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Playlist: News Station Picks for January '11

Compiled By: PRX Curators

 Credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/10635494@N05/3636324562/sizes/m/in/photostream/">SuzANNE</a>
Image by: SuzANNE 
Curated Playlist

Here are January picks for news stations from PRX News Format Curator Naomi Starobin.

Learn what Naomi listens for in news programming.

How To Write a Novel - a 3-minute primer

From Paul Levinson | Part of the A View to Media series | 03:07

Of course you need more than three minutes of advice to write a novel, but this is a good three minutes...direct, simple advice from an accomplished author. Some listeners have toyed at least for a moment about writing a novel, and this will interest them. But most listeners have an interest in literature, and this will appeal to them, too.

It's from author, professor and media commentator Paul Levinson, out of White Plains, New York.

Plcape_small I'm author of five novels, including The Silk Code, which won the Locus Award for Best First Science Fiction Novel of 1999, and my current novel, The Plot to Save Socrates. Here I offer a three-minute tutorial on how to write a novel. The salient points are that you have to actually write and not let life get in the way, and you have to finish what you start writing. (You might enjoy my sequel to this piece, "How To Sell a Novel - a 4-minute primer".)

Burger Bell

From Mia Lobel | 03:00

Fun, light, sound-rich. Just a first-person story about a girl and her bike bell, which is shaped like a hamburger. Gets into a mish-mash sound in the middle, which kind of carries you along.

This is by Mia Lobel, an independent producer/reporter from the Hudson Valley, New York. She believes in "better living through audio." Amen.

Playing
Burger Bell
From
Mia Lobel

Burgerbell_small This piece was originally produced for the 2007 Third Coast ShortDoc competition - a great exercise in creating a complete, sound-rich story in just three minutes.

Home Alone

From Radio Rookies | 07:27

There are so many wonderful pieces from youth radio programs out there. Here's one. It's from New York Public Radio's Radio Rookies, by Krystle Murray. She does a great job of describing how she feels about being alone after school while her mother is working, but she takes it to another level by asking the adults and friends around her about her situation. It flows beautifully and, the best part of good radio, it takes us into her world.

Playing
Home Alone
From
Radio Rookies

Krystlemurray_small Krystle Murray spent much of her childhood at school or in the care of babysitters, who watched her at home in the morning and at night, while her single mom worked fulltime at a law firm and went to college at NYU. Now that Krystle is a teenager she doesn't have babysitters anymore and sometimes she feels lonely waiting for her mom to come home, which can be as late as 2 or 3 in the morning. Krystle loves her mom very much and she feels guilty about how hard her mom has worked to provide a good life for them, but Krystle sometimes wonders if all the work hours are worth it.