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Following the Heard: How Jay Allison Went

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Following the Heard: How Jay Allison Went CENTER FOR ARTS POLICY COLUMBIA COLLEGE CHICAGO FOLLOWING THE HEARD: HOW JAY ALLISON WENT NUMBER SEARCHING FOR SOUND AND INSPIRED A RADIO REVOLUTION by Lauren Cowen 04 CENTER FOR ARTS POLICY COLUMBIA COLLEGE CHICAGO The Center would like to thank the following for supporting the Democratic Vistas Profiles: Essays in the Arts and Democracy Nathan Cummings Foundation Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts Larry and Jamie Fine Columbia College Chicago CENTER FOR ARTS POLICY COLUMBIA COLLEGE CHICAGO FOLLOWING THE HEARD: HOW JAY ALLISON WENT SEARCHING FOR SOUND AND INSPIRED A RADIO REVOLUTION by Lauren Cowen WOODS HOLE IS AN EXCELLENT The main road into town was once an Indian pas- HIDING PLACE. It is on the edge of the world, a sage. It banks along the ocean’s edge, past the bakery and couple hours from Boston on Cape Cod, sought out ferries and then twists along pathways that lead to grav- mostly by tourists who pass through it on their way to el roads and then to clapboard houses that are set in the Martha’s Vineyard. It is small—barely a thousand people. coastal underbrush, along pathways that even the There is not much commerce, an arrested nightlife, and garbage men have a hard time finding. a library that is open on occasional weekdays. Its most This is the place where, in 1986, Jay Allison found celebrated residents are marine biologists and oceanog- himself setting up shop. At the time, Allison was a radio raphers who conduct business either under florescent producer who approached the gathering and telling of lights or beneath the sea. stories not as a profession but as a calling. His radio doc- umentaries had taken him around the globe and were heard nationally on public radio. As an early practition- er of citizen journalism, he handed out tape recorders, Lauren Cowen's profiles and essays have appeared in numerous news- turning more control for the story over to the subject. papers and magazines. She is the author of three books, most recently And because he worked independently, gathering, writ- Grandmothers (Stewart,Tabori, & Chang, 2005), and lives outside ing, and producing his own stories, in theory he could Chicago with her husband and two children. work from anywhere. NO. 4 FOLLOWING THE HEARD by Lauren Cowen His wife (now his former wife), Christina Egloff, as This I Believe, that build on the promise of public also an acclaimed radio producer, had grown up in radio and give more people the tools to tell their own Woods Hole and descended from a family of renowned stories. scientists, some of whom still lived there. Allison was But at the time he was talking to his father-in-law, drawn to it. It was a definable community and offered Allison didn’t feel like he was on the edge of a modest much needed family support for his wife, whose arthri- revolution. tis was often debilitating, and for their new baby. He felt like he was at the edge of the world and There were downsides. Woods Hole was no media couldn’t help but wonder, if only for a moment, if an mecca. Without a local public radio station, Allison isolated place was destined to create an isolated man. would have to drive just to hear his own stories broad- Jay Allison tells this story from a coffee shop in cast on WBUR out of Boston.There was no internet or Woods Hole, on a grey-sky day when it’s hard to tell universal email, no virtual way of sharing information where the sky ends and the water begins. He is a tall, and transmitting audio stories. lean man with a boyish face, a receding hairline, and a But Allison’s work, his life, and his aspirations were forehead vast enough for a navigation system. As he all built on a belief that the simple act of sharing stories recalls his conversation with his father-in-law, his face “THE COMMENT SENT A CHILL THROUGH ALLISON. HE’D STAKED EVERYTHING ON HIS FAITH IN THE SHARED STORY.” could unite people who were divided by geography or registers the story’s emotion: hope, fear, disbelief, deter- demography or ideology. mination. This is what he had in mind one day when he fell “It was such a dark, sober thought,” Allison says into a conversation with his father-in-law, who hap- recalling the conversation.“He said,‘did it ever occur to pened to be a prominent psychiatrist. Allison had just you that all of life is unshared experience?’ I thought, returned from reporting a story halfway around the ‘No. No! It shall not be thus!’” globe and wanted to convey the feel of his adventure, In the vignette is the ethos of Allison’s work and life: the place, his conversations with the people, their long- where there is a life, there is a story,and a story told hon- ings, and what he learned from them. But as he estly and artfully has the power to connect people, to described the trip—or tried to—he could see that his allow people to see themselves in others’ lives. This is efforts were falling short, that he wasn’t transporting his what Allison means when he says (only partly in jest) father-in-law out of Woods Hole to this place or into “that when you make other people’s stories your stories the lives of the people he had just met. there’s a chance for world peace.” His father-in-law offered an explanation: Underlying this ethos is an unassuming ego that Perhaps experiences can’t be shared; perhaps each longs for connectedness as much as it longs to be heard. person is truly alone. His perspective is rooted in that same it shall not be thus The comment sent a chill through Allison. He’d determination, a sometimes desperation borne of a soul staked everything on his faith in the shared story—his that sees little distinction between the principles that devotion to storytelling, his determination to use radio inspire his work and the rationale for his life. to build community,his certainty that he could make his “You talk about drive,” he exclaims, “I think one life and ambitions work in Woods Hole. part of the drive is, you know, make damn sure this A decade later, he’d have something to show for his works and this succeeds and it is a legitimate organizing convictions: two new public radio stations, a website that principle for your life because if it’s not, you’re out of brings new voices to public radio, a systemized way to luck! You’re sunk! You gambled on the wrong horse!” get those voices on the air, and stories and projects, such If he couldn’t hear his own stories in Woods Hole, CENTER FOR ARTS POLICY COLUMBIA COLLEGE CHICAGO DEMOCRATIC VISTAS PROFILES 2 NO. 4 FOLLOWING THE HEARD by Lauren Cowen then he’d create new stations there.The challenge was to ent producer of Radio Diaries who calls Allison the build an audio community in Massachusetts out of Cape “father” of independent producers. “He’s also changing Cod, the South Coast, Nantucket, and Martha’s the infrastructure to let that happen.” Vineyard, an area that stretches over two islands, the Traditionally, independent producers had limited coastal mainland and a fragmented seventy-mile long options when it came to telling noncommercial stories peninsula, each with distinct identities. Allison began on radio.They could work on staff for NPR or at a sta- airing “sonic IDs”— audio snapshots that convey the tion or as work-for-hire, explains Richman. Efforts like sounds of, say, a woman hanging laundry in a breeze or Transom and PRX opened new pathways and offered a fisherman gathering scallops. The local glimpses, so newcomers as well as veterans of the industry a way to simple in construction, fed Allison’s more complicated exchange ideas and tools and share the economic bur- intent: to give people a sense of place, a stake in their dens of production. community, but also a sense of place in the more global “Jay built this infrastructure that didn’t exist, this sys- sense. tematic way to involve people in public radio,”Richman “We’re as parochial as any place, and each place, each says. “A lot of us aren’t even aware of how much we’ve island, thinks it’s special in some way.But the great thing benefited because of his community-building in the last about radio is that it doesn’t respect boundaries.You hear decade, how much that has shaped what we do and how a voice of a fisherman telling a funny story and you find well we do it.” that you’re laughing at the story. And then at the end Allison is uncomfortable with those sorts of com- you hear that the guy is from Nantucket. You’re from ments. He has a demure authority that learns as readily Martha’s Vineyard and you have a feeling of people from from the novice as the veteran and sees himself “as a over there as being inferior. But you’ve just laughed at radio Tom Sawyer, getting other people to paint the his story and thought of him as someone from here.” fence.” He delights in “the show,” in creating something With the stations in place, Allison saw in the inter- out of nothing, which he did first in theater, then with section of radio and the internet the chance to create “communities of affini- ty.” He launched Transom.org, an online “UNDERLYING THIS ETHOS IS AN master class where newcomers to radio production found training and help in UNASSUMING EGO THAT LONGS FOR putting together a story and getting it CONNECTEDNESS AS MUCH AS IT LONGS onto the air.
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