“As far as editing the tape down, it’s like taking a picture with audio; you take the snap-shot ONLY when you know everything you want is in the frame.”
-WFUV’s George Bodarky
Hi, this is Aaron Henkin, curator of the NPR Station Showcase with PRX. Each week, producers at public radio stations around the country are creating exceptional reports and features for their local listening audiences, and on this podcast we share some of the best and brightest of those stories with you. This week, we’re turning our antennae to New York City, where WFUV broadcasts from the campus of Fordham University. They bring us an original short series called “Odd Jobs.” It’s made up of four sound-rich, first-person profiles of people with, well, odd jobs: a chess hustler, a match-making cabbie, a street juggler, and a guy who removes chewing gum from sidewalks. “Odd Jobs” was created by a production team that includes WFUV’s George Bodarky, freelancer Michael Rice, and Fordham University seniors Evelyn Lombardo, Annmarie Fertoli and Shane D’Aprile. Here’s what the team has to say about how the series got underway…
The ‘Odd Jobs’ series seems like it was a great idea just waiting to happen — how did the concept get rolling?
Our News and Public Affairs Director Julianne Welby suggested the idea as we approached Labor Day and we all put our heads together to find New Yorkers with the most interesting or unusual jobs. New York City is full of unique individuals with amazing stories to tell — once you put your head to it — it’s not hard finding folks.
On this week’s podcast, we’re hearing four vignettes from the series. Talk about your department’s experiences interviewing these different characters for the series…
All of our producers had a blast. George Bodarky spent a few hours riding shotgun as cabbie Ahmed Ibrahim’s picked up fares and played matchmaker. He had quite the ride and most importantly was able to document it all on tape.
Production-wise, these features are very listenable because they’re so short and tight. I wonder if you might give listeners a sense of how much audio you were originally working with and what it takes to edit it all down into these audio microcosms…
All of our producers had quite a bit of tape. As far as editing the tape down, it’s like taking a picture with audio; you take the snap-shot ONLY when you know everything you want is in the frame.
When and how have you aired these audio moments on WFUV? And how have audiences reacted to them?
We’ve aired them as a series during our morning show, City Folk Morning. We’ve also aired them on our weekly public affairs program, Cityscape. These kinds of segments provide listeners with a slice of New York City life from a pie that will never run out. Sometimes listeners contact us for more information or simply to say the story put a smile on their faces.
You can hear more radio stories from WFUV online at The Public Radio Exchange, where producers from around the world post their stories. Write your own reviews and help decide what ends up on the radio at www.prx.org.