a school budget meeting. In Croydon, barely anyone goes to these. Even the local TV guy, who sometimes films town meetings, did not show up this year. So there's not even a recording. But I'm going to tell you about it, because what happened that day triggered a very strange series of events. The meeting takes place at the Croydon Town Hall…

Elaine Appleton Grant:

So talk about the genesis of this story.

Katie Colaneri

Yeah, you know, so I was on the job at NHPR for about a month when this went down. And I heard that this town just unexpectedly cut its school budget in half. And then there was this outcry and this effort to fight the budget cut, and how can we restore this funding. The political lines were really not what you would think. We're so used to right now with all these battles over education happening, Liberal Democrats versus conservative Republicans. And then it's getting mixed up in the culture wars and stories about book bands and school boards and all these things. But in this community, it was really like you had a lot of the people who were fighting to restore the budget were conservative Republicans themselves kind of teaming up with some more liberal Democrats. And then you had this whole other group that I had never heard of before, called the Free State Project that was pushing for the cuts. So just seeing the unexpected dynamics at play really made me go, Okay, I'm really curious now. And there was something for us to be documenting in real time, this effort to try to restore the cuts. And all these people that Sarah had access to. So that was a moment where I said, Okay, this really feels like something that people in New Hampshire want to know what's going on. And then people beyond New Hampshire are really like, wait, hey, what's going on? You know, because it's so resonant to all of these big conversations that we're having about public education right now. And about democracy. 

Elaine Appleton Grant:

And there was absolutely a holy shit moment, because we're talking about a one and a half million dollar budget that got cut to about $800,000. 

Katie Colaneri

Yeah, exactly. And then everywhere you looked it was like, What? What? What? 

Elaine Appleton Grant:

Yeah, yeah, that's, I mean, talk about a holy shit moment. And it happened, you know, in the blink of an eye. Let's back up just a second. And talk about the intersection between your greenlight process and how this story wound up on This American Life. 

Katie Colaneri

Yeah, I mean, I have to say, I think a lot of people might feel really jealous when they hear how it all went down. Because it's like, if only it were that easy. I still can't quite believe it myself. I was introduced to this story about a month into my job. And, you know, part of my role was to scout out stuff that we could do in the future. And when I learned about this, I thought, oh, my gosh, wow, I can't believe that the perfect story has just fallen into my lap. Like, this is so great. 

Again, Sarah came and told me I was still at a point where I was going around, I was doing a lot of one on ones in the newsroom trying to get to know people. And Sarah, so well let you know, let me tell you about this, this wild thing that just happened on my beat. And the more we were talking about it, the more I was like, Oh my gosh, you know, and it's happening right now. And there's gonna be this revote in May. The time is now like, we've got to like, circle the wagons here and figure this out. And so I kind of spun up a little mini greenlight brainstorming process that ended up becoming a bit of like a test case for the ultimate greenlight process that hadn't been written yet. And I asked her to come up with a pitch and pull a sizzle reel, like, you know, pull a bunch of her favorite tape that she had so far from the people she was talking to in the community and all the different sides of this, and present it to a group of people, all the members of the Document team, as well as some other folks from the newsroom in our podcast unit, just to kind of say, Okay, does everybody else see what we're seeing here that there's tremendous long form narrative potential. Everybody pretty much agreed right off the bat. And then the question was, okay, well, then what form could this take. 

We sort of coalesced around this idea that maybe it wasn't like a serialized podcast, that if we wanted to just tell the Croydon story even while including, you know, a lot of nods and overtones to the larger education situation and democracy situation across the country, like it really felt like a contained story that would really just stand by itself, maybe in like a half an hour or an hour. And then once we got there, that's when a couple of people including our director of podcasts, Rebecca Lavoie, were like, you know, this really sounds like the perfect This American Life story, why don't we pitch them? So fast forward, we decided, yeah, sure, let's do that. Started drafting up a pitch, hadn't sent it in yet. And then I remember I was digging in my garden on a Saturday and I knew Sarah was out in Croydon doing some reporting. She was following some canvassers who are organizing around this revote. And I checked my phone. And I see she's sending me these like panic text messages, like my sources are getting calls from This American Life. 

