| Joe Barr, News Director |
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Thanks for visiting our “Radio Rewind” web page! Here you’ll find several stories from the past year picked as personal favorites by our reporters. As a bonus, they’ve each blogged about their stories, giving you insights |
into how and why they were produced. In turn, you can give the reporters your feedback. This page is the start of an initiative by KXJZ News to open a window on our newsroom; to let you see how we produce the stories you hear and give you the chance to post your comments about them. We also think it’s a great way to extend the life of notable stories you might have missed on the air.
| 2006 was a busy year for KXJZ News. We undertook several major projects, including a multi-part series explaining the importance of bonds, yes bonds; a series on Sacramento’s Oak Park neighborhood, and a series on overlooked tourist attractions in the Sacramento region. |
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We produced comprehensive and in-depth election coverage, and we had all the angles covered on the Arena controversy in Sacramento.
We have exciting plans for future interaction with listeners, including the possible podcasting of one of our editorial meetings. “Radio Rewind” is just a start. Stay tuned and logged on! |
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| Jenny O'Mara , Capitol Reporter |
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Propositions 86/87
With so many different propositions on the ballot this past November, we were looking for a way to put things in perspective for people – and for ourselves! 86 and 87 were the two that stuck out in terms of spending. |
| The oil and tobacco companies were spending millions to defeat the measures, so that really said something about the potential impact of them. We decided to bring it all together in a two-part combined story. |
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This was the first time we’ve tried this, and it required a lot of coordination, but we both really liked the final product. One of the more interesting anecdotes was the “natural” sound at the beginning of the piece: it was an anti-86 event where a guy drove a steamroller over a giant pack of Marlboros. It really set the scene for the story.
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Gubernatorial Candidate Profiles
We wanted to do something a little different in covering the two major candidates for Governor… |
| Of course we attended several campaign events over the months leading up to the election, but for this story we wanted to concentrate a bit more on supporters for each side and how they saw the race. What was particularly striking in the Angelides piece was the supporter we spoke to and his acceptance that his candidate was the underdog…. But his confidence that Angelides would return as a candidate someday says a lot about supporters’ loyalty… |
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| Jeff Hudson, Arts Reporter and Theatre Critic |
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Musician Stan Lunetta
Percussionist Stan Lunetta is one of the great characters on the Sacramento music scene -- he's been playing in local ensembles since Dwight Eisenhower was in the White House. Lunetta is a marvelous musician and a humorous storyteller, he's popular with audiences, and (as a guy who hasn't shaved in 20-some years myself) I really admire his long beard. |
| This summer, Lunetta was playing in the pit orchestra for several Music Circus shows, I thought it would be fun to meet him in his midtown studio and get him to demonstrate his special kit. During the interview, I realized that Lunetta and I have something else in common. The walls of his studio are lined with shelf after shelf of paperback science fiction books — he and I have read and enjoyed many of the same writers in that genre. |
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Audrey Andrist Plays The Grieg Concerto
The Grieg Piano Concerto is something of a guilty pleasure for me. On the one hand, it's a proverbial "warhorse," one of those overexposed standards of the repertoire that is played on the radio pretty regularly, to the point that some people get a little tired of hearing it. |
| At the same time, I freely admit that I love hearing the Grieg Concerto performed in concert -- and in reality, in our part of California, you don't get an opportunity to hear it done all that often. |
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| So when I noticed that the Stockton Symphony would be playing the Grieg Concerto, I thought it would be interesting to get together with pianist Audrey Andrist and conductor Peter Jaffe, and talk about the expectations of the audience -- and the performers -- when the Grieg Concerto is played. Jaffe, Andrist and I got together at the keyboard on an otherwise empty stage at Atherton Auditorium in Stockton, and the story was an easy one to put together, because Andrist and Jaffe had lots to say. |
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| Elaine Corn, Food & Lifestyle Reporter |
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How I Fell For Heritage Sheep
I cover food, so why would I do a story about knitting, sheep and wool? Because I can. The topic of heritage sheep being raised for fleece to be spun into natural fibers by an articulate woman drew me in. We were in the midst of a knitting invasion, after all. |
| And I would have no trouble getting sound to enrich my story – baah-ing sheep, buzzing shears, bleating ewes. After an editor meeting, it was decided to start the storytelling from the knitters view, which I recorded during a big knitting class at Rumpelstiltskin. A few days later, I went to the farm for shearing day. |
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| I took along a friend from the station who is an advanced knitter, and who believed she had entered knitter heaven. For the story to appeal to non-knitters, we turned to the animals, recited their funny human names, and added as much baah-ing as the story could bear. The result was an easy-listening story with hard information about heritage sheep, artisan wool, the community that awaits the fleeces each year and a conveyed respect for agriculture’s aesthetes. |
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Sushi: How Hard Could It Be?
