Why this episode wouldn't work in print

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Consider This from NPR

Episode: Why This Episode Wouldn't Work in Print
Date: November 1, 2025
Host: Sacha Pfeiffer
Guests: Frank Langford, Laura Sullivan, Ann Powers

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Episode Overview

This episode of Consider This explores why certain storytelling forms excel on the radio but fall flat in print. Drawing on their own experiences moving from newspapers to NPR, veteran journalists discuss how audio uniquely captures emotion, character, and immediacy—and why some stories just demand to be heard.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Print vs. Radio Storytelling (00:00–01:47)

• Writing for the Ear vs. Writing for the Eye:
  Sacha Pfeiffer opens with the idea of the "NPR driveway moment"—radio that is so compelling listeners can’t turn it off. She and her colleagues, who began as print journalists, quickly discovered that writing for radio demands different skills than writing for print.

  • Quote:
    "I thought the writing would be the same. But instead of my story appearing in print, I just read it out loud. I immediately learned that a great newspaper story does not automatically make a great on air story."
    — Sacha Pfeiffer (00:18)

  • Ann Powers notes:
    "When you read a newspaper story, I mean, it's a nightmare on the radio. It's just this... lead in, it's long, it's really involved." (00:46)

• Simplicity and Conversation:

  • Radio stories must be shorter and simpler, often mirroring natural speech.

    • Frank Langford:
      "We had a certain kind of orthodoxy of writing imposed upon us that it's not the way anyone ever speaks." (01:10)
      "I was completely liberated to write as I would speak." (01:16)

2. Radio as a Theatrical Experience (03:02–04:56)

• Immersive Audio Scenes:

  • Frank Langford compares radio to theater or film, creating scenes that make listeners feel present.

    • He gives an example from his reporting: the difference between describing an elephant being tagged in South Sudan (in print) versus playing audio of the elephant snoring (on radio).

      • Memorable Moment & Quote:
        "The elephant, she's at least 30 years old, is snoring." (04:23)
        "You know what we do if she wakes up? You run." (04:29)

  • The sound transports listeners, conveying tension, location, and emotion better than print can.

3. Conveying Emotion Through Sound (04:56–06:04)

• Non-verbal Storytelling:

  • Sacha describes reporting on a bombing survivor whose joyful laugh with her service dog became central to the story—something that print couldn’t fully express.

    • Quote:
      "...if I was still writing for a newspaper, I couldn't convey the joy and delight of that laugh. So there's something about radio where you can bring something that you're a little limited with in print." (05:48)

• Ann Powers adds:
  "It's true. Radio, you get to bring the whole scene into it and all the characters become what's happening... It brings the whole thing to life." (05:49)

4. Interviewing for Audio, Not Text (06:04–08:09)

• Letting Silence Speak:

  • In print, reporters might constantly interject ("mhm", laughter); in radio, this can ruin the tape.

    • Ann Powers:
      "You gotta let them finish their thought. And you can't go, uh huh huh, through somebody's talking..." (06:20)

    • Frank Langford:
      "As a radio reporter, you're best if you're like Marcel Marceau, a mime..." (06:41)

  • Conversational Storytelling:

    • Shorter, real-time dialogue is more effective in radio.

    • Illustrative Example:
      Frank shares audio of British citizens talking about the Queen—revealing their personalities through their voices (07:19).

• Core Questions in Radio:

  • "And then what happened?" and "How did you feel about that?"—simple prompts that elicit natural storytelling.

    • Ann Powers:
      "...everything in an interview that I do is somehow some version of those two questions." (07:47)

• Building Rapport:

  • Frank contrasts a rapid-fire AP interview in Somalia with his more conversational approach, yielding deeper, more personal insights (08:17).

5. Making "Boring" Material Work in Audio (09:15–10:33)

• Adapting Print for Radio:

  • Ann discusses a story about historical markers—how their dry, text-heavy style seemed ill-suited for audio.

    • Solution:
      She overwhelmed the listener by reading out a long, random list—making the monotony itself memorable and effective.

