"Hopelandic" is the thing with feathers

Some of the radio kids have been quietly watching the progress of The Bryant Park Project to see how it will fair in the NPR market. The new morning show, named after the part of NYC where the studio is located, is NPR's latest attempt toward identifying with listeners in their 20s and 30s. Color me curious, and a little skeptical.

The best thing I've seen on the site so far? This disastrous interview with Sigur Ros. The onus for this interview's fate rests mostly on the shoulders of BPP co-host Luke Burbank, who asks some really amateur questions and then hates on himself for the rest of the interview in hopes of winning self-deprecation points with the band. (Hey, it's happened to the best of us. No need to get smug about it.) Rather than burying the ill-fated interview, BPP aired its dirty laundry last week by posting the piece on their blog, taking some pretty nasty hits from their Icelandic fan base—a surprisingly large base, as it turns out.

Well, BPP took it a step further this morning by posting a play-by-play commentary with music journalist Jancee Dunn about how Burbank could have improved his interview. For those of us hoping to break into the biz at some point, this is a pretty helpful breakdown of how NOT to interview your favorite band. I really learned a lot. I especially loved Dunn's suggestion about interviewing the eager drummer in order to get other band members' egos a little piqued. Check out the clip here.

Learning opportunity aside, what the heck is BPP hoping to achieve here, exactly? Do they think that by airing this we'll think they're hip for being so forthcoming? It reminds me a little bit of Kentucky Fried Chicken's move to rename themselves KFC to identify with a younger demographic. Do you guys remember the "cool" cartoon Colonel with the skateboard who thought buying fried chicken was "sweet"? Have you seen him around lately? Yeah. Me neither.

I met Andrea de Leon, and all I got was this lousy t-shirt...

...actually, I didn't even get a t-shirt.

BUT, she did give our class her contact information in case we want to pitch her something once we're alums. Oh, yeah, and she listened to our story pitches and — OK, wait, lemme back up a bit.

See, Andrea de Leon is kind of a big deal in the NPR world. She's the Northeast Bureau Chief, which means that any stories pitched to NPR on this side of the U.S. go through her. She literally hears story pitches all day long, and then she picks out the ones she feels will work on the air. There have been a few Salt alums whose pieces have made it to Andrea's desk and then, wonder of wonder miracle of miracles, onto national airwaves. Oh, and did I mention Andrea's on the board at Salt? This means that not only does she understand what we do, but she really appreciates it. Which makes pitching to her that much better.

It was good to hear Andrea's perspective on story structure, and to see how a professional outfit views a piece. After talking with us, she even gave each of us 10 minutes to pitch our best idea to her and the class. I won't lie, it was frickin' intimidating. You know those nightmares where you show up at school in your underwear and you have to give a speech in class and you lose your book bag and you're trying to write the speech but your pencil has turned into a carp? It felt a little like that. But instead of it being like the part in the dream where people laugh and point at me and the carp swims away, my pitch turned out to be pretty good. I told her my idea and she actually liked it and she gave me a little "good game" sort of speech and I felt a whole lot better. No mocking, no running from class crying...and I was fully clothed. Success!

But I don't want this whole post to get too romantic, because there are some other things to consider when you're dreaming about pitching your piece to NPR. This may come as a shock to some, but there are actually a few differences in what NPR looks for and what we are learning to put together here at Salt.

For instance, even if a Salt piece has a universal theme, we tend to make our stories more specialized to the region, specifically Maine. I think that makes our aesthetic a little more in-depth and personal, because we're not necessarily tailoring the piece for a broad national audience. Mostly we're thinking of what we're doing in an artistic and socially responsible way, not in a marketing-to-the-media-outlets way. I know that seems indulgent, but we're here primarily to tell good stories, and national publication isn't always the end goal. Of course that can come later, if you're interested in sending your story out nationally. But national publication can mean subjecting a wonderfully thoughtful piece to some serious hack and slash editing, just so it can fit the tail-end of All Things Considered. And that can be depressing, especially when we're in such a nurturing environment at Salt; an environment that keeps telling us that the untold stories need to be told. If that doesn't fit NPR needs, does that mean we shouldn't tell them? Does it make the story less legitimate if you send it to a smaller market? Does that make what we're doing unimportant or insignificant, even if we're not selling our pieces after this experience?

I don't know, can anyone else here sound off about what they think is the purpose of the stories they're producing or photographing or writing here? Are you all hoping for national publication, or do you have different goals? Do you think you can make a piece here that is both thoughtful AND perfect for national publication, or do you think the two are mutually exclusive?

Geez, everything I do here turns me into a penny philosopher. I'm gonna go work on my story ideas.

(and no, this is not me in the photo. I wish I could say I'd caught a fish that big.)