Final-year Journalism students produce Season 2 of ‘We Met U When…’ podcast
Taking an idea from inception to creation was a skill that final-year Journalism students had the opportunity to learn in Professor Shari Okeke’s Advanced Podcasting and Radio Documentary class. From interviewing sources to cutting audio clips, students enrolled in the class created Season 2 of We Met U When…, a podcast that digs up news stories from the past to examine the impact of journalism from the subjects’ perspectives to improve best practices. In class discussions, students were encouraged to consider the power dynamics between interviewer and interviewee – in the stories they dug up and in the stories they produced.
“The teams behind Season 1 did a phenomenal job creating We Met U When...together. Since the Season 2 teams would benefit from hearing Season 1 and learning from the founding producers, I challenged them to raise the bar and they did it,” she said. “I'm especially impressed by the way students pushed through difficult moments - that persistence and commitment to collaboration made this season strong. That determination and professionalism will make We Met U When... producers very valuable to other production teams as they move forward in their careers.”
Behind-the-scenes of production
Okeke explains that each student had multiple roles to play in creating the podcast; conducting interviews, writing scripts, designing sound and mixing episodes. She notes that all the episodes included in Season 2 of the podcast are exclusively student-produced.
“The first episode - Coco's Key Change - is scored using only music performed for this podcast. One producer from that episode, Anna Maria Moubayed, is a musician and even performed some music for episode 4 - Memories of Mamie,” she said. “Another producer, Mia Johnson, was involved in mixing several episodes. The teamwork this semester moved to the next level. Even our podcast art was designed by a producer in this class.”
Fourth-year Journalism student Farkhounda Azizullah took on the role of researching and writing the script for episode 4. Her main responsibilities were writing narration, formatting interviews and working on the structure of the episode to have the best delivery when it came to the theme and how to tune in their target audience.
“The experience of creating an original podcast was beautiful. From it just being an idea to it being on the way to publishing it is an unreal feeling to have all your work come to life,” Azizullah said. “Working on this podcast didn't just teach me new skills about teamwork, and production, but I also learned a lot about my peers.”
Learning industry-grade skills
Sheila Reid, a Master of Journalism student, was a co-producer on two episodes of the show, which involved interviewing, scriptwriting, music selection, and audio editing and mixing. She said she was able to hone her skills in interviewing and fact-checking and learnt how to transform her existing knowledge from written work to podcasting.
“Preparing for an interview is so crucial in podcasting – questions need to be precise because the responses will be heard rather than read. Radio documentary is a lot like long-form narrative writing in that you have to absorb a lot of information and then condense and make sense of it,” Reid explained. “The story will go through many iterations (and many, many rewrites) because people are complicated and narratives are messy – and that's ok! Good interviews and rigorous journalism are what matter most.”
All episodes of We Met U When… are now available for streaming on JRN Radio.
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