I fell onto the airwaves by chance. The alternative weekly that I worked for folded at the end of 1996. Shortly after my job-free holidays, the news director of local public radio station WCBE called me, said she liked my writing and, since the whole city knew I probably wasn’t up to much, asked if I might be interested in doing some arts stories for her.

She trained me to do everything on the fly, from how to hold the microphone for good sound to mixing tracks to editing the tape. She gave me tips on writing for audio and suggestions about how I might read more naturally. I did some of it well and completely stumbled through other parts. Audio can bring such great new dimensions to storytelling.

A lot of people felt certain that this should be the new direction of my career, except for me.  I was more comfortable taking notes and living behind a byline, not so much  with thrusting a mic into people’s faces and hearing myself in between the pros of  NPR’s “Morning Edition.” I even turned down a couple of opportunities, opting to pursue the freelance writing, editing and new digital frontier that all lived in my comfort zone.

I did maintain a freelance relationship with the station on and off for several years, though, and did a fair amount of visual arts reporting (a real challenge to do on the radio!) in conjunction with Dialogue magazine that was funded by the Greater Columbus Arts Council. It was good for local artists and arts organizations – the pieces were played on public stations all over Ohio because of the dearth of arts reporting on the radio. But as I took on other work and funding for those projects eroded, it fell by the wayside.

In hindsight, I wish that I’d let myself enjoy all of it more. These days, I’m rediscovering that writing and editing for broadcast is a total blast.

This fall, I had my first opportunity to do some television script writing for a local station and I can’t tell you how much fun I had using Avid and playing with words, sound and video to tell a few stories. I have zero desire to be on camera, but I’m not at all voice-shy anymore, and I love producing this kind of work.

Most recently, I produced the pilot episode of my husband’s radio show, Almost There, and contributed a segment of my own on adult-friendly children’s music. We have two more two-hour episodes airing over the holidays in hopes of landing a permanent slot, so please stay tuned.

And if you’re looking for someone with a strong writing/reporting background to produce audio or video scripts, I’m very interested in this kind of work. Please get in touch.

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Post tags: Almost There, arts, broadcast, Dan Dougan, entertainment, public radio, radio, scripts, storytelling, WCBE

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For one thing, our arts and entertainment establishments don’t have the breadth of history that those in Cincinnati or Cleveland do. We don’t have, say, an Alan Freed to help us claim relevance on the national landscape, a Marge Schott to bring us infamy or quite as many philanthropists dumping money into our fine arts institutions.

We’ve suffered through extended bouts of pro sports team envy, taken our lesser, successful pro sports teams for granted and either adored or felt dogged by the permeating culture of our Big 10 football team.  We’ve trained a telescope on Austin, Texas — another massive-university capital city with big-time college sports — and tried to glean something  about how it manages to be the kind of magnet for creative individuals and companies that we would like to be.

Columbus has yet to embrace its inner funkiness or the more colorful points in its history. It also has an unfortunate tendency to reject or replace the authentic in favor of things that are marketing-driven… but that seems to be a plague everywhere in this economy, and these are rants for another day.

What we do have is a city that lacks some of the built-in charm of those with a more cohesive skyline and compact borders, but is extremely livable in many respects. A lot of development has gone into our parks and bikeways, resources like our library system are top-notch and our warm months are packed with free, worthwhile cultural events. These days, there is also an extraordinary amount of interest in and conversation about how the urban center can, could or should develop.

Looking back through my files to the days when local alternative weekly newspapers did things like print 1,000+ word pieces that weren’t even the cover story, I recently unearthed an interview I did with James Howard Kunstler, author of The Geography of Nowhere. A passionate and somewhat accidental civic guru, he visited Columbus in 1995 to rap us upside our collective head about suburban blight and the potential of our urban community. He was working on his sequel, Home From Nowhere, which included sections about Columbus as  a representation of both the best and worst of the urban American landscape.

It’s interesting to look back and see what he thought of the city then. I think his books, and this interview have been a reference point in terms of how I look at Columbus ever since. His observations about various neighborhoods and structures were prescient.

What seems dated about the story, though, is that it has a lot of language about the Internet’s potential as a greater isolator. It seems funny, given the fact that in 2009, it’s really thanks to web sites like Columbus Underground that there is something closer to the New Urbanist movement that Kunstler was hoping for in existence today.

