{"id":854,"date":"2012-03-02T14:47:11","date_gmt":"2012-03-02T14:47:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/niemanstoryboard.org\/2012\/03\/02\/audio-danger-npr-daniel-zwerdling-on-golden-radio-yoda-robert-krulwich-moment\/"},"modified":"2025-02-14T18:39:33","modified_gmt":"2025-02-14T18:39:33","slug":"audio-danger-npr-daniel-zwerdling-on-golden-radio-yoda-robert-krulwich-moment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/niemanstoryboard.org\/2012\/03\/02\/audio-danger-npr-daniel-zwerdling-on-golden-radio-yoda-robert-krulwich-moment\/","title":{"rendered":"NPR\u2019s Daniel Zwerdling on golden radio, Yoda parallels and the Robert Krulwich moment"},"content":{"rendered":"    \n    <div class=\"  core-block\">\n        <div class=\"block block--core block--core-html mb-5   max-w-screen-full mx-auto\">\n            <em>[The third installment in\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.niemanstoryboard.org\/2012\/01\/04\/audio-danger-stories-from-the-edge-of-listening\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">an ongoing series<\/a> of posts by Julia Barton about audio narratives. \u2013Ed.]<\/em><br \/><br \/>A ghostly crowd of voices parades across the public radio airwaves every day: politicians and hosts, foreign correspondents, callers, singers. Sometimes they catch our interest, but as soon as one voice is gone and replaced by the next, it\u2019s usually forgotten.<br \/><br \/>Not so the voices in Daniel Zwerdling\u2019s stories. They persist. They are not especially remarkable people: a veteran\u2019s wife who insists on huge holiday displays although her family is poor; a military doctor giving a dull PowerPoint\u00a0demonstration. You may not remember their names, but you have<em> imagined<\/em> them \u2013\u00a0their voices stay alive in your mind.<br \/><br \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-14532\" title=\"zwerdling-d4\" src=\"https:\/\/niemanstoryboard.org\/app\/uploads\/2024\/03\/zwerdling-d4.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"156\" height=\"195\" \/>This is because of something we call, in the business, \u201cgood tape.\u201d Good tape is the golden currency of audio stories. Without it, they are just another forgettable drop in the day\u2019s torrent of sound.<br \/><br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/people\/4173096\/daniel-zwerdling\">Zwerdling<\/a>, who started out as a staff writer at The New Republic, is now part of NPR\u2019s special investigative unit. Zwerdling\u2019s reports on topics as diverse as NASA, pesticides and the Department of Homeland Security have won nearly every broadcast prize, including the DuPont, Peabody, Polk and IRE awards. Maybe it\u2019s just the result of more than three decades in the field, but he seems to get great tape no matter what he puts on the air. So I called him to see if I could glean the Yoda-like secret of his craft.<br \/><br \/>Turns out, the Yoda thing is not exactly a joke.<br \/><br \/>\u201cI\u2019m short, and I have short, stubby arms,\u201d Zwerdling admits in his trademark amiable voice. \u201cAnd in order to mic (interview subjects) closely \u2013\u00a0because I always mic closely to get very clean sound \u2013\u00a0I sit right, like, almost on their laps. Big, burly generals will literally grab my arm and start pushing me away and say, \u2018Do you have to do this?\u2019 and I\u2019ll say, \u2018Yeah, I\u2019m sorry, but it\u2019ll make you sound better!\u2019 I\u2019ll sit right next to them, as close as I have to, to hold the microphone right at the side of their mouths. So it\u2019s very intimate.\u201d<!--more--><br \/><br \/>There\u2019s no getting around a central factor in audio interviews: Microphones make most people nervous. And, although broadcast journalists may not like to admit it, the act of recording \u2013\u00a0with all its cables and headphones and microphones and checking input levels \u2013\u00a0makes us nervous, too. Zwerdling says he learned how to face down these jitters from another Jedi master.<br \/><br \/>\u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/people\/5194672\/robert-krulwich\">Robert Krulwich<\/a> taught me my first day at NPR, which was in December 1980 \u2013\u00a0he took me into a little room and said, \u2018Don\u2019t just walk in and have pleasant chitchat,\u00a0and then say: \u2018All right, now we\u2019ll do the interview.\u2019\u00a0&#8230; Walk in, and as you\u2019re chatting about whatever \u2013\u00a0cupcakes, the weather \u2013\u00a0as you\u2019re unzipping (the equipment) bag, taking out the microphone, you know &#8230; scratch your back with the microphone.