Who are today's best audio storytellers?
Behind the scenes of a Pulitzer finalist, and seeking the sky.
A Pulitzer honor for The 13th Step
If you’re a regular reader of this newsletter or a Sound Judgment podcast listener, you know I’ve been spending oodles of time pulling apart the investigative podcast The 13th Step in recent weeks. (In fact, it’s been months; I first invited reporter Lauren Chooljian and lead editor Alison MacAdam onto the show at the turn of the year.)
“The best defense is the truth,” Part 2 of my deep dive into The 13th Step, came out this morning. Two days ago, as I was finishing up the fact-checking on this episode, I received an email from Alison. It said, simply, “Update: We’re Pulitzer finalists!”
The Pulitzer board honored the team “for their gripping and extensively reported investigation of corruption and sexual abuse within the lucrative recovery industry that sought accountability despite legal pressure.” (Read the entire list of Pulitzer finalists and winners.)
I’m thrilled for The 13th Step team.
And, frankly, I’m thrilled for what it says about my goal for this podcast, which I started in September 2022. (This episode is my 50th!)
I started Sound Judgment because I was frustrated that there was an overwhelming amount of online information about the business and marketing of podcasts – but almost nothing about the craft of audio storytelling. As a longtime editor, I couldn’t believe how little attention people were giving to the question of how to make something worthwhile in the first place. (With the notable exception of Sound School, Rob Rosenthal’s iconic podcast.)
I felt strongly that there is a lot to learn by example, by breaking down the creative choices of today’s best audio storytellers.
I faced two difficult problems, though. The first, which is so subjective as to be unsolvable, is “Who are today’s best?” (I have help from the brilliant Sound Judgment advisory board.) The second: Could I persuade those I admired to do this painstaking work with me on the show?
That was a gamble.
Today, looking over the Sound Judgment catalog, I feel like that gamble has, largely, paid off. Some guests were well known before they appeared on the show – Anna Sale, Glynn Washington, and Kelly Corrigan, to name just a few. Some still aren’t. Others are now, but weren’t when I first invited them: Ronald Young Jr., for instance, and Jonathan Menjivar.
Notoriety is absolutely not synonymous with quality. Neither are awards, for reasons I’ll leave to a future newsletter. What truly matters is the level of art, craft, strategy and skill that these guests put into their stories. And what matters is that every guest has been thoughtful, open to sharing their creative philosophies, their decision processes, and the surprises, good and bad, that they’ve encountered in the pursuit of making great art. Generously, they’ve been willing to try to pull apart the mystery of what they do, so we can all learn.
Thank you for coming on this journey with me. And congratulations, once again, to you, Alison MacAdam and Lauren Chooljian!
Seeking the Sky
I considered moving to Colorado from New England a dozen years ago. I’d been living in a farmhouse built in 1792, nestled in thick woods on a dirt road so far out from the town’s tiny center that we dreamed about inviting guests and calling it “The Inn at the End of the World.”
It was beautiful. Springing apart from the pine trees were glorious old sugar maples that blazed in the fall. Encountering a twisted apple tree in a clearing could put me in a reverie of what life was like more than 200 years ago.
But I felt trapped in a crisis-ridden marriage. I was commuting three days a week, three hours a day, to Boston, for a job that didn’t merit the grueling journey. My 10-year-old son was struggling in school and with the effects of our unhappy marriage. I had virtually no time to think, no time not just to solve problems but to set a new course for a refreshed life.
Then I flew to Colorado for a job interview. Watching ducks float in a tiny man-made pond in a corporate office park, I was struck by…the air. Above me, unobscured by trees, was a vast expanse of emptiness. It was June on a “Colorado blue sky” kind of day. I felt like I could see forever. I took my first deep breath in a long, long while. In the most cheesy of metaphors, in that moment, I could see the forest rather than the trees I’d been stuck within.
I’ve been here ever since. In the last dozen years, I’ve made changes I could never have predicted. I took a job I loved, until, three years later, I didn’t. I started a company, a podcast, and this newsletter. I got out of that crisis-ridden marriage and fell deeply in love. I remarried.
Today, I’m at another inflection point. Without realizing it, I’ve fallen back into the woods. In my work running a production company, I’ve been staring at the tree in front of me, the branch I’m stumbling across, the crisis that needs solving right now. I haven’t been able to see the forest for the aspen, the locust tree, the tangled lilac bush shooting its roots up among the weeds.
So it’s time for me to seek the sky again, to breathe deeply while I consider some new directions. Today’s Sound Judgment episode will be my last one for a while. I’m putting the show on hiatus for the rest of the spring and the summer, in order to break free of the deadline pressure and allow myself room for creative expansion. There will be changes to my company.
But don’t worry — Sound Judgment, the newsletter, will continue as always. I love the community that’s been building here. I love sharing lessons from today’s best audio storytellers. I love learning from those of you who comment, send emails, take workshops and participate in coaching calls.
I have many exciting plans for this newsletter and for consulting, coaching, teaching and speaking engagements drawn from the Sound Judgment body of work. But I’m saving this news until after at least a little bit of a breather.
For now, let me turn this around and ask: Are you at an inflection point? Or have you navigated one recently? What caused it? What did you change, and why? How are you feeling now?
Have you, too, been seeking the sky? Please answer in the comments or restack this post with your reply.
I treasure learning about your experiences.
As always, it is a joy to be with you.
Elaine Appleton Grant
Epilogue
”I think we have an overly narrow description of what editing is.
We think of it as marking up the grammar of a sentence with a pen, but great editors — and I’ve worked with a lot of great editors — they’re mystics of a sort. They’re not technicians. They see something that isn’t there yet, whether of their own work or your work, and not really knowing how to get there, they help you get there. Not really knowing how to get there, they help themselves get there.”
— “This conversation made me a sharper editor,” The Ezra Klein show, with Ezra Klein and Adam Moss, author of The Work of Art: How Something Comes from Nothing
Anna Sale is good people. Did some work with her before she had her own show.
Congratulations on choosing a hiatus and making more room in your life. And if you find the ways to get through an inflection point, let me know - I feel mine is years-long by now