strings for hope

PODCAST EPISODE #64: Catherine Steward, photographer, WTVF-TV

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I rarely ask a Telling the Story podcast guest to come back for a second episode. I like to spread the audio wealth and interview as many storytellers and journalists as possible to provide a full spectrum of perspectives for my audience.

But when a previous guest wins a National Edward R. Murrow award with one of the most pristine slices of video I’ve ever seen, I can make an exception.

Catherine Steward has captured numerous honors for her work as a photojournalist for WTVF-TV in Nashville. This may be her biggest yet. She took the Large Market TV station Murrow for Excellence in Sound, and the winning piece was a solo effort. Steward heard about a foundation called Strings for Hope that repurposes musical strings into wearable art, made by women who were formerly incarcerated with drug and alcohol addiction. In my earlier post about lessons learned from this year’s Murrow winners, I wrote this about Steward’s story:

It’s a beautiful concept, and Steward rises to it with an equally beautiful treatment. She captures crisp audio, whether on the Nashville streets or inside the string-spinning studio. Then she layers it in the edit with seamless fades in and out, musical and natural-sound-based scene switches, and pristine video to match.

This piece is a winner, no doubt. But it’s maybe the most instructive and practical for up-and-coming storytellers in need of inspiration.

I decided to interview Steward for the podcast because of that final observation. Young visual storytellers – photographers, reporters, or solo video journalists – should examine this piece for the myriad of techniques it includes. I asked Steward to deconstruct her story, scene by scene, nearly shot by shot, to give the rest of us a chance at producing something similar.

So BEFORE YOU LISTEN to this podcast, watch “Strings for Hope” below. And follow along with Steward on Episode #64 of the Telling the Story podcast.

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5 lessons from this year’s National Edward R. Murrow Award winners

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Awards season typically crests and winds down as the summer arrives, with one of the highest of honors coming near the cycle’s end.

Last week the RTDNA announced this year’s national recipients of the Edward R. Murrow awards. Whenever the list comes out, I spend hours watching the winners. So often, even working in journalism, we miss the majority of the great work done nationwide. The Murrows gives us another chance to witness the pinnacle of our craft.

Here’s what I learned from pieces that spanned the spectrum of broadcast and digital media:

THE STORY: Recovering from Rehab (Reveal/Center for Investigative Action)
THE LESSON: Slow and steady CAN win the race.

Working in local TV has conditioned me to expect a certain type of investigative story: URGENT voicing from the reporter, DRAMATIC confrontations with a person in power, and WHIZ-BANG graphics to hold the attention of the casual news viewer who’s debating whether to keep watching or head to bed.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. This piece shows how.

Recovering from Rehab took the National Murrow for investigative reporting among Small Digital News Organizations, and it’s easy to see why: it’s just as effective, just as gripping, but nowhere near as sensational as its analogues in TV. Producer Olivia Merrion and reporters Amy Julia Harris and Shoshona Walter triumph here, with a straightforward but thoroughly reported story about a man sentenced to a year in prison but diverted to an alcoholism recovery program (despite no addiction to alcohol) where he mainly worked on a chicken processing plant. The super-tight shots at the start grab attention immediately, and from there Merrion and her team unfold the story with a deliberate confidence in its content.

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