How a producer produces
Booking Hallmark stars and perfecting fades before A.I. takes my job
I am marking one YEAR in Savannah, Ga. this month. In May, I passed the one year mark working remotely for NPR. Today I am working from a pleasant coffee shop called Perc, housed in an old brick warehouse that, like all Savannah architecture, manages to effortlessly exude elegance and neglect.
Below my keyboard, I have a Post-It note of minor B-celebs whose publicists I am emailing to see if they would like to appear on our podcast for a series we’re planning later this year on the economics of romance. We’re calling it LOVE WEEK. I am already committing little factoids to memory with my cold inquiries that will linger in my longterm memory — long enough to maybe come in useful on trivia night.
Danica McKellar, a.k.a. Winnie from The Wonder Years, has more recently been acting in direct-to-streaming holiday rom-coms. She recently switched production shops from Hallmark to GAC Family, a more faith-focused competitor. That means I’ll reference a movie like Christmas at the Drive-In, done with GAC, instead of Christmas She Wrote from the Hallmark era. Will it matter? Probably not! But paying attention to minor details is part of the job and it shows respect for their work.
Most of my days are not spent this frivolously. Usually I am cross-eyed, entranced in a Pro Tools session on dual monitors trying to automate a fade just right. Or searching NPR’s clunky music library for a bed that conveys “inquisitive neutral” or “mysterious neutral” or “buying pistachios at a Whole Foods neutral.” My days are spent focusing on tedious details, assembling audio and navigating out-dated publishing systems. It is unglamorous and fun.
The economics side of daily news is low key. I used to treat low-key beats with contempt, equating business as unimportant or boring even. Now I see the intersection of it all: money, markets, politics and power. Whenever I have pangs of regret for retiring my reporter’s notebook, I mentor a younger freelancer or produce an episode that benefits from all the groundwork I laid over the last 15 years as a journalist.
On my office wall I have a kanban board divided into three columns for “ASSIGNED,” “IN PROGRESS” and “COMPLETED” stories. Any given week, I am juggling about three episodes, publishing two of them, and researching another to queue up the following week. I write some, not a lot. I miss that part. The pace is still relentless, yet I am grateful for work that prioritizes moments of delight.
Some recent episodes I’ve worked on:
The curious rise of novelty popcorn buckets. For this episode, we look at movie theaters’ latest attempt to get you back into their megaplex, aside from close-ups of Glenn Powell’s perfectly symmetrical face. Did try to book Ryan Reynolds, who supposedly “designed” the Deadpool bucket, to no avail. Sigh.
Documenting the long road to a work permit for one Venezuelan migrant in NYC.
We bought shares of two investment funds (ETFs) that track the trades of members of Congress to see who’s coming out ahead in the race to get rich off public office. I did not sell the experimental shares yet, so there is still time to get rich and retire early.
Pick Your Sides
A lot of Olympic storylines to follow, but I’m rooting for USA’s 5’1 Sunny Choi in the Breaking (#breakdancing) competition. Really, I root for all sports dominated by people in their mid- to late-30s.
About 200 pages behind, but I’m attempting to read The Power Broker by Robert Caro this year, on the man behind New York’s most enduring infrastructure projects. The podcast 99% Invisible is releasing a companion episode each month per 100-page chunk. This month featured Pete Buttigieg as a guest. Caro himself appears on the first episode.
Congrats to my podcast partner in crime Nicole Nixon for her new role at The Sacramento Bee covering California politics! We should reunite for an emergency pod soon.