\u2019\u201d<br \/><br \/>Seriously? Scratch your back with it?<br \/><br \/>\u201cNo, really,\u201d Zwerdling says. \u201cShow it\u2019s an extension of your body. So that\u2019s sort of what I do. I call it the Robert Krulwich Moment.\u201d<br \/><br \/>One thing that\u2019s clear as Zwerdling talks about interviews: He listens on many levels. He\u2019s fascinated by what people are telling him, and comfortable if they get emotional. But he\u2019s also thinking about the needs the rest of us will have later \u2013\u00a0the way that we require concrete information, chronological accounts and vivid details to enter another person\u2019s story. If Zwerdling has to ask basic, \u201cobvious\u201d questions over and over to break that story down on tape, then it\u2019s fine with him.<br \/><br \/>When sources stare at him like a simpleton, Zwerdling tells them, \u201cYou\u2019ve got to remember, my listeners are driving in the car, they\u2019re making dinner for their family. They\u2019re distracted \u2013\u00a0you\u2019ve got to grab them and tell them, \u2018Folks, THIS is what happened. This is why it\u2019s important!\u2019 And then they kind of get into it.\u201d<br \/><br \/>All of Zwerdling\u2019s interview and reporting skills are on display in a story he did with T. Christian Miller of ProPublica that aired on NPR\u2019s \u201cAll Things Considered\u201d on\u00a0March 22, 2011. \u201cSuicide by Cop\u201d is nearly 20 minutes long and worth your time. Go ahead and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2011\/03\/22\/134657905\/suicide-by-cop-leads-soldier-on-chase-of-his-life\">listen<\/a>. We\u2019ll wait.<br \/><br \/>The piece is part of an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.propublica.org\/series\/brain-wars\/\">ongoing series<\/a> about an epidemic of traumatic brain injuries among recent combat veterans, and the veterans\u2019 struggles to get diagnosed and treated. \u201cSuicide by Cop\u201d starts out, literally, like an episode of the reality show \u201cCOPS,\u201d with the ragged sound of a police radio in North Dakota. The main subject of the story, an Iraq veteran named Brock Savelkoul, is standing by his pickup truck with several guns, surrounded by officers in a standoff. We won\u2019t know until almost the end of Zwerdling\u2019s piece whether he lives or dies.<br \/><br \/>Along the way, we learn about Savelkoul\u2019s life from his sister Angie and his father, Bruce. We hear how he and his fellow troops sustained concussions after a rocket blast near their Army trailer, and how Savelkoul started to break down later, while on leave in Thailand. We hear how he walked away from a treatment facility in California and ended up back home, discharged from the military and more than 200 miles from the nearest VA hospital. And then we hear how Savelkoul\u2019s father came home one night to find his son gone and their shared home trashed.<br \/><br \/>The clip of Savelkoul\u2019s father speaking lasts 90 seconds. It\u2019s rare, in a story on a nightly news program, to hear any one person talk for that long. And it would have been easy for Zwerdling to cut the last several seconds, when Bruce Savelkoul, a licensed gun dealer, describes the features of each weapon his son took out of the house that night. Zwerdling\u2019s original draft of the story was far too long, and he needed to make cuts. So why did he save this part?<br \/><br \/>\u201cI wanted the details. Let us really confront what guns they had in the house, and what guns the soldier put together, and why a bunch of people with the highway patrol would feel so threatened by him,\u201d Zwerdling says.<br \/><br \/>Great tape torques our minds in different ways all at once. On the one hand, we\u2019re getting all this detailed information about the firepower Savelkoul carried. On the other, we\u2019re noticing how his father takes the time to list each gun. Beyond that, in the rhythm of this story, such a long piece of tape hammers at our subconscious expectations: It goes on for too long. As will the 2 1\/2-hour<span style=\"color: #3366ff\"> <\/span>standoff with Savelkoul about to come.<br \/><br \/>Zwerdling often interviews people while they look over original documents, photos, or videos. In the case of this story, it was dashboard footage from the North Dakota Highway Patrol \u2013\u00a0no easy thing to score, as any journalist who\u2019s worked with police departments can tell you. Zwerdling sat down with state trooper Megan Christopher to watch the standoff. Christopher recalled how she tried over and over, in the dark sleet of an empty field, to get Savelkoul to give up his weapons. He finally did \u2013\u00a0at which point another officer rushed out and tasered the veteran. This is painful to hear. But then we learn\u00a0what Christopher did next.