amount of attention that peo-
ple are willing to give to a
radio story, a TV news story
or a podcast. It can seem over-
whelming to turn a 30-minute
interview into a two-to-three
minute podcast. An easy way
to start is to pick out all of the
quotes from an interview that
you want to use.
Finding the
Nugget
Radio journalists face this
problem every day, and
they often call radio-friendly
quotes “the golden nuggets.”
A golden nugget is a mem-
orable quote that is easy to
understand. These nuggets
usually aren’t statements of fact (unless the fact is really surprising),
rather they are quotes that tell the listener how the subject felt about
something, what her analysis is of a situation, or what his opinion
is of what might happen next. Good sound quotes from a subject
should be very short, usually 10 to 15 seconds long, so keep in mind
that a golden nugget may be only a part of a really long sentence.
To find these golden nuggets, start by logging your recording, or
transcribing the interview. You don’t have to write down the exact
words, but your log should be pretty accurate, and should indicate
what time on the tape the interviewee said something (this will make
editing the podcast a lot faster). As you examine the log, first take out
the parts of the interview that you don’t need, elements that aren’t
crucial to the story or tangents that you weren’t going to use anyway.
Now look at the interview transcription and take out the quotes that
you think you could paraphrase more efficiently or in fewer words.
With the quotes you have remaining, pick out the best three to five
golden nuggets.
Scripting
Now that you have identified the quotes you are going to use, you’re
ready to write your podcast script. A good place to start is to use the
order of your quotes to build the structure of the story. Now fill in
the gaps. What do listeners need to know before and after they hear
each quote?
NEW MEDIA IN JOURNALISM 473
You can access thousands
of podcasts using an MP3 player
and a computer.golden nugget
a memorable quote that is
easy to understandlogging
writing down what was said in
an interview as you listen to a
recording of it