One of my favorite things about reporting is the tingle I get at the base of my skull when I first hear something I know I’ll include in a finished story. As I’m interviewing someone, they might mention how their customers give them vintage china. A surge of electricity under my skin tells me, “This is it! You can build the entire piece around this detail!”
I’ve learned to trust this response. Reporting a story means sifting through mountains of undifferentiated information, and I need my instincts to assert which facts, opinions, and colorful asides should be plucked from the pile. Without the tickle near the nape of my neck, I’d be lost.
When I listened to conversations about the foodways of Wilson County, Tennessee, the tingles just kept coming.
A few months ago, Kate Fields asked if I could help her edit over six hours of audio interviews into a podcast about Wilson County, which sits 30 miles east of Nashville. As both a scientist with a masters in biology and a reverend with a doctorate focused on land, food, and faith formation, Kate is uniquely attuned to how food shapes people’s lives. Guided by her keen interest and compassionate ear, she spoke to over half a dozen people about Wilson County farming and cooking, and she wrote a fantastic essay about what she learned. I was delighted when she called me to turn the project into an audio story.
Also, I was intimidated. As I posted myself in a library and prepared to listen to hour after hour of Wilson County residents, I hoped the juiciest moments would present themselves to me. I had spoken to Kate at length about what she wanted to communicate—namely, that all these folks have found fascinating ways to make food a throughline from their past to their future. But would I recognize the vital parts of their stories? Would the essence of their tales be obvious to me?
It doesn’t always happen. As any journalist can tell you, sometimes the story just doesn’t come together. The sources you’re interviewing don’t have much to say, or the angle you’re pursuing hits a brick wall. The risk is higher when you’re pulling from pre-recorded audio, because there’s no opportunity to ask follow-up questions. What you’ve got is what you’ve got.
It took about five minutes to realize the Wilson County files would provide the opposite (and happier) challenge: The people Kate interviewed had so many interesting things to say that I couldn’t fit them all into a single podcast.
For instance, when I was listening to Dave Stout, an expert in cast iron cooking, I felt the tickle when he described his multi-year campaign to acquire his grandmother’s cast iron skillet from his cousin Judy. I laughed out loud, library etiquette be damned, and knew this anecdote would help listeners care about Dave while revealing how deeply cast iron is woven into his life.
Dave’s account of generational cookware echoed what I heard from Ruth Wharton, whose family’s grocery store was one of Wilson County’s most successful Black-owned businesses of the mid-20th century. There was a clear connection between her parents’ years of filling grocery orders and her own recent work with local children. When Wharton revealed she had pulled a bag of 50 year-old seeds from the back of her freezer and worked with kids to coax them back to life, I nearly cheered. That’s a perfect metaphor for food’s enduring power. Here was another tickle that became a chapter of the podcast.
The finished version—which you can stream now on Soundcloud or download from the Tennessee Folklore Society—features six Wilson County residents in half an hour, along with interstitial comments from Kate. As you listen, you might notice a narrative arc. The episode begins with tales of the distant past (including a 19th-century farm), moves to the present, and finally looks toward the future of the region’s food. Kate and I crafted her commentary to underline key themes, but I let locals make the major points themselves. These are captivating, well-spoken people. I wanted their voices to dominate.
This highlights a unique opportunity of audio journalism. In a print story, it’s more typical to quote someone for a few sentences, then use your own writing to provide heftier context. In audio, I prefer the opposite approach. When Wharton has a point to make, it’s engrossing to quote her at length, so we can hear her develop a train of thought. When Stout talks, his mellifluous Southern accent adds nuance that eludes the written word. In the editing process, I snipped out some “ums” and “ahs,” but otherwise I crafted a script that made ample room for unvarnished ideas.
That’s a curious truth about reporting: You tell a story about other people who told a story. You choose a frame for the unruly business of their lives, and you hope what’s inside the frame gets at something authentic. It was a joy to build the frame for this podcast, and by the end of the project, I had a new respect for Middle Tennessee’s food culture. The goal is always to develop that expanded appreciation and then share it. That way, the audience—whether reading or listening—has a chance to feel its own tingling enthusiasm for the stories that only food journalism can tell.
No Comments