We had not pitched, we were getting ready probably the following week to send off a pitch. Actually, we started panicking. At first, it didn't really seem like a good thing. We thought, oh no, we're too slow. They know this is a great story too, dammit. But then it turned out that a really wonderful producer was just making some kind of casual calls on it. His name is Chris Benderev, and his editor Laura Starecheski. And he was just kind of scoping out the story, you know, they'd heard that this crazy thing has happened. It's quite possible, actually, that they had seen Sarah's initial coverage for NHPR on it. And we're just kind of like, what is going on here. It had all the same impulses that we did. So it was very frightening and validating. And then once we got in touch with them, they were very quick to say, and actually very gracious to say, hey, you know what, we've got a local public radio reporter on the ground, who's already been telling this story and covering these issues in the state like. Yeah, let's work with you guys. And Laura and Chris actually worked with us on the pitch that they ended up pitching to the rest of their colleagues at This American Life. And it became an adaptation of the pitch that we had already written, originally intending for it to be something for the Document team. 

The team over there went for it and then by that summer, the piece was out. And it was actually, even by This American Life standards, a pretty quick turnaround, because they also wanted to kind of seize on the moment of the story. 

Elaine Appleton Grant:

What did they recommend that you change in the pitch? Do you remember one thing? 

Katie Colaneri

Oh gosh, that's a really great question. For us, our fascination really was around this group, the Free State Project, that libertarian backed movement that I mentioned earlier, that was helping to push the cuts. But that ended up being something that This American Life was less intrigued by. And they really kind of encouraged us to shift the focus more to these bigger questions about democracy, and less about the more New Hampshire specific political dynamics. So I think that the pitch became this cautionary tale, and less about all these mixed up political lines and these big questions about education. 

Elaine Appleton Grant:

Well, and that makes sense, at least the political piece, because if This American Life is looking at it for a national and international audience, and the Free State Project is fairly specific to say, New Hampshire and Colorado, maybe a few other states at this point, then it's going to have somewhat limited appeal, I imagine. And it's something for people to really think about - who's your audience? Thank you for sharing the genesis of that story. I'm gonna play that clip. One more time. It's short.

Audio Clip:

In Croydon, barely anyone goes to these, even the local TV guy did not show up this year. So there's not even a recording. But I'm gonna tell you…

Elaine Appleton Grant:

What I was particularly struck by having listened to the whole This American Life story is how subtly this reporter treated the issue. And I'm curious to know how intentional it was to keep it very subtle. One was what happens when there's no news coverage in a small town. Even the local TV guy didn't go to this budget hearing, she says, and it's practically the first sentence in the whole story. And the other theme is what happens when we don't participate in civic duties in the way that we once did. We learn very quickly, there are around 40 people at this budget hearing at this town meeting. But no one ever comes out in this story and says, You need to care about your local news, or you need to do something about civic education or anything, none of that is happening. Tell me about the decisions made along the way to make these points, but make them very subtly.

Katie Colaneri

It's interesting that you brought up the local news coverage angle, because that's not even one that we've discussed that much at all. But to us, the two big things that we've really seen when we look at the Croydon story is the democracy question of like, wow, this is what happens when people don't pay attention, don't show up, don't vote. And then the other big questions that are being raised here about the quality and the cost of public education, This American Life decided to really focus on the democracy question. And I think that was also how a lot of people in the town, it resonated with them as well, in addition to the other education questions. That was very intentional, because even when you have a piece that's about a half an hour, I think up until that point, this is the longest piece that Sarah Gibson the reporter had ever done. You still really need to refine the angle and you need to zero in on one element of the story. And I think the subtlety with which they presented it, matches the ways that This American Life, and the public radio in general, that's our ethos, right? We're not here to tell you what to think. But you also sometimes have to call a spade a spade. And I think in many ways, this story does an excellent job of showing, while not telling that this is the realities that community members face when not all of them who have different viewpoints show up to have their say. 

Elaine Appleton Grant:

Exactly, exactly. And it is interesting that when you're used to doing, every now and then a six minute story and you get half an hour, it can sound like you've got oodles of time to weave a new narrative. But a half an hour is not really all that long. And you do still have to make very conscious choices.

But I want to move on to the introduction of a character named Ian Underwood. So Ian wrote a pamphlet that he circulates at the town hall meeting where the budget was cut. And this pamphlet is called budget or ransom. And this scene also introduces another character named Tom Moore, who is an outgoing member of the school board. He's a parent of three kids in the public school. And Tom when he walks in, doesn't expect anything unusual at this very small town meeting. And he finally looks down, he reads this pamphlet that had been shoved into his hand when he walked in. And here is that clip. 

Audio Clip from This American Life:

Tom Moore: …as I'm looking at that, people are starting to get really upset about how much we're paying the principal and the superintendent, and about violins and snowshoes. And there just seems to be a lot of people up in arms.

