Middle School
I listened to the story called Middle School aired last year that was basically an interview where
a host, Ira Glass, was talking to a 14-year named Annie who emailed the website
with a suggestion for a show. She said she got the idea for this show because
of a conversation she had with her friends earlier that day but did not want to
put her name in the email because she feared being ridiculed by her fellow
classmates.
The entire interview was sound clips with some
music of the interview between Glass and Annie. There were some direct quotes
from Annie, but at some times Glass did summarize a response she had with an
indirect quote. The music that was played was suitable for the audience this
story was intended to attract. It wasn’t too childish but not too mature either.
After
the interview, Glass talked to some specialists about the stage of a child’s life
where they are in the middle of being an adolescent and a teenager. During this
part of the audio, you heard the voices of both Glass and the specialist and
some music. While she was discussing the part of a child’s life where they are
acting more like children, you heard music from different famous cartoons that
children watch often. But once she moved on to their earlier stages of the teen
years, different music came on.
Like
it said on the website campfire journalism website, dialogue allows the
audience to see and hear characters interaction with one another. Instead of
just using quotes form Glass’s interview with Annie and putting them in a written
story, he decided to make an auditory story that allowed his audience to be
able to hear first-hand exactly how she answered the questions—where she
laughed, when she paused, when she got quiet. All those little things played a
very important part in being able to adequately tell this story.
Later
on in a different interview with a teacher talking about students during a middle
school dance, you could hear in the background the kids laughing, yelling and
having fun along with the music. This was a brilliant idea because everything
the interviewee was talking about, we could also hear in the background.
