Description
We have all lived through recent momentous events in our nation’s history. The election of the first black president, the bombing at the Boston Marathon, the signing of the Paris agreement, and the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School are just a few recent important events. Our varied experiences and memories during these events are our own personal primary sources. If someone wanted to know what it was like to live through these events, you and I, the people that are alive, are the best ones to tell the story. This is why broadcasters like NPR get “tape” of people retelling what they saw, felt, heard. They have a reporter do their research to understand the event, but then they let the primary sources tell the meat of the story. These memorable moments are crucial to our country’s identity and critical to the role history plays in shaping our current lives. Your job is to produce a piece of radio that tells the story of one critical moment – and that moment can be a local moment as well – through mostly primary sources. With a few interviews with adults who lived through a momentous event as the backbone, tell the story that brings that day to life more than any textbook can. Even the perspective of ‘I remember where I was when I heard…’ can add important information to our understanding of the event and its impact. Like a journalist, you can use twenty seconds to set the scene, and then from there, craft a tightly edited interview – as based on two or more sources – that should have your listeners feel like they were there. To help you, you can utilize other primary sources, newscasts, music and sound effects to really bring the story to life.
