![]() ![]() Every reporter knows the sinking feeling that accompanies a request to do an interview over lunch. Then, last fall, I was interviewing people for my current book project and had a problem. The results were immediate and dramatic- this video, featuring journalism activist Josh Stearns, University of New Hampshire journalism professor Meg Heckman (a former student of mine), and Tim Coco, the force behind WHAV, a nonprofit community radio station in Haverhill, Massachusetts, became the “here’s what to do” example that I show my students. In 2014 I bought a Røde lav microphone that I could clip onto the lapels of people I was interviewing. My students always laugh (they’re laughing with me, not at me at least that’s what they tell me), but it pretty much amounts to a demonstration of what not to do. But before long, Bass is drowned out by the sound of machinery kicking into gear and dishes crashing. I fired up my Canon point-and-shoot and began recording. I like to do a compare-and-contrast, starting with a video I made in 2009 about the New Haven Independent, a nonprofit news organization that was the main subject of my 2013 book The Wired City.įounder and editor Paul Bass sat down with me in a local coffee shop. When I teach smartphone video to my students, I always stress the importance of good audio. Even though the file now resides in two separate places, when I’m on the road I can’t relax until I’ve also uploaded it to Google Drive. If it’s a really big file, plug the phone into your Mac and copy it over using iTunes. When you’re done, you can send the AIFF file to yourself using email, Dropbox, or SoundCloud. Time elapsed is prominently displayed, which is great for jotting down (for instance) “great quote on lessons from prison 30:25” so that you can go back to it later. ![]() A red bar shows the audio level, providing you with the constant confirmation you crave that, yes, your interview really is being recorded. When you start it up, you choose from among three levels of recording quality, give the file a name, and hit the big red button. It turned out that iTalk had everything I needed. I chose iTalk because it was inexpensive and looked easy, and because it was from Griffin Technology, which has a good reputation. So I hopped onto the App Store and found several possibilities. I was in a panic that morning in New Haven-so much so that I didn’t even realize that my recently acquired iPhone already had a recording app. My digital devices are all from Apple, but you should be able to adapt these ideas to whatever you’re using.Ī screenshot of iTalk. These tips, I hope, will make it easier for you to record and transcribe. But I’ve been surprised by reporters who’ve told me their transcription technique consists of nothing more than playing back the audio on their phones. By now, of course, nearly all of us are recording interviews on our smartphones. Since then, I have assembled a digital recording toolkit that I hope will be useful for journalists. But I didn’t really begin upping my game until I tested my little Olympus recorder in a New Haven hotel room one morning in 2011 only to discover that it was pining for the fjords. I’ve been all-digital for maybe 10 years now. Transcribing was worse, as you’d sit there constantly hitting the “play” and “rewind” buttons, an imprecise process that risked damage to the tape. The little microcassette tapes were of dubious reliability-and yes, I once had one fail on me during a crucial and contentious encounter. Before the emergence of digital tools, recording and (especially) transcribing an interview was a tedious affair. ![]()
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