      • Ann Powers:
        “What if we just read these giant paragraphs listing all of these signs... by just overwhelming the listener with them." (09:35)

    • Sacha Pfeiffer:
      "It was this blizzard of random historical markers that you read. And it was a huge block of text, but it worked really well on the radio." (10:25)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On writing for the ear:
  "I felt that I was completely liberated to write as I would speak. And I'm always thinking, if I'm having a pint in a pub with somebody or what's the first thing I'm going to tell them? What's the story?"
  — Frank Langford (01:16)

• On radio’s power:
  "You can bring something that you're a little limited with in print."
  — Sacha Pfeiffer (05:48)

• On the core of radio interviews:
  "There’s really only two questions in radio that we use ad nauseam: ‘And then what happened?’ and ‘How did you feel about that?’"
  — Ann Powers (07:47)

• On improvising with difficult material:
  "In that one particular instance, I think it helped people understand what we were talking about."
  — Ann Powers (10:33)

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Important Segment Timestamps

• 00:00–01:47: Print backgrounds lead to insights on radio writing differences
• 03:02–04:56: The immersive, theatrical nature of radio; sound versus description
• 04:56–06:04: How audio conveys emotion print cannot
• 06:04–08:09: Radio interviewing styles; capturing true conversation
• 09:15–10:33: Adapting "un-radio" material (historical markers) for sound

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Summary

Filled with laughter, practical examples, and honesty, this episode shows that radio—and, by extension, podcasting—is a unique, living form. Beyond chasing facts, it’s about creating scenes and capturing emotion in real time, letting listeners experience the story through voices, pauses, and sound. Effective radio journalism, as the guests emphasize, isn’t just reporting; it’s performing, listening deeply, and inviting the audience to feel as well as know.

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Transcript

[Sacha Pfeiffer]

There's a reason people talk about having NPR driveway moments, you know, when you finally get home but keep sitting in your car or pause whatever else you're doing because you have to listen to the rest of a story. Some radio is that good, that memorable. We're constantly on the hunt for great sound, but some of us at NPR wrote for newspapers before getting here. I'm one of those people. I worked at the Boston globe for about 17 years writing countless stories of all kinds during that time. And, and when I switched to radio, I thought the writing would be the same. But instead of my story appearing in print, I just read it out loud. I immediately learned that a great newspaper story does not automatically make a great on air story. NPR investigative correspondent Laura Sullivan used to work for the Baltimore sun, and she quickly had the same realization.

[Ann Powers]

When you read a newspaper story, I mean, it's a nightmare on the radio. It's just this it's lead in, it's long, it's really involved.

[Sacha Pfeiffer]

It's one skill to write for print. It's a very different skill to write for the ear. Radio writing needs to be shorter, simpler. NPR's roving national correspondent Frank Langford also used to work at the Baltimore sun, and he now prefers radio writing over newspaper style.

[Frank Langford]

We had a certain kind of orthodoxy of writing imposed upon us that it's not the way anyone ever speaks.

[Ann Powers]

I kind of agree.

[Frank Langford]

And I felt that I was completely liberated to write as I would speak. And I'm always thinking, if I'm having a pint in a pub with somebody or what's the first thing I'm going to tell them? What's the story?

[Sacha Pfeiffer]

Consider this. Radio reporting uses the same journalism skills as reporting for text, but a powerful radio story can bring characters on and off the stage. From NPR News, I'm Sascha Pfeiffer.

[Daoud Tyler Amin]

Hey, I'm Daoud Tyler Amin.

[Ann Powers]

And I'm Ann Powers.

[Daoud Tyler Amin]

We are an editor and a critic at NPR Music, and we're also friends who love digging into music histories and thinking about how songs can change over time.

[Ann Powers]

And we're doing that on a new show.

[Sacha Pfeiffer]

We're totally nerding out about the songs that just stick with us and why.

[Daoud Tyler Amin]

Find our first episode in the All Songs considered feed on October 23rd.

[Terry Gross]

Hi, it's Terry Gross, host of Fresh Air. Hey, take a break from the 24 hour news cycle with us and listen to long form interviews with your favorite authors, actors, filmmakers, comedians and musicians, the people making the art that nourishes us and speaks to our times. So listen to the Fresh AIR podcast from NPR and whyy.

[Rachel Martin]

I'm Rachel Martin. If you're tired of small talk, check out the Wildcard podcast. I invite influential thinkers to open up about the big topics we all think about, but rarely talk about. Tune in this fall to hear Mel Robbins, Malala Yousafzai, and Brene Brown talk about everything from grief and God to ambition and forgiveness. Watch or listen on the NPR app, YouTube or where get your podcasts.

