VOICES FROM IRAQ

This is a valuable contribution to ongoing media coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is especially well done for a student production. This program is well-written and edited. The interviews are conducted well. Subject matter appears to be well researched.

I am thrilled to see that college students are doing this kind of serious journalism that demonstrates an interest beyond their dorms, their campus and their comfortable lives in the U.S. This is clearly a program with a mission and its producers seem to be in tune with that mission.

Host Wren Elhai does an excellent job of hosting. He has a good voice and a smooth and professional delivery. All of the student producer/reporters in this show are better-than-average in my experience of college-age radio journalists.

I offer two suggestions for improvement:

1) Try to improve the quality of the telephone interviews. It's relatively easy to talk to guests most anywhere on the planet today but crappy cell phones (or satellite phones) sound like crappy cell phones no matter where they are. Some of these long segments can be very tedious with poor audio quality. Sorry that's the case but, as broadcasters, we really don't want to "settle" unless we have to. (Have you considered tape syncs, Skype or some other methods of getting better quality audio?)

2) Related to the above, some of the segments seem to go on longer than necessary. Especially with the poor audio quality of phone connections, I would recommend cutting the interviews to their essentials or doing even more host cut-ins and paraphrasing.

Again, this is an excellent example of serious student work. I expect to hear more from these young radio journalists!