Ian Underwood: It's like, if you wanted to design an instrument that could be easily broken by second and third graders, it would be the violin.

Sarah Gibson: This is Ian Underwood. He's the guy who wrote that pamphlet…

Elaine Appleton Grant:

It goes on to introduce who Ian Underwood is, he is a member of the Free State Project. And he's had it with the size of the school budget. And what struck me about this are two things. And again, I know you didn't directly edit this story, but it sets up what can be a really, truly tedious thing, going to town meeting, as this conflict between not two sides, but two actual people who have real stakes. Right? There's my taxes on the one hand, there's my belief in what I think about what public education should or shouldn't do? And my seemingly reasonableness about, yeah third graders are likely to break violence. And, you know, his counterpart, who believes in public education, has three kids in public school, has a lot at stake, if that budget shrinks?

Is that something that you think about a lot? Like, who are the characters? And how are we going to set up this conflict almost immediately from the get go? 

Katie Colaneri

You know, you want to establish these as your leading people, as people who have wants, desires, needs, and those are really idiosyncratic. I think the hope must have been that people might have thought about that for some time, like, oh, you know, like, they're both raising some really interesting questions. Tom is gonna is looking at having to pay $9,000 to send his kids to public school, which is supposed to be free, other than, like, the taxes that you pay, whereas Ian, who's got a totally different outlook and view on what public education really is, and how much individuals should be required to pay for it, even if they don't have kids in the school system. So it's really getting down to these fundamental differences between the two of them. 

And I think, the role of any storyteller is to get people thinking about those things. Especially in audio, you're spending time with these people, maybe a bit more than you would have in say, a four minute piece. So you're getting a chance to think about how another human being who you might fundamentally disagree with is thinking. And the hope is that spending time with that person, even for just a little bit longer than say, 30 seconds, is going to help give you a richer understanding. And that's, the real beauty of long form. 

Elaine Appleton Grant:

I agree. And I think also the real beauty of it is that we have the opportunity to bring these things down to such concrete specific details that just stick in your head, you know, you hear the snowshoes and you think of the violin, the little tiny violin, and you're there and it becomes so much richer, more fun to make and more fun to listen. More memorable, much more memorable. The last clip I'm going to play is introducing two other people who become the central focus of the rest of the piece. They are twin sisters, Angi and Amie, they sort of scramble after they hear that this budget has been cut to try to reverse that decision. And what that requires of them to do is to find a way to get 283 people to come to a revote. And if they don't reach 283 people, and remember, the whole town is only 800 people, then they're going to fail. 

Audio Clip from This American Life:

Sarah Gibson: …Amie and Angi are driving from house to house, trying to convince people to come to the revote. They've never done a campaign like this before.

Angi Beaulieu: We're bad at this. They say, we're not registered voters. OK, that's fine.

Sarah Gibson: Angi and Amie grew up in Croydon. Their car has an American flag tinted on the back window.

Elaine Appleton Grant:

The reason I wanted to play this is because the entire rest of the piece is suspense. This could be practically the same setup that you use for true crime, what's going to happen? All along the way, every single reporting and editorial decision is made to make it more suspenseful. Are they going to make it? Are they going to get this person to come to the meeting? Are they not? Is someone going to run out the clock at the meeting? What are the votes gonna be? Et cetera, et cetera? When you are working on a greenlight pitch for long form audio doc, how much are you thinking about how much suspense is in this piece? What is the big question? And can we actually keep planting that question in the listeners mind?

Katie Colaneri

Yeah, I mean, I think in a lot of ways, that's sort of everything. That's the kind of thing that really takes it from an in depth feature story to is it really a narrative? To what extent is time an ingredient in the piece? Are we gonna have to wait for something to happen? What are the plot points? Is there a whole backstory that we have to tell that gets us to how we got here and where we're going. At the end of the day, it really comes down to can you tell a story that has that beginning, middle, and even if that end is still unfolding, that really helps justify the amount of time in some ways that you end up spending with a long form piece. Both the time that the audience is hearing a six hour podcast that's told over eight chapters, slashed the time that maybe you're spending investigating that story.

Elaine Appleton Grant:

Katie, after about a year working on this greenlight process, and starting to really get super intentional about the Document unit at NHPR, are there things that you've learned along the way in crafting and re-crafting this greenlight process that came as a surprise to you?

