If you’re struggling to come up with a story idea, or your pitches keep bombing, and you live in the U.S., this tip is for you.
National Public Radio has a new feature called “This I Believe,” a national project that invites you to write about your core beliefs. The personal statements from listeners air each Monday on “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered.”
Is this great publicity or what?
By inviting Americans from all walks of life to participate, series producers Dan Gediman and Jay Allison hope to create a picture of the American spirit in all its rich complexity.
“This I Believe” is based on a 1950s radio program of the same name, hosted by acclaimed journalist Edward R. Murrow. In spite of the fear of atomic warfare, increasing consumerism and loss of spiritual values, the essayists on Murrow’s series expressed tremendous hope.
Each day, millions of Americans gathered by their radios to hear compelling essays from the likes of Eleanor Roosevelt, Jackie Robinson, Helen Keller and Harry Truman as well as corporate leaders, cab drivers, scientists and secretaries–anyone able to distill into a few minutes the guiding principles by which they lived. Their words brought comfort and inspiration to a country worried about the Cold War, McCarthyism and racial division.
Allison and Gediman say their goal is not to persuade Americans to agree on the same beliefs. Rather, they hope to encourage people to begin the much more difficult task of developing respect for beliefs different from their own.
“We hear a country moving toward more equality among the races and between genders,” says Gediman. “We hear parents writing essays that are letters to their newborn children expressing the hopes and dreams they have for them. And we hear the stories of faith that guide people in their daily experiences.”
Thanks to Publicity Hound Leslie Paladino of Kregel Publications in Grand Rapids, Michigan, for alerting us to this great publicity op. You can submit an essay here.
Book publcist Lissa Warren says NPR’s producers, editors, reporters and hosts are always on the lookout for new stories, compelling guests and fresh ideas. But navigating the NPR labyrinth can be a nightmare if you don’t know what you’re doing. Lissa, who was my guest during a teleseminar called “How to Get Booked on National Public Radio,” has placed more than 100 of her clients on NPR shows and says the best place to start doing your research is at the NPR website to see which shows are the best fit for you.
There’s a lot more to NPR’s “This I Believe” situation than has been covered. I am not a lawyer, but if I understand the TIB contract correctly, NPR can hold the essay for up to two years. On Freelance Success, a forum for writers, there was great debate about whether NPR could hold the essay captive for that long or whether the author can resell the essay during that time. As I understand the opinions expressed on that board, authors get to keep keep the copyright but whether they can use the essay elsewhere while NPR holds onto it is a legally murky issue.
In addition, if I understand the situation correctly, NPR can use the essay any number of ways but only pay for it once. If that situation is indeed the case, this kind of lowballing rights grab is something fairly typical in the media business, where authors are frequently told that nobody else has complained about such a contract. This line is one we’ve all heard way too many times to believe a particle of it. In my nearly 30 years in the writing field, I myself have heard publishers and editors use that line so often that if I had a dime for every occasion,I could buy out Donald Trump.
The point is that anybody offering similar contracts, often has to pay only once – if ever – then can kiss off ever sending another check to the author for that piece again, no matter how many times or how many ways the publisher uses that piece of writing, and no matter how many profits cascade into the publisher’s coffers year after year after year.
Such a situation, while common, is, in my view and that of many writers, gross exploitation.
In addition, that NPR would force many authors to wait up to two years to be told the fate of their submission is, in my view, unconscionable, especially if the piece is held in legal limbo.
The holdup, while not, in my opinion, justifiable, may be at least explicable: There are a lot of essays. For that reason, TIB authors shouldn’t hold their breath waiting to hear their finely wrought golden words intoned over the air. At last count, 10,000 essays had been submitted, with the number continuing to rise higher than Hurricane Katrina-driven flood waters lapping against a New Orleans levee.
In short, before expending a lot of energy on writing a “This I Believe” essay, authors and other folks might consider finding writing outlets which treat their efforts with more decency and where the odds of getting the money and publicity they want are significantly better than 10,000 to one.
David Kohn award-winning co-author, ghost writer, editor 954-429-937
Joan
1. Per your comments and those above on “This I Believe,” Ive had two friends (former journalists) contribute essays, have them held up for over a year, then used by NPR, but not notified when they were. They found out from others who heard them.
2. Consider adding FeedBlitz to your options for getting blog updates.
I’ve found that it is extremely user-friendly )no I have no business relationship wit hthe service)
As Cory Doctorow (www.craphound.com) has said, it’s better to worry about obscurity than being ripped off. NPR has a broad reach, and getting their “endorsement” is valuable. I’d love to have the problem of NPR repeatedly using an article that I’d written for them. It’s not about what *they* make from it, it’s what exposure my business receives.
When you write or record an audio program, you hold the copyright. If you are willing to sell off all, or many, of the rights to that piece, that’s your choice. Rather than worry about being ripped off by NPR’s “This I Believe” program, may I suggest you agree to their terms and just write different essays for different markets.
For example, if you strongly believe that reading cartoons is good, or bad, I’m pretty sure you could talk about that topic for an hour! So, let NPR have their 2 minutes, while you go on and do 29 other similar-but-different segments on the same topic for other outlets like http://www.ezinearticles.com.
Find a way to turn NPR’s less than generous offer to your advantage.
Rodney Robbins is a novelist and cartoonist. Learn more about him at http://www.Rodneys52Ways.com.