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“That is the main difference between storytelling for the ear and writing, is that the cost of revisions is so much higher.” — Julia Barton, audio story editor, founder of RadioWright, former executive editor of Pushkin Industries
Today we have Julia Barton. Julia was the third hire, I think I have that right, with Pushkin Industries, the podcast giant founded by Malcolm Gladwell. She was the executive editor of Pushkin and helped develop Revisionist History and Against the Rules, the latter by the journalist and uber best seller Michael Lewis. She, quite literary, edits with her ears.
I met Julia briefly at the Power of Narrative Conference in Boston, where she’s also a Nieman Fellow, as her talk followed mine. I did not attend her talk and I feel great shame about that, but my battery was in the negative after my talk and I just needed to disappear, the plight of the introvert. I could have learned a LOT since her talk was about the grammar of audio stories. I atoned by inviting her on the podcast to talk about her auditory journey.
Julia has a cool newsletter called Continuous Wave, which is a weekly newsletter exploring the forgotten history of broadcast and all electronic media. It’s very specific, which is what you want from a newsletter. She’s the founder of RadioWright, she is @bartona104 on IG. You’ll hear her name at the end credits of Against the Rules, and that’s why I was like, damn, I gotta talk to her about:
- Editing audio stories and how it’s different than print
- What’s the ideal length for a podcast be it narrative or interview
- The cost of revisions
- Scratch mixes and dry mixes
- Animal vs. Mineral editing
- Picturing the ideal interview in your head
- And more!
CNFin’ Snippets TK
“I felt this welcoming energy, and I found that radio and podcasting have that element of that to this day. And so there’s always been a community element to it, and we see each other, and we’re happy to see each other. We complain about stuff, and it’s what I thought newspaper and magazine journalism was, and might be for many people, but I just found it through audio instead.”
“The scratch mix is a way to get it off the page. So the tension in this form of editorial process is trying to get it off the page as much as possible and into our ears so that we don’t make the cognitive mistake, which is very easy to make and understandable, that the thing on the page is the production.”
“That is the main difference between storytelling for the ear and writing, is that the cost of revisions is so much higher.”
“Picturing the ideal interview in their head, even if it’s day-of kind of like, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if I encountered someone saying this, or I got a scene in which this happened,’ and just that act of imagining it can help manifest it, because you kind of know why you’re going out into the field.”
“I don’t think people’s attention is infinite, so you do have to earn it, and that’s subjective and hard to figure out how to do that.”
“It’s been really fantastic working with [Michael Lewis]. I mean, I feel like I learned so much from the way he writes, the way he characterizes people. And it’s always been my job to get out of the way, but to also tell him when I think.”
“My job is to help them sound good in this medium.”
Julia’s Rec
Our Ancestors Were Messy
Parting Shot: The UJT
Thanks to Julia for coming on the show. Be sure to check out the podcasts she’s involved in and head to RadioWright.com to learn more.
OK, so let’s not bury the lede … Kevin is doing better, though there’s a bit more management involved. Meaning, even when we take her out to go to the bathroom in the backyard, it has to be on leash for now. She’s been eating, even if that means I give her more soft food so it’s more appealing to her. She can get down into a squat for toileting. She’s moving well and I think the gabapentin is helping with the shoulder and the carprofen is helping with the knee. All in all, she’s herself, wagging her tail and all, and we’ll keep working on her rehab so that she might be able to go on longer walks on flat surfaces. You can tell she wants to GO, and she’s pretty bummed that we don’t let her jump on the furniture anymore. No tears this week. Next week, who knows.
So what’s this universal journaling theory? UJT, which sounds like a birth control device, but totally isn’t. I have a LOT of notebooks.
I use a Bullet Journal for the daily tasks and general organizing. I’ve kept a diary or journal nearly every day since 1997 and I’ve gone through a LOT of versions of these O’Meara Chronicles. I also have the compendium notebook that serves as a diary and phonebook for the next book project. Paper all the way down.
Since 2021, when I started my Field Notes subscription, I’ve used a packet of six themed, 48-page notebooks as one “collection,” one “edition” of the Chronicles. It’s a tight little package, maybe a little too tight, but I love it in part because they store easily in a Field Notes archival box.
For years I’ve long wanted a universal journal theory that puts everything under one style of notebook, the better to streamline things. I thought that maybe I could combine the Bullet Journal with my daily journaling so I get my feels from the morning out, then we see how the day proceeds and it’s all together. This would likely mean that I’d go through 4 full Bullet Journals a year. I’m projecting. Right now, I use one every two years or so. I keep it tight in there.
This morning I tried my usual journaling, the highlight of my day, in the Bullet Journal, and it was cool. I numbered the entry, which is 4,281, and wrote a page. In my current O’Meara Chronicle volume I put the date, the entry, and a See Page 165 in Bullet Journal.
The FN versions were the closest thing I came to over the years for a UJT. Once I’m done with this volume of FN notebooks, I might just try a volume or two in the ol’ Bullet Journal and see what happens, how it feels. As you can tell, I take this shit way too seriously. A lot of my journaling over the past few years has been about journaling and finding a way to have a satisfying, unified experience that creates the ultimate document of my day to day life, no shape, unfiltered.
It’s not like you can’t change and go back. I did that one time during the FN run before going back to ol’ faithful. Really what it boils down to is I want to uncomplicate things. I’m the messiest person who wants to be clean; the most cluttered person who wants so desperately to be uncluttered.
I’m not much of a call to action guy, but drop me a line either on social or in the comments in Spotify about your journaling practice.
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