A CONVERSATION WITH LAURA BERTRAN - SUPERVISING EDITOR FOR THE NPR ARTS DESK
Interviewed February 2006 by NPR Liaison to Independent Producers, Paul Ingles

How much independently produced material do you think the cultural desk takes - a rough percentage?

At NPR, we definitely are the biggest user of independently produced material, aside possibly from the shows that have special projects going with independent producers. As far as the percentage of pieces, I would say close to half of what we put out comes from independents. So it's important for you to have a relationship with the independent community? It's more than important, it's essential. Our reach would be much less without having access to good independents. We have a number of independents that we've been dealing with for many years and who are experienced. And they account for a large percentage of the independent material that comes to us.

But like I said our reach would be much less and there are often places out there where we don't have someone whom we've dealt with for years and years. And also, we need eyes and ears out there in the places where we don't have somebody to spot the stories for us.

What is important for independents to know about working with the cultural desk at NPR?

I think there are two different areas of concern. One is the aesthetic area and the other is the technical skills area. Let's talk about the aesthetic area first. Before they send us an idea, the most important thing for people is to really think it through in terms of why this particular story would be of interest to a national audience. So often we get pitched stories that are wonderful stories, but they're really only interesting to that local listening area.

So how does a reporter know what that line between local and national is. For example, I'm in the Southwest. If I want to do a story on a remarkable Mariachi band based in Santa Fe, clearly it's best appreciated by listeners in my region but I ask myself, why wouldn't listeners in New York enjoy this peek at something wonderful from another part of the country?

Well I think you have to look at the artistic excellence involved. You know, if it's a musician or a visual artist or a writer and what they are producing is so noteworthy and so excellent, then that is a natural for national attention. But if it were somebody who is reasonably accomplished but is popular in an area because they pay attention to that area and focus on that region, then I would draw the line there. I would say that we here, at the cultural desk, are always interested in great musicians, great painters, great writers - not necessarily people who are well-known mind you, but just people who should be known.

Also, I think something that raises an item to the level of national interest is if it's a precursor to a trend or a style that may be right now specific to a region, or always specific to a region, but is appealing beyond the region. And your example of a good mariachi band is a good one. That's music that can be appealing to a broad audience, not just a regional audience. But again the level of the excellence and the originality of what the people are doing - I think that's what raises it. So it's really kind of a quality issue and more than just "there's this interesting guy in our community," to "there's this guy that everyone should know about."

There's that somewhat famous "there's this guy" memo that Bill Wyman (Assistant Managing Editor) sent out a couple of years ago.

Yes, that was Bill's missive to the troops out there. He feels quite strongly about that….for too long that NPR was the home of "there's this quirky person doing this quirky thing." I don't want to put words in Bill's mouth, I think you should talk to him about this subject (we will)…but I think the idea is that we're interested in people working on a high level of accomplishment.

If you think your story meets that threshold, then you need to do some reporting, some fleshing out of the information and not simply give us a press release attached to an email saying "Here's something really interesting going on in my community." We want your take on that story - not the press release's take - but what do you think is interesting about these musicians, this play, whatever. As a reporter, what have you found out about this story that will allow the listener to take away more than just what a publicist has in mind - just trying to get these people known. And then write a coherent pitch - almost the lead to what the story might be - and send it to the editors here so that we can present it to our editors meetings. Our editors meetings are sometimes knock-down drag-out fights for stories. And we can only do so many. I think that the more ammunition that you give your editor in terms of a well-framed pitch that really gives you a sense of why this story is going to be different from what this artist's publicist would give you in a press release - that is going to give the editor the weapons necessary in that story meeting.

When you go to those meetings, do you essentially have only three or four sentences with which to sell a story. That's all the time you have basically?

Yeah, pretty much. So many times we get pitches for people who haven't gone to www.npr.org and done a transcript search to see that we've done something on this artist seven months ago. If we did a story that recently, we're not likely to do it again.

That's a very good first step then, the npr.org search?

Yes. We're interested in getting ahead of things instead of behind them, so that's another thing to think about.

Anything else you want to say about the pitch?

Well, if, for example, you're pitching us a play. Pitch it to us early enough so that we're going to be able to run the piece while the play is in previews, not after it's already opened. We're going to be much less interested in the play once it's already opened.

Are you only interested in plays, for example, that would be playing in big markets where lots of people would have a chance to see it?

