Internship Experience #4: 90.5 FM WCBE Columbus
After the Spring Fund Drive Week was completed and our fundraising goal hit, it was quickly time to use the momentum for the next phase of projects and collaborative work. The next phase of my internship was heavily focused on podcast editing, with my first podcast editing project being given to me by DJ show host Mike Foley. While I initially got the podcast edit files a short time before the Fund Drive started, I wasn’t able to fully focus on the work until after the drive concluded. Additionally, the CAHS student interns were also getting their first introductions to podcasting with a project of their own, which the Capital interns and myself helped record and edit for them.
Before the Fund Drive initially started, Mike Foley asked the Capital intern team to edit some of his past podcasts and podcast content, like sweepers and intros/outros. We each took a chunk of the work, with my chunk being a near-30-minute long interview between Mike and Gaelynn Lea, a disabled violin player and vocalist who’s also a disability spokesperson and advocate. It was a bit difficult to edit, mostly because the interview took place on zoom, so I had to troubleshoot a solid process for editing that wouldn’t affect the Gaelynn’s voice but would get rid of the noticeable digital sibilance and interference in the recording. This process of editing, re-editing, and reviewing took me about a week and a half total, with multiple hours each day going towards this project. It definitely was a lot more of a workload than I was expecting and really allowed me to gain an appreciation for professional podcast/interview editors, as it was a lot of tedious work. However, I’m definitely glad I was able to learn along the way and be of help to Mike for his project. Plus, it’s never a negative thing to add more skills to my repotoire.
Additionally, another large podcast assignment came from the Columbus Alternative High School (CAHS) student interns. They started a podcasting project which they called StudentConnect, in which they would interview each other, along with other high school student interns, and talk about student interests, hobbies, and activities outside of school. We were tasked with recording them within WCBE’s Studio A, and this initially proved challenging because of the difficulty of the recording console. It took us a bit of troubleshooting with both show hosts Mike Foley and Mike Taylor, but we were eventually able to get microphones, headphones, and a talkback microphone setup and working properly.
Photo of other capital intern Joe G. and myself troubleshooting the console with show host Mike Foley looking at the other side of the board through the studio window!
Once this was recorded and the files were transported, I was responsible for the podcast editing involved with it. While it initially sounded easy, it proved to be one of the biggest challenges on my editing patience during my internship. The first challenged stemmed from the recording setup: we unfortunately could only get two microphones for a group of four speakers, which lead to a stereo file instead of four mono files. Combining this with the presence of all speakers in the same room in a close proximity, there was an intense bleed that was hard to separate and balance between the four speakers’ differing levels. I ended up going through the entire length of the audio, splitting the stereo tracks into four tracks (one for each respective speaker), and then going back to the beginning and editing volume levels and noise artifacts like breaths and lip smacks. All in all, this project took me over two weeks to complete alongside other projects, and the length ended up going from near 30 minutes to around 20 minutes, showing just how many editing cuts were performed.
Finally, another main portion of this segment of internship hours was dedicated to a project between the Capital interns. We discussed with our boss, Johnny DiLoretto, about brainstorming a collaborative project between the high school and college interns, highlighting the work and involvement of all interns at the WCBE station. After a lot of different ideas, the group settled on something we called “Intern-views”, which were interviews between interns. In our pitch, we described the interview project as a way to not only document intern interactions and involvements in and out of the WCBE station, but also as a way to connect to a younger audience across Columbus for 90.5 FM. We set up a list of questions meant to figure out our intern interviewees personally, getting into their hobbies and interests, but also touching on their connections to the WCBE station, why they’re involved, and what they get out of the experience. Our first couple iterations were a bit shaky, as we found it hard to get some high school interns to open up, especially those from Fort Hayes. However, we’ve since completed a couple solid interviews between Capital and CAHS student interns and we’re planning to complete more on the days when the high school interns visit the station.
