Hacker News Reader

Comment by homonculus1 | Hacker News Reader

>WARNER: Joe Healy is sitting in this conference room with Felipe, the IT guy in his buttoned-up shirt.

>HEALY: He's a physically little guy...

>WARNER: He's 5-foot-4.

>HEALY: ...And not overly muscular.

Man, Planet Money's constant interruptions and hacked-apart quotations are just as jarring to read as they are to listen to. It's entirely possible to transition your narrative structure between accessible exposition and raw firsthand accounts--but for some reason Planet Money tries to chase after both, simultaneously, at every second. The result is a choppy, rattling collage of thought fragments. Ugh!

What, you guys don't like style criticism? Complaining about a webpage is okay so I don't see why this should be off-topic.

View on HN

I generally like Planet Money's style, in which the reporter/correspondent will do a majority of the narration, paraphrasing and interjecting when the original speaker isn't saying something particularly notable. Sometimes this is just necessary, interviewees don't always speak in complete and or/concise fashion, especially when doing boilerplate description.

In the example you give, I think the interjection is fine. Healy, the U.S. postal inspector, gives a vague description of Felipe – "a physically little guy" – and the reporter interjects with actual specifics. I don't think the flow would be noticeably better if this was the edited cut:

> HEALY: He's a physically little guy...And not overly muscular

> NPR: Felipe's actually 5-foot-4

If it's unnatural to include before or after, that's because it's not that relevant to the story in the first place. It's enough to be able to picture that his risk is compounded by a physical disadvantage, we don't need to know his exact dimensions if that data isn't worth bringing up afterward. And if it is that important, the middle of someone else's sentence is the most flow-breaking place you could possibly put it.

Yeah I think this is definitely a style preference. Planet Money (and other featurey shows, like This American Life) often tries to describe the non-aural qualities of the people in their stories, ostensibly to better humanize them. It's not for everyone but I personally find it to make the subject more engaging.

Planet money started as a spinoff of This American Life back in the 2008 financial crisis.

Perhaps it works for radio, but I agree that it is jarring to read.

It also left me wanting for more. Why did the family member refer Fernandez? What is the psychology behind operating a scam as a business? What motivated Emilio to be a "really good boss" when he was proactively hurting so many other people? I realize that this is a human interest story that isn't intended to address such questions, yet the frequent interruptions seemed to encourage such mental wanderings.

That's my issue with RadioLab. It is just constant interjection.

Those guys are annoying AF. It really makes it a close call whether it's worth listening to.

Yeah, the content is just the right level of interesting/shallow to be great for a commute or something of that nature, but they get annoying very quickly.

I was not bothered by the interjections in the Planet Money story, but I am by the ones in RadioLab. I think it´s because in PM it sounds like friendly banter, but in RL every interruption is like it´s made to be thought of as a [pause for dramatic effect] revelation.

I think this is a reasonable way to turn a long interview into a cohesive story for the listening. On TV it's we use "noddies"[1] to cut together interviews and this is the audio equivalent.

If you're interested in a different style, try listening to BBC radio shows. The interviews tend to be more complete and are often recorded live. The downside is that the interviews often run out of time or the interviewees don't get to make their point as well as they could.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noddy_(TV_interview_technique)

I hadn’t previously heard of Planet Money but I found it too hard to read for the same reason and actually gave up soon after that. I figured the transcript was being too faithful to the podcast and that the story would be easier to follow in the audio version.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com