Brooke Gladstone is the host and managing editor of NPR's On the Media, a weekly program that covers whatever the staff decides to call media.
More photos from Brooke Gladstone
Thursdays cause all the cold sweats.When we re-launched the show 17 months ago, Thursdays would last about 18 hours. Now they're down to 14. On Thursday, all the copy is written, most of the week's interviews are recorded and edited, the pieces come in, the elements are mixed, the musical stings are chosen, and all the bits are assembled into a show, to be fed by satellite to the public-radio system, on Friday.
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StumbleUponI've been around. I was a media reporter, a Moscow correspondent, the editor of two big-time NPR shows, and a fill-in host at the network. I can do those jobs. I just can't master them all simultaneously.
For example: Right now I am reading a 20-page report for an interview I'm about to do, helping Sean carve a few seconds out of another interview, doing a second edit with a reporter on a piece for the show, and talking to Arun about the Big Board. (Arun has to makes things fit, and flow, and get out on time. His life is hell.)
Last night, we forgot to include Zimbabwe, so we jettison the bit on Dan Rather. Mike's parody involving Ari Fleischer and the New York Post is funny but not quite there. (Rare.) Bob punches it up via e-mail. But we don't have the right voice to record it, so that leaves a gaping hole to fix Friday. Meanwhile, I get a little aggressive in my interview because I'm not hearing anything new. I say, let's kill it, but Kat says she'll cut it anyway. And with the editing machines and the televisions and the talk and the sports columnist we can't reach and the Eco interview we've been cutting for three days and the gaping hole, it all feels like a swarm of gnats buzzing, plus Bob's coming down with the flu.
Kavanaugh and Pesca are both wearing orange because that's the color of our national alert. But to me it's the color of Thursday. A good one. Like today.
The highlight of Thursdays is the arrival of Dylan Keefe—the audio engineer who comes in at 7 p.m. and leaves at 8 the next morning. He records the continuity, the copy that links all the pieces together, with Arun and Bob and me. He's also the bass player for Marcy Playground, and his ear makes the show sound sweet. He's a Minnesotan, a calming influence. And even though he has a weird haircut and I once saw him pull an old piece of pizza out of a wastepaper basket, I worship him. We all do.
I listen to the final edits on a couple of interviews, write the continuity, and we head downstairs to the studio about 10 p.m. Arun keeps me telling me to drop my pitch, I'm sounding "brittle." Bob's voice is rough and scraggly. We slog through with only a couple hundred re-takes (called pick-ups) for Dylan to clean up later. Part of the reason we mess up is that it's late and we're punchy. Also Bob is a rare talent, an extraordinary wit, an old friend, and a spectacular distraction. Hearing Bob, from his home studio in Virginia, so close in the headphones, practically behind my ears, is a very strange sensation. One slip-up and a laugh cascades into a convulsion, like a couple of weeks ago while reading a letters segment.
Tonight Bob is grousing about this Diary. Seems he objects to his portrayal. He sent me this letter.
Brooke,
Nice job on the diary. Perhaps your readers might be interested to know that you have a colleague who does more than sit in his "soundproof booth" abusing drugs. Perhaps you might tell them how, seven years ago, I found you on the streets, broken and bereft, gnawing on a discarded Drake's Yodel, and sheltered you. They may be interested in that healthy left kidney of yours, which once belonged to me, and how I taught you to speak English beyond your vulgar Brooklyn patois. Maybe this "ancient history" doesn't suit your agenda, to portray yourself as the moral center of On the Media. Or maybe I am just a gorgeous voice, a blow-dried larynx, a sidekick, like Mortimer Snerd. Tell it like it is, Brooke. Tell them the name for the show, "On the Media," was MY idea.Yours,
Bob Garfield
Thursday spills into Friday, the staff trickles back in, interviews and pieces are heard and tweaked one last time and then sent down to the studio for final assembly. We decide to drop the parody—we would have had to cut the interviews too tight to squeeze it in. Late this afternoon, like all Friday afternoons, we'll gather in the control room to listen to the satellite feed. That ritual puts an end to the week, and often involves a bottle of single-malt scotch. We don't listen very closely, because we're tired, we've heard it all before, and we can't judge the work anyway. That happens this weekend, when we hear it for real, on the radio.
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