A CONVERSATION WITH BEN ADAIR - MANAGING EDITOR of WEEKEND AMERICA from AMERICAN PUBLIC MEDIA
Conversation from Spring 2007 with NPR Liaison to Independent Producers, Paul Ingles

Ben Adair started his public radio career in the late 1990’s editing pieces for the late great Savvy Traveler. He wound up producing the show by 2004. After some time as a consultant, free-lancer and L.A.-based producer, he signed on as Managing Editor of Weekend America in early 2007. Ben fills us in on the latest on American Public Media’s weekend show, including how independent producers can best contribute to the program. For more details about submitting to Weekend America, visit their submission page: http://weekendamerica.publicradio.org/pitchastory/

ADAIR: Peter Clowney became executive producer of Weekend America in August of 2006 and he significantly changed the production model. Most notably he moved a lot of the staff out of Los Angeles and spread them throughout the country in order to reach into more areas and more regions.

INGLES: So what does it look like now?

ADAIR: I think we have six or seven people here in Los Angeles now including a host (Bill Radke). We have five people in St. Paul and we’re hiring a host for St. Paul. We have an east coast editor in New York. We have a reporter in Boston, a reporter in Seattle, and we’ll soon have a west coast editor/reporter in San Francisco. That’s Krissy Clark who is currently in Los Angeles but she’s moving to San Francisco.

INGLES: Given this construct that you’ve just described, how do you prefer to have independent producers and reporters approach the show with pitches?

ADAIR: Well, we have two ways that we do it. The easiest way, for someone who has not worked with us before, is to send an email to wapitches@americanpublicmedia.org. If we don’t know you, include a little bit about who you are, and some links to work that you’ve done that is representative of a piece like the one you’re pitching. So if you’re pitching us a feature, send us a link to a feature. If you’re pitching us a non-narrated piece then send us a link to something like that. Just so we’ll get an idea of the type of story you’ll be doing for us. Once we know you, we’ll give you a log in to this new web-based pitch application that we have called “Sir Pitch-a-Lot.” That’s just a web page where you can go and log in and it has a form where it’s really easy to pitch us. That gets you into our system and into our meeting.

INGLES: So tell me more about where a pitch goes once it’s come in on one of those paths.

ADAIR: Everyone on staff has access to the Sir Pitch-A-Lot application. That’s how we manage all of our content across the country. That includes from when pitches first come in, all the way through to the finished piece. It all resides in this web-based application. It’s really great but it’s new and we’re still trying to figure it out and getting used to it. But it’s really great for managing our content. We discuss all feature pitches at a Monday morning meeting (10 a.m. PT). All pitches received by 8 a.m. PT that Monday are discussed at that meeting. Each one is either accepted or rejected or asked for a new pitch. Like if we like the story but don’t really like the focus, we’ll go back to a reporter and say, “How ‘bout shifting it in this direction?” Or if we have questions about it, those questions will be addressed at this meeting. Then our Futures Editor Phyllis Owens will contact the reporter to say we’ve passed or we have these questions or we accept it and we tell them which person is their editor.

INGLES: So if a reporter gets a pitch in by 8 a.m. before the Monday meeting when should they expect to hear a response?

ADAIR: Definitely by Thursday of that week, but maybe as early as Tuesday.

INGLES: How are the editors assigned?

ADAIR: Based on the reporter’s location. Amanda Aronczyck is our east coast editor. Julia Barton is our central editor. And Krissy Clark is our west coast editor. Peter Clowney and I also edit some contributors.

INGLES: When the show passes on a story pitch, will the reporter pitching the story get more than a short “we pass” message, or will they get any word why the show passed on it?

ADAIR: Typically it’s just “Thanks for the pitch, we’re passing.” But if a reporter is interested in more details as to why, he or she can contact an editor that they’ve worked with before or contact Phyllis. We always have specific reasons why we pass on pitches but we usually don’t share those with people.

INGLES: But you will if queried?

ADAIR: Yeah if people want to know, we’re happy to tell them why.

INGLES: How has Weekend America evolved from its launch to how it is today?

