April 4th

Monday, April 4th:

Today was a great first day for my project! I began the day by doing research on what makes a good podcast. Since I haven't listened to that many podcasts in my life, I wanted to make sure that my podcast sounds legitimate. I looked at podcasts from 3 main reporters: Terry Gross, Mark Maron, and Sarah Koenig. All of them had different approaches to their podcasts, but I noticed a few common themes that I wrote down on a Word document. First, I noticed that each podcast segment has about a one minute introduction before the actual interview starts. The introduction gives an explanation of who the person being interviewed is an why they are being interviewed. I also learned that is extremely important to do thorough research on the person who I will be interviewing before I conduct the interview. In each of the podcasts I listened to, it was obvious the interviewers had done their fair share of research. Finally, I got some insight about what makes a good interview question. The best questions are the ones that are thought provoking, but also provoke a long and thorough response from the person being interviewed. In addition, the questions can't simply be good individually, they have to flow all together. I will take all of these things into consideration when making my podcast.

After listening to these podcasts, I began working on my own. I started by doing research on all the people I plan on interviewing for my podcast. I want to make sure that I am prepared for the interviews, so I did as much background research as possible. Next, I wrote two questions for each of my contacts. I will be asking more than two questions per person, but it took longer than I thought it would to come up with these questions so I only made 2 per person today. The reason it was difficult coming up with questions is because I really that although I'm asking these people generally about the same thing, I have to individualize the questions based on what those people do. For example, I ask different questions to a professional women's soccer player than to a general manager of a soccer club. Overall, today was a productive first day and I am excited to continue this project!