Radio has turned out to be a successful medium for food storytelling. Sounds, more than pictures, connect easily with sensory experiences. I’d wanted to do a story about something most of had not experienced but might have secretly wished for — to go behind a sushi bar with a sushi chef for a private lesson. No matter how many times I’d planned this live tutorial, the concept wasn’t ready. |
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But sometimes, if you wait …. A year went by. Taka Watanabe was named a finalist in a sushi contest. This newsy “hook” recharged the story. Taka agreed to let me, a woman, behind his sushi bar. My editors and I had two meetings, one for story structure, another to solve a technical glitch. |
| How was I going to hold a microphone while making sushi? Paul Conley came along as an engineer – my first story with an engineer in tow! He adjusted two microphones and monitored sound levels so I could concentrate on Taka’s technique. I was amazed that in 5 minutes of air time, the story accomplished more than we’d planned for. Taka starred in the first half alone. The second half revealed him as a gentle teacher with a sense of humor indulging a pushy surrogate [me] for anyone who has ever wondered how hard it can be to put a piece of fish on top of a lump of rice. |
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| Marianne Russ, Capitol Bureau Chief |
Bonds 101
You have to admit, we couldn’t have picked a duller subject, but that was actually the point. Just talking about the story was enough to make your eyes glaze over, but we knew it was important –and it was a challenge to make this dry topic come to life. |
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This was part one of a four-part series on bonds that we did back when lawmakers were still arguing over just what a public works bond package would contain. As you know, in November voters approved a record package of bonds. |
| As far as the substance of this story, we relied heavily on the legislative analyst’s office, which has some great bond experts. To spice things up, we decided to ask people on the street if they knew what bonds were – and even went out on a limb and included some James Bond music in the piece. I laugh every time I hear the beginning of the story. |
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| Tourist in Your Own Town: The State Capitol |
| I loved the idea of the series, since we so often tend to take for granted the tourist opportunities in our own backyard. How true that turned out to be when I went to do this story! |
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| I’m at the Capitol most days of the week as part of my regular reporting duties, and it was a challenge to step back and attempt to see the building with new eyes.
I made multiple trips for the story: I took a tour, talked with tourists, recorded the sound of lobbyists at work, and did an interview with a Capitol historian that went over an hour. That’s where the toughest decisions came in. I had to boil almost two hours of tape into a four or five minute piece. My favorite part of the experience was the story I learned about the painted panels in the basement from the early 1900’s. There’s what some might call real foreshadowing there. Curious? Listen for yourself! |
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| Steve Milne, Afternoon Host/Reporter |
Medical History Museum
This story ended up being pretty popular with listeners and funnily enough, the museum is just a stones throw away from the radio station. Most things in the medical museum don’t make noise so the challenge was to find good sound. Dr. LaPerriere is a great tour guide, a wealth of information and a fascinating interview but I still needed to record a few things that made noise to make the piece stand out. |
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He thought it over a bit, dug around his office for a few items and came up with a several pieces that made very distinctive sounds. As you’ll hear, they ended up making the story come alive. |
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Oak Park: Signs of Hope
One of Sacramento’s most troubled neighborhoods, Oak Park is dealing with a lot of change right now. Everyone we talked to for this story is passionate about turning things around; |
| Residents, business owners, city leaders – they’re all working to keep drugs and crime out of the area. But not everyone agrees on how to move forward. We tried to capture the dilemmas and the sense of change in the community. |
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| It was extremely important that we talked with a variety of people. Consequently, this piece took a little longer than usual to produce. But I think it does a good job of capturing the current mood in this historic neighborhood of Sacramento. |
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| Ellen Ciurczak, Sacramento Reporter |
Firefighters: Anniversary of 9/11
