Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Over the last few decades, the radio documentary has developed into a strikingly vibrant form of creative expression. Millions of listeners hear arresting, intimate storytelling from an ever-widening array of producers on programs including This American Life , StoryCorps , and Radio Lab ; online through such sites as Transom, the Public Radio Exchange, Hearing Voices, and Soundprint; and through a growing collection of podcasts.



Reality Radio celebrates today's best audio documentary work by bringing together some of the most influential and innovative practitioners from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia. In these nineteen essays, documentary artists tell--and demonstrate, through stories and transcripts--how they make radio the way they do, and why.



Whether the contributors to the volume call themselves journalists, storytellers, even audio artists--and although their essays are just as diverse in content and approach--all use sound to tell true stories, artfully.



Contributors:

Jad Abumrad

Jay Allison

damali ayo

John Biewen

Emily Botein

Chris Brookes

Scott Carrier

Katie Davis

Sherre DeLys

Lena Eckert-Erdheim

Ira Glass

Alan Hall

Natalie Kestecher

The Kitchen Sisters

Maria Martin

Karen Michel

Rick Moody

Joe Richman

Dmae Roberts

Stephen Smith

Sandy Tolan

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Foreword (p. ix)
• Introduction (p. 1)
• Are We On The Air? (p. 15)
• That Jackie Kennedy Moment (p. 27)
• Talking To Strangers (p. 36)
• No Holes Were Drilled in the Heads of Animals In The Making Of This Radio Show (p. 44)
• Harnessing Luck as an Industrial Product (p. 54)
• Covering Home (p. 67)
• What Did She Just Say? (p. 76)
• Out There (p. 86)
• Cigarettes and Dance Steps (p. 96)
• Unreality Radio (p. 108)
• Finding the Poetry (p. 116)
• Diaries and Detritus: One Perfectionist's Search For Imperfection (p. 128)
• Living History (p. 135)
• The Voice and the Place (p. 147)
• Crossing Borders (p. 157)
• Adventurers in Sound (p. 165)
• Dressy Girls (p. 171)
• Salt is flavor and Other Tips Learned While Cooking (p. 176)
• Afterword: Listen (p. 183)
• About the Contributors (p. 197)
• Editor's Note: Hearing the Documentaries (p. 205)
• Acknowledgments (p. 207)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

True or false: the difference between reality television and reality radio is that the latter tells "true stories." The contributors to this book do not claim that specific point, but the title begs the comparison. Biewen and Dilworth (both, Center for Documentary Studies, Duke Univ.) collected essays by journalists, documentarians, and artists who have chosen radio as a primary medium for reporting audio that takes one inside a topic rather than offering 15-second sound bites. The names of the contributors will be most familiar to the public-radio listener, but their work has infiltrated a variety of old and new media, demonstrating its relevance. What is striking about this collection is how clearly the reader can "hear" the diverse voices and stories, despite the print medium. Biewen comments on the difficulty of "coaxing [the contributors] to articulate on the page what they do with sound." But the book succeeds admirably. It is a remarkable collection that reveals the process, creativity, and purpose behind stories designed to help listeners "feel something." It also provides lessons in journalistic decision-making, editing, and attention to detail--how to keep listeners listening, and affect their understanding of the topics treated. A wonderful and accessible read. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates; technical students; professionals; general readers. F. Tavares Southern Connecticut State University

Booklist Review

Radio has suffered corporate deadening just like other traditional media, yet it retains an edge thanks to public, community, and college stations and the popularity of radio documentaries. Biewen, audio program director for Duke University's Center for Documentary Studies, offers a lively history of creative documentary radio in his introduction to 19 passionate, instructive, and unexpectedly moving essays by innovative audio journalists and artists who use sound to tell true stories artfully. Such artists include the Kitchen Sisters, who write about their deep need to bear witness and try to heal the culture through stories and revelations, and Ira Glass, who generously reveals just how much patience, effort, and luck are involved in creating This American Life. Jad Abumrad's description of his work with Robert Krulwich on the wacky Radio Lab series is matched by provocative accounts of radio diaries and bold audio performance art and Katie Davis' beautiful essay about her collaborations with Washington, D.C., teens in Neighborhood Stories and the practice of deeper listening. Invaluable and many-faceted coverage of a thriving, populist, and mind-expanding art form.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2010 Booklist