ADAIR: The show is very different from when it first launched. I think it’s very different than it was even a year ago. I don’t know too much about the evolution of those ideas, but I can say very clearly what we’re looking for now. We’ve decided that this show is very much about what is happening in America on the particular weekend that the show is airing. So all stories take place on the weekend. All stories have a significant weekend angle to them. And most stories have a compelling reason to air on THE particular weekend that we’re playing them.

INGLES: This does sound like a change from what I was hearing just a year ago when something that had been happening the week before a Weekend America program might find its place in the line-up.

ADAIR: Not so much any more. And I think this is the biggest change for reporters working with us. Most of the pitches we reject are because there’s no specific reason why the story would be on THIS show as opposed to any other NPR show. You know like a musician has a gig coming up this week and we should cover it so people can hear about it and go to their gig on Tuesday or something. That’s not interesting to us. For us it has to be something that’s happening THAT weekend. Or at least something that peole are thinking about that weekend, is about as wide as we’ll go. So we might do some reflecting on news of the week, but even those stories we try to get a pretty significant weekend angle to as well.

INGLES: So if the feature were on an artist that did have a gig coming up in say, San Diego that weekend.

ADAIR: That could work but it’d be better if we could go hang out with them before the gig on a Saturday night, talking about gigging on the weekends. Since our show roll is 9 to 11 a.m. Pacific Time, we are able to go live and be places on the weekend so that’s really great.

INGLES: OK. So I hear about the weekend-centric theme. Is there anything else that distinguishes what might make a successful pitch to Weekend America?

ADAIR: We want each of our stories to be inventive, eye-opening and memorable. We want them to exhibit a strong sense of place, so that we feel like we’re in America. We’re looking for stories with strong characters, strong plot lines. I think some of the previous editors on this show were more interested in sort-of quirky weekend activities. Sot of like an “Eccentric America” approach to things. While I’m certainly not opposed to that, quirk for quirk’s sake is not good enough any more. I want there to be compelling reasons why we’re airing a certain story. It has to be a good story and has to be of national interest. And it has to tell us something about the American story that we’re all interested in shedding more light on in public radio. We’re killing pieces much more often now. Stories that don’t come out at the quality that we like. You know stories always evolve, but our reporters have gotten very good at keeping in touch with their editors about how stories are evolving so that there are no surprises when we get to air.

INGLES: Is it fair to say that the quality bar is a little higher now than before on Weekend America?

ADAIR: I think so. This used to be a program that was very willing to work with first time reporters or with people who hadn’t had that much experience working for a national audience. We’re a little less so now.

INGLES: As you think about best practices for producers or reporters wishing to approach Weekend America, what comes to mind?

ADAIR: We’re looking for reporters who aren’t afraid to show a little personality in their reporting. Whether that’s snappy writing to tape or having an attitude toward approaching a subject, or a really inventive treatment of things. We don’t have the button-down approach of weekday news shows. We want reporters who show us a little bit more of a kind of weekend, hang-out kind of feel. A little more informal. A little bit more personality. We’re not so much in reporting the facts of a situation. But we are more interested in why things happen. So a little bit more “think-y” than “reporter-y,” if that makes sense. I think we’re a little more sound-rich on the weekends. Because I think listeners have a little more time to appreciate not only intricate stories but also beautiful-sounding pieces.

INGLES: What are the time ranges of pieces you accept?

ADAIR: I’d say typically our stories from independent producers go anywhere from 3:30 to 5:00. The shortest we go is like 1:30. The longest space for any story on the show is, I think, 9:45. In that case, it has to be a really great story. It has to hold for that long.

INGLES: Can you sum up how you pay for pieces?

ADAIR: Yes, but I should preface this by saying we are currently completely re-vamping our payment, based more on story difficulty and the level of experience a reporter brings to a piece, that kind of thing. More in line with the way NPR and Marketplace deal with free-lancers now. We’re doing it because we want to be more fair and pay people more what the stories are worth. But right now (May 2007), we typically pay between $100 and $150 per minute depending on the piece.

INGLES: Anything else?

ADAIR: One thing that our program, and I think a lot of programs are struggling with right now, is finding more stories outside of the the coastal regions. Anyone who can pitch us very interesting stories for places we don’t hear about very much, are very exciting to us. Also interesting weekend takes on current events are very interesting to us. For example, a recent story we ran about the education initiative “No Child Left Behind” was centered on the Saturday classes children take in order to prepare for the new standardized tests.