[Sacha Pfeiffer]

It's consider this from NPR. I'm Sacha Pfeiffer. Recently, NPR's Laura Sullivan and Frank Lankfit and I met up to talk about some of the ways radio reporting differs from our previous newspaper lives. I wanted to know more about how they've felt about making the transition from print to radio, and I asked them to share what makes audio storytelling different, how they know when they've discovered radio gold.

[Frank Langford]

It's a lot like theater in a way, or film in that it's a great way to convey to people in sort of what will feel organic to them. And sometimes if I'm building a story, I might say, if I've got enough time, I want three separate scenes with different characters. But I'm going to give you an example, a little bit about, you know, what it sounds like when you write it, because I wrote this, and then what it sounds like when you hear it. So, okay, very briefly, I'm tracking elephants in South Sudan. We're in helicopters, we're flying around. We track an elephant, hit him with a dart, down he goes. So here's what I wrote. Within five minutes, the elephant's lying on its side, unconscious in a bed of parched grass. The men leap out of the helicopter, go to work. The veterinarian opens the elephant's nostrils with a stick and tapes a monitor to its eyelid to check vital signs. That's not the greatest writing. It's, you can get a sense of it. But let me play for you what that actually sounded like. The elephant, she's at least 30 years old, is snoring.

[Ann Powers]

Nice.

[Terry Gross]

Uh oh, she wants to wake up.

[Frank Langford]

You know what we do if she wakes up? You run. I mean, that's just like one of the best pieces of tape I've ever got. And it tells you how different it is to be out in the savannah of South Sudan. At first I didn't realize it was a snoring elephant. I thought it was a herd of elephant who were growling in the bush. I don't know much about elephants, clearly, and so I'm doing like a 360. Oh, what? And then he goes, no, no, he's snoring. I was like, oh, good, we're fine. We're not going to get trampled.

[Sacha Pfeiffer]

You're reminding me that when I worked for WBUR in Boston, I did a story about a young woman who had lost her leg in the Boston Marathon bombing and later had to have her other leg removed because it was so injured. She ended up getting a service dog that not only helped her with practical things, but made her happier and less depressed because this dog was so fun and joyful.

[Ann Powers]

Rescue Speak.

[Sacha Pfeiffer]

And this woman had such a beautiful, trilling laugh.

[Daoud Tyler Amin]

Good boy.

[Sacha Pfeiffer]

That's rescue. An 80 pound black lab specially trained as an assistance dog. He belongs to Jessica Kensky. Yep.

[Ann Powers]

You're gonna show him your toy.

[Sacha Pfeiffer]

And I listened to that laugh so many times when I would listen to my tape. And I remember thinking, if I was still writing for a newspaper, I couldn't convey the joy and delight of that laugh. So there's something about radio where you can bring something that you're a little limited with in print.

[Ann Powers]

That's true, that's true. I mean, you know, radio, you get to bring the whole scene into it and all the characters become what's happening. All this, the voices, the sound, what's happening in the room where you are. It brings the whole thing to life.

[Sacha Pfeiffer]

There also is a different interviewing style required for radio. You know, when I worked for the Globe and I interviewed people, I would often laugh, I would react. And with radio, if your voice ends up in the tape, sometimes that works. But that can often be problematic.

[Ann Powers]

Absolutely. You gotta stop stepping on people when they're talking. You know, you gotta let them finish their thought. And you can't go, uh huh huh, through somebody's talking, which you often do. So you have to learn how to do it with your eyes to be like, I'm really into what you're saying. Keep talking without saying it out loud because otherwise you end up ruining your own tape.

[Frank Langford]

As a radio reporter, you're best if you're like Marcel Marceau, a mime, and you're just kind of, you know, encouraging them but not saying much. I do remember being with radio reporters when I was a print reporter and I would do exactly what Laura was saying, which is, huh, huh. And the radio reporter was stamping on my feet, getting me to. Because I was ruining the poor guy's tape. I would say, though, that I really love the back and forth, like, on certain kinds of exchanges. If you can do very short questions. You have a sense of dialogue like you'd have in a film or in theater. Anna Coughlin was sitting on a blanket having a picnic with her mother and three young children. How do you feel about the Queen?

[Ann Powers]

She's a treasure, isn't she?

[Unknown NPR Politics Host]

I'm curious.

[Frank Langford]

How do you feel about Prince Charles?

[Sacha Pfeiffer]

He's all right.

