Listening to this programme I knew a lot of people had worked very hard for little or no money to get it together. If it?s made by college students I commend them on work that is almost professional. I insert the almost because it is in need of a bit more polish.
The texts could be refined, and the people who read them need to work on their delivery.
For example the anchor reading the intro, introducing a male guest, and then the report begins with a female reporter who re-introduces the guest ? it?s the radio equivalent of a grammatical mistake in a book. It stops you in your tracks and disrupts the story you?re telling.
However the stories are good and all of them were worth bringing out.
The piece on domestic abuse in Iraq is simply great ? a ghastly story that?s had little or no coverage anywhere else, and though the journalist in me asked why this report had no women with their own stories, the producer in me knew how logistically difficult it would be to arrange that ? but it was great at least to hear from someone running an organization working in the field.
I thought the interview with the philosopher on the train could have been more focused. Just about every American knows at least something about this war in Iraq but I doubt that details of the war in Lebanon would have struck a similar chord with listeners so the comparison didn?t really do the work it set out to do.
The interview with the soldier left me wanting more ? more detail, more probing and again, a bit more refined editing; taking the questions of the reporter out and inserting in its place, a studio read question from the anchor is excruciating listening.
But having worked in student radio and fully understanding its limitations, I do commend the producers of this programme for a piece that is for its context, outstanding.