IEEE Spectrum November, 2014 - 10

SPectraL LiNeS_

11.14

SNOW MEN: IEEE Spectrum's executive editor,
Glenn Zorpette, interviews Brian Johnson, an Antarctic
survival specialist, for a radio program produced in
2010. The location was the McMurdo Ice Shelf.

How and why a print magazine got into the radio business

n a ncient times , before the Internet, the terms "print media" and "broadcast

media" were pretty literal descriptions of the two main kinds of news organization.
But journalism's steady migration to the World Wide Web has blurred the lines
considerably. Nowadays, traditional broadcasters are putting up text stories and
blogs on their websites. And IEEE Spectrum and other historically print-centric
media are producing videos, podcasts, slideshows, and radio shows. Each of
Spectrum's radio segments, in fact, is being broadcast to some 4 million listeners
across the United States via stations syndicated through the country's NPR network.
Our foray into public radio began exactly a decade ago. Spectrum's editor
in chief, Susan Hassler, hired Sharon Basco, an NPR veteran, to test the idea that
some of our print stories could be turned into radio segments of interest to NPR
shows. But that limited goal soon prompted a question: Could our journalists do
radio reporting alongside their print reporting, so that
timely stories in different media but on the same general topic could be released around the same time?
Basco was confident that it could be done.
Basco was a seasoned journalist who had made a
splash in her first job, interning for columnist Jack
IEEE SPECTRUM 1964 / 2014
Anderson, by uncovering a big drug scandal at Walter
Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. After marrying and settling in the
Boston area, she switched from print journalism to radio.
She first met the Spectrum staff in the spring of 2004. Addressing us at our annual
retreat, she described how augmenting our coverage with radio would expand our
reach and spread our journalism, and the IEEE's name, to a large and high-demographic
audience. She had no doubt that she could turn a bunch of ink-stained wretches into
skilled radio reporters. "Radio is easy," she assured the staff, who looked at her blankly.
Well, there have been times when it didn't seem all that easy. I myself recorded an entire
interview in Guadeloupe in an office that was all glass, stone, and metal; the resulting

CORRECTION: In "Identifying Explosives at a Distance" [October],
we incorrectly stated that James Kelly and his team at the Pacific
Northwest National Laboratory are attempting to measure a substance
at a dosage of 1 milligram per square centimeter on a surface. The
actual dosage is 1 microgram.

Editor's note: In this 50th anniversary year of IEEE Spectrum, we are using each month's Spectral Lines column to describe some pivotal moments of the magazine's history.
Here we recount the establishment and evolution of Spectrum's radio news operation.
10

NOV 2014

NOrth americaN

SPectrUm.ieee.OrG

Josh Landis

Exploring the Radio Spectrum

sound was so bad that no broadcast-quality
segment could be salvaged from it. During an assignment in the Netherlands to
record a segment about a state-of-the-art
recumbent bicycle, Harry Goldstein instrumented himself with sound-recording gear
before settling onto the US $10,000 bike-
and then falling three times and bloodying his knees, as the bike's designer looked
on in dismay. Visiting Gordon Moore at his
home for an interview recently, Rachel
Courtland decided to record the sound of
herself approaching and knocking on the
door of Moore's fabulous seaside estate in
Hawaii, followed by Moore himself opening
the door and greeting her. It all went off like
a charm. Except Courtland forgot to push
the "record" button before the approach.
Goldstein and Courtland still managed
to get excellent segments out of their
reporting adventures, with help from
Basco and Dennis Foley of HomeWork
Productions, in Austin, Texas. From the
very beginning we were fortunate to have
had as collaborators some of the most
extraordinarily talented people in radio.
Foley, for example, is an audio-mixing wizard whose artistry has brightened many of
our segments over the past decade. We also
found some gifted radio stringers, who still
contribute to our operation. These include
reporters Ari Daniel in Massachusetts,
Giselle Weiss in Switzerland, Prachi Patel
in Pittsburgh, and producer Mia Lobel in
New York state. In New York City, the legendary recording engineer Paul Ruest has
captured the sound for many of our most
important segments.
Before long, as our print and online
editors became increasingly comfortable
with radio reporting, our pieces crossed
the threshold into broadcast quality. We

http://SPectrUm.ieee.OrG

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum November, 2014