It doesn't have to be a big market. I don't know if you heard our regional theatre series that we did last year. Eight or ten parts on regional theatre and we covered tiny little theatres that no one had ever heard of. And I thought it was just a fabulous, fabulous piece of work, that series. We identified a number of issues that are kind of the defining issues of regional theatre in America today from funding to programming to the actual building of theatres and what's innovative in that area - all these kinds of things and we picked theatres all over the country and we avoided major markets to illustrate those issues. So that suddenly a Shakespeare theatre in Alabama became the representative for repertory theatre in America. So we'd like very much NOT to be in the business of saying that only things in going on in theatre in New York or Los Angeles are interesting.

So we talked about the aethetics of the pitch. What do you want to say about technical proficiency?

I often advise people who have never produced for the network and have done very little production otherwise to really start in their own community with their local station. It's very hard for us to bring somebody along who is at a very basic level. We really need a basic level of skill, some level of experience. We're much more likely to assign a piece to somebody who can give us samples of work to listen to, that sort of thing.

And do you have time to do that? Listen to work from prospective reporters?

Yes we do try to do that. Because you're looking for talent? Yes, exactly. If we hear from somebody who has a list of ideas - or even one or two great ideas, we get interested in that person. If we hear from somebody who simply says, "I'm interested in producing pieces for you guys, what do I need to do?" that person might fall beneath the preview screen on your email pretty quick just because you're dealing with a bunch of other stuff and you don't immediately see what the pay-off might be for dealing with that person. I start off my day presuming that almost anybody that comes my way is going to be worth my attention, but the realities are that you just can't function that way most of the time - you sort of have to prioritize and choose the things that you are going to devote energy to.

Do you want to highlight a couple of novice mistakes about script writing that might be useful for independents to keep in mind?

I think that the biggest thing for me is to see somebody go in to a story, from the very beginning, thinking about what role sound is going to play in that story. It seems like a fairly elementary concept but I find that there are certain people who routinely "get" that and others who routinely don't. And it's the difference between an interesting and compelling story that's going to grab the listener's ear and the show's ear. Because we are the conduit for bringing this material into the building but once we get it, we have to sell it to the shows. And the shows want sound-rich stuff. They (already) have a lot of breaking news stories that are just actualities and tracks. When they hear something that really uses sound creatively, they really perk up and get interested. So I like to see that. Somebody who has the technical chops to know how to incorporate sound into a story, how to write a script around the sound that they have where they are using is as an integral part of telling their story. As opposed to, "here's my story, here's a little sound, here's my story, here's a little sound."

Anything else about writing?

The two things that I see the most is people who have not organized their story that has a beginning, middle and an end. I think of a story like a trapeze artist. You're holding on to this trapeze and you're about to jump off to the next one. And if the next one isn't there, you're going to fall. The story is the same way. You're carrying the listener along on the trapeze, you turn a conceptual corner in your piece, is the next handle going be there for the listener to grab a hold of it. And you have to explicitly address that in your story. How you get from the beginning, to the middle, to the end. And have it all make sense to someone who is NOT sitting there reading it but who is probably only going to be able to hear it once.

The other thing is over-writing. I know it's really hard for me because I tend to write more formally than I speak. But that's death on the radio. So I have to fight that urge all the time. If folks can get into their heads that they're telling a story and try to be as conversational as possible. Speak English as oppose to "bureaucrat-ese."

How do you handle a pitch from an independent who might want to do a story on a national musical artist. They might wonder if they have a chance to get the story instead of NPR assigning it to a staff reporter, or a host doing an in-studio interview?

We have this thing called the "Dibs" list. Shows and desks spot something interesting or someone interesting and they put that on the "dibs" list to say, "that's something I want to do." So sometimes we'll spot some band worth doing something on and we'll check the dibs list and someone already has it. Scott Simon has said he wants to do something on that band. Now we do negotiate. Sometimes we can convince a show that there's a better approach. It's not that people are unreasonable about it. But that's kind of how things get divided up. Now in terms of assigning it to an independent…if an independent pitches us something and we're not already working on it and that person has made a good case on why this is interesting and we know that that person can turn around a quality piece, it's pretty much theirs. We're not really going to look for someone else to give it to.

So independents can sort of get in the on the "dibs" thing as well if they, for example, spot an anniversary coming up and they can convince the desk that they are the ones who could do a quality story on it?

Yes.