This story came together very easily. I was surprised at how open the firefighters at Citrus Heights Fire Station #21 were. The firefighters were obviously fearful about the possibility of having to respond to a terrorist attack in their own backyard, and they were, in fact, called out on an alarm while I was at the firehouse. |
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I was also very surprised at how reluctant they were to leave me alone at the station without supervision. Their new security measures prohibit them from leaving their equipment unattended, and though I felt I presented no security risk, they obviously thought I did. In the end, they had me sit in the lobby and wait for their return. Listen to this story, and hear how the firefighters feel, five years after the attacks of 9/11. |
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Tourist in Your Own Town: Governor’s Mansion
I took a tour of the governor’s mansion with a special guide -- John Casey, grandson of Governor Pat Brown. |
| He had spent time in the mansion as a child, so he had wonderful, personal stories to tell. Casey played the old grand piano for me. He got very emotional, as he remembered playing the instrument as a child, at the time, not realizing that people like Frank Sinatra had also sat on that same piano bench. When he told me about the time John F. Kennedy came to breakfast at the house as a young senator, I got goose bumps, thinking of the promise of his life and of what happened to him as president. |
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| Donna Apidone, Morning Edition Host |
Old City Cemetery: Halloween
I love cemeteries. From Paul Revere to Washington Irving to John Steinbeck, from one end of the country to the other, I’ve stopped to visit historic luminaries in their resting places. Old City Cemetery caught my attention when I first came to Sacramento because of Mark Hopkins. |
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Seeing his grave connected me to the city’s railroad heritage. As the Halloween features points out, a cemetery is a city unto itself. Each grave, no matter who is in it, tells a fascinating story. Even if you don’t delve into old newspapers or the cemetery’s archives, you can still learn a lot from a visit. The gardens, headstone styles and engravings all tell about the times. It’s a museum worth visiting. |
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A Talk with Baxter Black
For a year, I lived in the Wild West (near Dodge City, KS) and I came to understand what inspires cowboy poets. |
| As long-time listeners to Morning Edition know, Baxter Black is more than a poet, author and former large animal veterinarian. He is an entity. That, to me, is part of the story — how this wise man has built his public-speaking enterprise without losing his special connection with the hearts of man and beast. It was a privilege to spend time with him. |
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| Paul Conley, Senior Producer |
Escher at the Crocker
Producing a radio story about the visual arts isn’t easy. But M.C. Escher is so well-known and so unusual, I thought this traveling exhibition at the Crocker Art Museum would make for a great feature story. The trick was to capture people’s candid reactions as they viewed the mind-boggling works. I wanted to create for radio listeners the experience of attending the exhibition first-hand. |
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That’s why, aside from a short introduction, there is virtually no narration. The comments of the assistant curator were included to provide an expert analysis of Escher. But they only serve to underscore the more important aspect of the story: the spontaneous observations of museum goers. Give a listen and see what images come to your mind. |
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| Team Tennis |
| When most people think of professional sports teams in Sacramento they think of the Kings, the Monarchs, or the River Cats. But the Sacramento Capitols franchise of World Team Tennis has been entertaining fans and winning championships for more than two decades. Never having attended a match, I wanted to find out more about this quirky pro sports league that convenes just one month out of the year. It was thrilling to sit about 8 feet away from Pete Sampras as he fired off a high-velocity serve right past local favorite Sam Warburg. |
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| But Warburg ultimately won the match. And, learning more about up-and-coming players like Sam was a big part of the story. I also got a feeling for how supportive local fans are about their home team, even when members of that team come from as far away as Russia (Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova). Sound was a big part of the story. Using a stereo microphone I was able to represent the back-and-forth action of a tennis rally. Hear it for yourself ! |
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