Katie Colaneri

Interesting. The biggest change really came when I had to define our mission, which is so hard and is a big challenge for any newsroom, any team within a newsroom, or any podcast, any broadcast show. Honing in on exactly what you do and what you don't, is really hard. Why are you doing that thing? And how much time do you devote to it and who the resources are going to be where the resources are coming from? You know, especially that “what we don't do” question. I know we talked about this a little bit earlier, but I think it's something that so many shy away from, because being able to say no to something means that you're really confident in what you can say yes to and I think even just getting to that place can be a little scary. There can be this fear of what are we missing if we say no to something? And I think in many ways, a lot of podcasts, news organizations, teams, you know, have been revisiting that question, as many of us in media are realizing that there's many people that we've left out of these conversations. Many audiences that we haven't considered so reconsidering those things is always part of the game. That's why you have to be really intentional about what you're doing and who you're serving. And getting really specific about who you think your audience is, and how you can best serve them is another element that I think can be really scary and people shy away from because I think so many of us are afraid that we don't know the answer, or that we don't know how to arrive at the answer. But those are the places where it's worth spending the most time because then you know if you're spending all this time to tell this story, you have to know that you're connecting with the people who are really going to most need it or want to hear it. 

Elaine Appleton Grant:

Fascinating. Katie, thank you so much for being here. And are you having fun doing this job?

Katie Colaneri

Yes, I am. I am. This has been my dream job and I feel just incredibly grateful to be working with such talented people who are really, really dedicated to doing impactful long form journalism and just, you know, I totally pinch myself. It's great. 

Elaine Appleton Grant:

Well, they're lucky to have you. Thanks.

At the end of every episode, I give you a few of the many takeaways from these conversations. Today's takeaways are about how to pitch your long form story or limited series.

1. What are your holy shit moments? We need holy shit moments. What are those surprises – in the story, or about the people in your story – that make you say, “Wow, you’re never going to believe this!” Holy shit moments help get your pitch accepted – and they generate word of mouth. 

1. In your pitch, identify people – characters – who have high stakes and are in conflict with each other. Make sure you have access to them, too. Care about these people and frame your story through their eyes – in the This American Life story we dissected here, why it matters that one man imagines an eight-year-old breaking a violin, and another is terrified at the prospect of paying thousands to send his kid to a public high school. Snowshoes and violins make important things memorable. Issues alone do not.

1. Here’s a three step pitch process for longform narrative: First, write a text-based pitch. This can be a short query letter or a full-fledged slide deck. Then produce a sizzle reel. Use your best tape from whatever you’ve collected so far. If audio production isn’t your strong suit, ask for help. Finally get feedback from friends or colleagues. Choose good storytellers or folks who have a great understanding of your potential audiences. Revise as necessary. 

1. Editors and program directors in public media have tough decisions to make about podcasts. Done well, they can grow your audience enormously. But managed poorly, podcasts can rob newsrooms of talent and even hurt local news. As Katie says, the Daily News needs of the state are great. A longform project has to meet a high bar if we’re going to take a reporter out of the newsroom. The new greenlight process helps them decide how to vet story pitches and decide what’s worth listeners’ time - and reporters’ time. This process can help any newsroom, and any podcast network. 

That’s all for today. Thanks for being with me. If you liked this episode, you may love Episode 10: Glynn Washington, Lessons from a Master Storyteller. That link’s in our show notes. 

Please follow us on your listening app. Our goal is to help you make great creative choices every day. 

And you can help us do that! Take just one minute and give us a five-star rating and a short review on Apple podcasts. Everything you do helps us grow our new show, and we’re grateful. 

Sound Judgment is produced by me, Elaine Appleton Grant. Sound design by Andrew Parrella. Our gorgeous cover art is by Sarah Edgell. Podcast management by Tina Bassir. 

See you soon. 

Katie Colaneri

So I'm like a retired opera singer, for lack of a better word. My father is an opera conductor. And he was on the staff at the Met at the time. And I met the then head of the Children's Chorus. And she was a very gruff lady known for instilling fear in the hearts of 10 year olds who are going to appear on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera. And she said, Do you sing? And I said, Yeah. So before I knew it, I was whisked downstairs to the kids rehearsal room. And she had me sing happy birthday. And she came back upstairs and threw a bunch of sheet music at my parents. She said she's in and two weeks later I was singing at Carnegie Hall for a memorial service for some large donor. I just got sort of thrust into that. So for about three and a half years, I was a member of the Children's Chorus. And it really was just a wild experience being on stage, you know, with all these people in these major productions to sing for about, you know, all this build up to sing for about two minutes. You know, it really prepared me for a career in public radio where you're waiting around and then you get on and then you're like okay, well, lots of work to do before I'm back on the air again.