If you've got stories to tell, WBUR would like to hear them
Do you, or does someone you love, have a story to tell? StoryCorps wants to hear it. In a partnership with WBUR-FM (90.9), StoryCorps, a national oral-history project, is coming to Boston for four weeks, beginning Sept. 28, and is looking for ordinary people to interview their friends, family members, or other special individuals about their lives.
``We're looking for stories from the heart," says Sam Fleming , director of news and programming for WBUR. The interviews that StoryCorps is seeking, he says, ``are not usually the kind of stories that we as news people would be thinking of. Sometimes they're good just because of the emotion."
StoryCorps was founded in 2003 in New York City as a 10-year project designed to record interviews with every day people who can inspire us. Folks from all walks of life have been invited to interview those special to them, in 40-minute segments that are then preserved for posterity at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. With stories of coal miners, lunchroom attendants, survivors of wars and the Great Depression, and many more, the project has already recorded more than 7,000 interviews in its New York recording studio.
``It's about touching humanity," says Fleming, whose station will be airing three-minute versions of some of the interviews during the mobile studio visit. The excerpts will be broadcast on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays as part of ``Morning Edition." (The station currently airs StoryCorps interview excerpts on Fridays during the weekday 5-9 a.m. news show.)
The mobile studio coming to Boston, one of two customized silver Airstreams, is part of the project's inaugural tour of 25 cities. The mobile studio visiting Boston will spend Sept. 28-Oct. 15 parked by the Boston Public Library and move to Boston City Hall Plaza Oct. 16-22. Reservations (which are expected to go quickly) will be available on Sept. 14. (Details on reserving interview time will be posted at www.wbur.org.) Working in the mobile studio will be two StoryCorps staffers and a WBUR producer, George Hicks, who will also burn a copy of each interview for the participants. To further help people conduct their 40-minute interviews, the StoryCorps website (www.storycorps.com) offers an interview guide.
Most of the interview slots, Fleming says, will be available on a first-come, first-serve d basis. However, some times are reserved: WBUR and StoryCorps have done community outreach to make sure certain groups, including the Boys & Girls Clubs and African-American churches, are represented. For those unable to reserve a recording time, the StoryCorps website offers instructions for recording and submitting interviews on one's own.
What makes a good interview? ``In some ways, the best interview is like a good conversation," says Fleming. ``Get people to talk. The person being interviewed stops thinking about being interviewed and just starts being himself. Then, you get a heartfelt conversation."
