So You Want to Send an Audio Postcard?
Stay in touch with your friends at NPR by sending us an audio postcard. Postcards dress up our shows with rich sound. They fill little holes in our programs. And they give us a little taste of life out there.
We pay $300 for most postcards. When you've got an idea to pitch, just contact your regional bureau chief. Not sure who that is? You can find out by calling NPR's National Desk: 202-513-2760.
Examples of NPR postcards: |
What is an audio postcard?
-- Jonathan Kern, NPR Training
Even people who can't define what they mean by an "audio postcard" seem to recognize one when they hear it. That doesn't mean there's any sort of template you have to follow. Some postcards are just 60 seconds long, while others go on for four or five minutes. Some use actualities, and some only include natural sound. There are postcards that rely on extensive voice tracks and others that get by with just a few words at the top and the bottom. So there's no formula for creating an audio postcard. Yet successful postcards do seem to have a few things in common.
To start with, they project a strong sense of place. Just as a picture postcard from a far-away vacation spot brings that sunny beach, or brightly adorned Buddhist temple, or multi-lingual corner market right into your suburban mailbox, an audio postcard should put listeners in a place right away -- and keep them there. You can argue that a sense of place is an ingredient of almost all good radio stories, and that's certainly true, but it's one of the dominant features of a postcard. The reporter is right here, wherever "here" is -- walking along a path with monks in Tibet, listening to the rhythms of a construction site in Chicago or surrounded by a hundred fishermen in Connecticut as they compete in a casting contest.
An audio postcard is heavy on the audio. An effective postcard often envelops the listener in sound. And that means the sound should somehow be remarkable -- the rasping of 17-year cicadas so loud it drowns out conversation; the music of church bells in the medieval German city resonating with history and spirituality and celebration; the midnight creaking and snapping of birches in the Maine woods in January eerie and otherworldly. This is sound that is not just ambience. It's the audio equivalent of that four-color photo. It should really make listeners feel they were there.
Finally, the best audio postcards should stand out from the rest of the program, whatever that program is. That's one way of saying that postcards are not the same as reported pieces, but they can be different from regular reports in different ways. For example, the postcard may set itself apart by lacking any sort of narration: the intro may simply say, "Reporter Jason Fichley sent us this audio postcard from aboard the lobster boat Lucky Devil," and the postcard itself may be non-stop sound. Or it may start with a blind tease: The reporter addresses the program ("Dear All Things Considered"), the host identifies him ("Reporter Jason Fichley is spending his summer working as a lobster fisherman, and sends this audio postcard) and the piece begins with a postcard-like track ("This morning I was at the pier an hour before sunrise"). A postcard may use sound where most pieces use actualities, and it may well lack the sort of news peg that characterizes much of what we hear on public radio.
And that's all good. In other words, whatever form it takes, a successful audio postcard lends texture to the program that includes it. It changes the pace of the show. It forces the listener suddenly to refocus his or her attention -- to reinterpret that audio coming out of the car speakers or kitchen radio as the sounds of a certain place, a specific moment and a particular experience.