[Ann Powers]

Yeah. He'll be a bit weird. He's not as charismatic as she is, you know, because she led the country through so many huge things and so.

[Frank Langford]

That people can hear in the story a real conversation between real people.

[Ann Powers]

Yeah.

[Sacha Pfeiffer]

And any type of reporting requires close listening, but radio, I think, requires a level of listening that might be different than printing.

[Ann Powers]

I mean, there's really only two questions in radio that we use ad nauseam, which is, and then what happened? And how did you feel about that? I would say everything in an interview that I do is somehow some version of those two questions. And what you're trying to do is get them to tell a story, because then they can bring you to the place where the thing is happening.

[Sacha Pfeiffer]

Radio also requires a different type of interviewing style than for newspapers. And Frank, I think you mentioned you have a good example of this.

[Frank Langford]

So I was in Somalia, and we were traveling around covering the fighting there in the civil war. And I was working with an AP reporter. And this. She's a great reporter, but her interview was like a million questions. It was just staccato. She was basically extracting as much information as possible as efficiently as she could from this major. And then I was talking to him. And so the first thing I said to him is, well, tell me about your family. And, of course, his whole demeanor completely changed. He started talking about the people he had left behind, how difficult it was to be fighting in Mogadishu. And then I began to ask them, well, like, how were you trained? And they said, we were taught to jungle fight. So we have no idea how to do house to house in this sort of urban warfare. And so it just ended up being much more interesting. And I got all the information. I mean, I piggybacked on the AP reporter. And so I had all the facts, but I was able to get just a much more sense of who these people were, the challenges that they faced.

[Sacha Pfeiffer]

What about when there's very limited sound to work with? How do you deal with that situation?

[Ann Powers]

I had this situation happen last year. We were doing a story about historical markers. You know, these signs that don't make any noise and are incredibly leadenly written. I mean, they're just really, a lot of them are really very boring.

[Sacha Pfeiffer]

This historical person did this historical thing.

[Ann Powers]

Exactly. And then they died. And so I was trying to figure out in print, you can do this very easily, easily, because you can just link to all the signs and you can write giant paragraphs explaining the randomness of all these historical markers. But how do you, like, turn that into the radio? And so then I kind of thought, you know, actually maybe that could kind of work for us. What if we just read these giant paragraphs listing all of these signs and sort of implying that how, you know, the actual randomness of these signs by just overwhelming the listener with them. Anesthesia. Kentucky and Missouri both claim to be the home of Daniel Boone's bones. Michigan and Alabama both claim to be the home of the first Western railroad, while Maryland and New Jersey both claim to have sent the first telegram. The country also has at least 14 markers to ghosts, two witches, one vampire, a wizard and a. I remember this.

[Sacha Pfeiffer]

Graph in your story. It was this blizzard of random historical markers that you read. And it was a huge block of text, but it worked really well on the radio.

[Ann Powers]

Exactly. And it goes against everything we were trained in radio, where it was like, you're not supposed to read these giant blocks of text. But in that one particular instance, I think it helped people understand what we were talking about.

[Sacha Pfeiffer]

That's NPR reporters Laura Sullivan and Frank Langfit. Thank you.

[Ann Powers]

Thanks so much.

[Frank Langford]

Happy to do it, Sasha.

[Sacha Pfeiffer]

This episode was produced by Lena Muhammad. It was edited by Sarah Robbins. Our executive producer is Sami Yenigun. It's Consider this from npr. I'm Sacha Pfeiffer.

[Unknown NPR Politics Host]

There is so much happening in politics in any given week, you might need help putting it all in perspective. As your week draws to a close, join the NPR Politics podcast team for our weekly roundup. Here, our best political reporters zoom into the biggest stories of the week, not just what they mean, but what they mean for you all in under 30 minutes. Listen to the weekly roundup every Friday on the NPR Politics podcast.

[Daoud Tyler Amin]

We are now in spooky season. And on this week's episode of Books We've Loved, we discuss all things Interview with The Vampire with NPR's Barry Hardiman. So turn on the lights, grab some garlic, and listen to books we've loved in NPR's Book of the Day podcast feed on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Ann Powers]

Want to hear this podcast without sponsor breaks? Amazon prime members can listen to Consider this Sponsor free through Amazon Music, or you can also support NPR's vital journalism. And get consider this [e-mail] that's plus.NPR.org.