Read “Suburbia Bites” here.

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Post tags: alternative newspapers, Columbus, culture, development, James Kunstler, Ohio, urban planning

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A few years ago, we decided to combine our resources and make all of our holiday gifts together. As fans of luxurious bath products, we created several of our own – mostly bath bombs and salts. We dove into aromatherapy research, scoured online wholesale supply stores and experimented like madwomen in her basement. We called our line “Bathquake,” and we made great product with fun titles and labels with whimsical descriptions.

Family members were so supportive of our Christmas gift efforts that we considered becoming a real company. We geared up for Valentine’s Day by creating several new formulas with frisky titles and got some of our friends hooked. Happily, one of my addicted friends was a massage therapist who was always willing to defray her fee when I brought a few things for her.

Sadly, neither my friend or I liked sales nearly as much as we liked making the stuff, and although we tried in vain to find someone who could tow that line for us, we relegated our product back to gifts for family and friends. I include it here because I wrote some fun product copy in the process. Reading it still makes me want to take a bath.

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Post tags: bath products, catalogue writing, copywriting

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James Thurber

When Ohio State University decided to give its cleverest native son James Thurber a posthumous, honorary doctorate degree, the Thurber House and Museum decided that it would be apropos to ask journalists to help celebrate. An invitation was extended to the shoestring staff of the alternative weekly that I worked for, and somehow, I was selected (probably by default) to write and deliver a toast.

It was the mid-1990s — the era of the Contract with America.  The National Endowment for the Arts and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting were under constant threat of elimination as the subjects of highly misleading, inflammatory campaigns about how and where they spent their money. Artists who tackled difficult themes were singled out, their work discussed with little context and lots of saber-rattling. The political landscape of the time was polarized and witch-hunt prone,  the era of Joe McCarthy echoing all around us.

I found out that Thurber had previously turned down an offer for an honorary degree from OSU because he felt the institution had been complicit in McCarthy’s anti-Communist crusades. So I reread his children’s book “The Wonderful O”  and wrote this toast about his passion for intellectual freedom. I worried that I might offend someone by bringing up that bit of ugliness from the past in a public forum, until it dawned on me that worrying about offending people probably wasn’t very high on Thurber’s list of concerns.

I was nervous, but the toast seemed to be well-received by the people there. I received kind words from the organizers, former U.S House representative Bob Shamansky and a woman who worked for the local public radio station. She asked me to lunch.

I’ve learned that speaking truth to power has effects that you could never anticipate. My lunch date turned quickly into a solid friendship, which turned into family when I introduced her to my younger brother and they decided to marry. The yield of that day now includes three beautful children, a Northern Ohio farm and creamery and (so far as I can tell) no unicorns.

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Post tags: alternative newspapers, family, James Thurber, McCarthyism, opinions

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Gold!

My KnowledgeWorks Foundation colleagues and I have been honored with a national communications award from the Council on Foundations for our storytelling project, Every Student Deserves a Legacy (published last fall). While our work from 2006 & 2007 earned silver awards, this one, which took a look at the personal stories of people doing the day to day work urban high school reform over a four year period, got the gold. You can download or request a copy of my short book about the efforts at Brookhaven High School in Columbus here.

Here are some of the judge’s comments:

“The reports are well written, informative and reveal the compassion and dedication of the educators. Fantastic insights… The visuals balance the text. The handwritten quotes or stories bring the reader in to the human side of the story. Excellent initiative and strategy. The organization is connected to its audience and clearly cares about the future of each student.”

“This material is outstanding. Beautifully written, simply designed, relevant and compelling content… Great use of spot color, big b&w photos, clean. This is impressive. If I lived in Ohio, I would support it.”

“Great stories highlighting individual teachers. Interesting to have multiple freelance writers and their take on the story.”

I am currently working on a new storytelling project with KnowledgeWorks about a young and innovative early college high school. Please visit Metro School Stories, subscribe to its feed or follow us on Twitter @MetroStories.

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Writing • Web content development • Editing

I’m in the middle of a major overhaul of this site, so please pardon its appearance.  I have a lot more content coming soon,  including new project information and more portfolio material .

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