Reality Tv Humor
Hendricks Chapel was packed, pews filled, people standing on all sides of the room. Ira (I’d like to think we’d be on a first-name basis) walked onto the stage in complete darkness and said, “You’ve have to understand that it’s radio. Not seeing contains a power in and of itself.”
And for the first couple of minutes, he began his lecture in the dark. It was just like listening to his sweet voice on the radio.
When the lights turned on, the crowd went wild. No, really. (Once you listen to just one This American Life episode, you’ll understand why.)
Dressed in a gray suit and rockin’ his awesome, dorky, black-rimmed glasses, Ira covered topics from how to structure a story to how he “could give a fuck about Facebook.” (Quite possibly the best line of the night)
On Radio:
He said there’s something about only hearing someone’s voice that makes it really hard not to feel something back. ”There’s an intimacy of just hearing someone’s voice,” Ira said.
You don’t have the choice to make assumptions about a certain someone. All you have is his/her voice; not the baggy clothes he wears, or the tattoos up and down the side of her arm, or the frightening scar across his face. Everything changes once you actually connect the voice to the image of the person.
On why journalism is failing:
Ira explained that there’s no amusement or humor in broadcast news or newspapers. The human emotion is missing from stories, and the stories aren’t necessarily interesting to either the reporter or broadcaster. “Generally, there’s a strict separation between serious and fun. [...] Funny isn’t allowed to touch the serious,” Ira said in regards to typical news stories today.
He played an example of a story that This American Life decided to do while on a huge aircraft carrier a little after September 11. Instead of doing a serious war story, one of the producers focused on a vending machine worker. The story was literally about this young woman whose job was to replace vending machines every day. It may sound like nothing, and it probably wouldn’t be the most popular story at the New York Times, but the final product was pretty hilarious. And you know what? The producer actually enjoyed himself, and was amused and surprised from the story.
He said that commentators (think Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Glenn Beck) are winning over journalists because a human reaction has been added. “Commentators talk like real people and journalism needs to catch up so we can kick their ass,” Ira said.
[That's something that Ira completely succeeds at doing. One of the main reasons he is so successful at what he does (making both men and women swoon) is because his voice, the way he narrates is just completely ... human. He doesn't have that ridiculous news anchor voice where every other syllable is enunciated. He talks to his listeners like he's talking to a good friend. And that is what journalism needs to do.]
On being bad:
“It’s normal to be bad … for a really long time.”
He admitted that even in his 7th year working for NPR he was…just plain bad. He even proved it by playing one of his old stories about … to be honest all I can remember is something about tortillas and farming. But, he said, what’s important is that “you get paid nothing so you might as well enjoy it.”
Throughout all those years, he managed to find his own “taste” in his work. He did what he found interesting, and thus made it interesting for listeners. And he didn’t wait for permission to do so. He experimented in storytelling and in his narratives. Although it took him awhile (his mom finally accepted the fact that he wasn’t going to med school only after he was 36, had his own NPR show, and was a guest on David Letterman) to be successful, even as a self-proclaimed geeky, shy, awkward guy, he has been named the “Best Radio Host in America” by Time Magazine.
His own story just kind of makes me want to drop everything I’ve done over the past four years and start over. I only hope everyone at the lecture, journalists, students, and all, took his words to heart and will help turn the state of journalism around.
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