Days of Interns Past

This isn't Weekday High's first rodeo or its first summer of producing radio stories. Our past summers' work is available through the links on the right, but they deserve their own post.
Last summer, Steve, Nathan and I worked with a group of girls to produce VoxPod, a podcast and blog (and MySpace page!) that showcased our work. We focused on voices and stories from local communities of choice and chance.
In 2006, Nathan, Steve and the interns focused on their connection to our waterways. You can search KUOW's archives to listen to their work, though much of it was part of a Weekday show on the health of Puget Sound.
The summer of 2005 was theme-less, but the interns produced a batch of good stories focused mainly on their fellow teens. Scan through the archives for stories about teens and dieting, interracial romance, Native American identity, and other meaty topics.
Four years ago was an election year, obviously, and the interns focused on politics at the neighborhood level.
That's all the Weekday High work available online. Weekday High's just a tiny part of a nationwide youth radio movement. Other excellent examples include Youth Radio, Curie Youth Radio, and Generation PRX, as well as the links Nathan cited in the last post.
Have a good listen and a good weekend.

Listening

Yesterday Producer Jenny Asarnow stopped by Weekday High for a "lesson" on youth radio. I put lesson in quotes because what Jenny really stressed was how flexible, diverse, and creative youth radio can be. So even though we listened to and discussed a bunch of different stories, the take home message was to use them as jumping off points to produce our own unique sounds.

If you're interested, here's what we heard:

- Ghetto Life 101 - by LeAlan Jones and Lloyd Newman in Chicago and Dave Isay in NYC for Sound Portraits

- What we wish we could tell our parents - by Curie Youth Radio students in Chicago

- The Cruz Azul - by Claudia Villa for KRCB's Voice of Youth in Sonoma County, California (and withouth music on The World)

- DNA of the Black Experience - by Anyi Howell for Youth Radio in Oakland, California (and without the poem on NPR)

And as bonus, here are the links to two of the youth radio specials Jenny produced for KUOW - with special help from some Weeday High graduates.

- Getting Raised - "Getting raised isn't easy. In this hour-long special, we hear stories from those who know. Teenagers explain how to deal with in-your-face parents, abusive parents, absent parents and becoming a parent when you're still in high school."

- The Migration Project - "All teenagers search for identity, but some ask "who am I?" in more than one language. Young people tell us what it's like to cross the border, learn language, and lose language. We're not going to pick apart policies. We'll hear what it's like to be a young immigrant."

Impressed...as usual

You know, this is my fourth year working with the Weekday High School Internship Program (or WeHigh), and each year I continue to be impressed with how quickly the interns pick up the tricks of the trade.

Take yesterday, for example. We did our first lesson on audio editing, never an easy or particularly fun lesson. We (Brad Iverson-Long, or Iv-Lo, and myself) were teaching the interns Adobe Audition, now the industry standard for audio editing. It's a complicated program, even for those of us who have been cutting and fading for some time now (that's NOT a drug reference). But after just an hour of playing around with the program, everyone seemed to have picked up the basics.

They were cutting together and polishing a fake radio program Brad and I threw together just for practice purposes. Here's the raw audio, and this is what it sounds like after some rough editing (to download, scroll to the the bottom of the linked pages, also think they will only stay active for 30 days).

Oh and by the way, the music we grabbed from our friends at KEXP. The songs are I Wish that I could see you soon by Herman Dune and Fools by The Dodos.

Want to try your hand at audio editing? You can download a free 30 day trial of Audition from their website.

Start Your Radio Engines

Hello, world. Here we are:

Here are six of Weekday High's interns hard at work. This photo exemplifies how most people make radio these days: silently huddled over computers, ears covered by headphones.
We've worked two days so far. Day 1 we discussed storytelling, and Day 2 we focused on writing for radio. So now we can confidently write about how to tell stories.
We'll have nice and shiny podcasts ready in just over a week, but for now you can visit the Weekday High page at KUOW to find out more about the Weekday High interns. You can even hear their voices.