<br \/><br \/>It is at this point, nearly 18 minutes into the story, that the chaotic impact of a faraway war fully punches us in the gut, along with relief that for once, it didn\u2019t result in more tragedy. Only after that, in the last two minutes of the story, do we hear directly from Brock Savelkoul. First he\u2019s in the VA hospital where he\u2019s finally getting intensive treatment. Then a few months later, he\u2019s on the road to recovery (literally, in the truck where he piled all those guns the night of the standoff) hoping to become an advocate for other veterans with brain injuries.<br \/><br \/>Zwerdling says he probably got 12 hours of raw tape for the 20-minute final story. He made three trips to North Dakota over a few months. Sometimes we get great tape through luck, but usually, Zwerdling says, it takes persistence, time, and someone higher up willing to spend the money for that. But of course there are other factors money can\u2019t buy.<br \/><br \/>\u201cThe most important thing about interviewing is that you, the interviewer, be really interested in what these people have to say. Genuinely interested,\u201d Zwerdling says. \u201cIf children can spot a phony from a mile away, adults can, too. If you come in with some kind of persona that\u2019s not you, then nothing will happen.\u201d<br \/><br \/>As Zwerdling watched video of the North Dakota standoff, he sat close by trooper Megan Christopher\u2019s side. \u201cWe would start the video and then stop it, start it and stop it. And then when I could feel something changing in her body language, that\u2019s when I would stop it, get away from the video, turn to her and just talk together,\u201d Zwerdling remembers, and then pauses. \u201cI just got a Christmas card from her today.\u201d<br \/><br \/><em>Julia Barton (<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/#!\/bartona104\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">@bartona104<\/a>) is an editor, media trainer, producer and writer who spearheads the \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.niemanstoryboard.org\/2012\/01\/04\/audio-danger-stories-from-the-edge-of-listening\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Audio danger<\/a>\u201d series on Storyboard.<\/em><br \/><br \/><em>\u00a9 National Public Radio, Inc. Excerpts from NPR news report titled \u201c\u2018Suicide by Cop\u2019 Leads Soldier on Chase of His Life\u201d by NPR\u2019s Daniel Zwerdling and ProPublica\u2019s T. Christian Miller were originally broadcast on NPR\u2019s \u201cAll Things Considered\u201d March 22, 2011 and are used with the permission of NPR. Any unauthorized duplication is strictly prohibited.<\/em>\n        <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[The third installment in\u00a0an ongoing series of posts by Julia Barton about audio narratives. \u2013Ed.] A ghostly crowd of voices parades across the public radio airwaves every day: politicians and hosts, foreign correspondents, callers, singers. Sometimes they catch our interest, but as soon as one voice is gone and replaced by the next, it\u2019s usually [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3721,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,12],"tags":[425],"topics":[],"authors":[92],"issue":[],"class_list":["post-854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-digital-storytelling","category-essays-on-craft","tag-podcasts","authors-julia-barton"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>NPR\u2019s Daniel Zwerdling on golden radio, Yoda parallels and the Robert Krulwich moment - Nieman Storyboard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/niemanstoryboard.org\/2012\/03\/02\/audio-danger-npr-daniel-zwerdling-on-golden-radio-yoda-robert-krulwich-moment\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"NPR\u2019s Daniel Zwerdling on golden radio, Yoda parallels and the Robert Krulwich moment - Nieman Storyboard\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"[The third installment in\u00a0an ongoing series of posts by Julia Barton about audio narratives. \u2013Ed.] A ghostly crowd of voices parades across the public radio airwaves every day: politicians and hosts, foreign correspondents, callers, singers. 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