This week's guest is Eda Uzunlar, a multi-talented journalist with experience in print, audio, and illustrative journalism. She's currently the arts and culture reporter and a news anchor for WSHU in New Haven, Connecticut, covering that state and Long Island, New York.
There were two topics that I really enjoyed talking about with Eda.
One was childhood curiosity, which foreshadowed her future career.
Eda on curiosity
"I was always just a really curious kid. In Turkish, there's a nickname people can have, Maydanoz.
Maydanoz is parsley, but parsley is an ingredient that makes its way into every Turkish dish. Not all of them, but it's a very nice topping. It's fresh. It's good. But it makes its way into everything.
And when I was little, I would stick my nose into everyone's business. I would ask a lot of questions and I'd ask follow-ups after that. And so that (Maydanoz) was the nickname that my parents gave me.
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How that comes into play now is in the stories Eda reports on, like the local college student, who started a technology museum in his attic. The student's father wrote the station to share the story of his son's collection and Eda made her way to their house.
"Sometimes I go into a situation, like when I walked up into that attic, or even when I walked into this kind family's home, you kind of have to imagine yourself as a little kid, who I think are the most curious of us all, right?
What would you want to look at first? What would you want to get your grubby fingers all over first. And it's those things that you're drawn to, the things that our little kid brains are drawn to, that you want to make sure you spend a little bit of extra time on.
As an audio journalist, we really think about how can we take the listener and put them right where I am. I could spend hours and hours asking this kid to tread on his carpet and even get the muffled sound of his footsteps. He was very nice about it too. Every piece of technology that he had, like that first Macintosh computer that could read the words out to you that you've typed in, we did that over and over again to make sure that we could get the sound and we can make it as crisp as possible.
They were delighted to do it too, obviously. Anybody who is so passionate about their craft will geek out with you over and over again about the smallest of things. And that's when you know you've hit it right, you've hit the bullseyes when they're excited and you're excited. You can tell it's all going to come together really well.”
The other subject that was fun to talk about with Eda was talking about writing and speaking for radio. That came through in both the vocabulary she used …
Eda on writing for radio
" When you write for radio, you have to write really simply, you know? We love to give ourselves credit for being smart people and smart thinkers, and we are. Yet, when we're listening to the news, specifically listening to it, we don't understand as much as when we're reading it. So when you write for radio you have to write in short sentences and don't use words that are too long.
You have to use numbers that make sense, that are easy to understand. No crazy percentages. And I like writing like that because it really challenges you. You can really, really understand something and show that you understand it when you can explain it simply. And that's what you have to do every day when you're writing for radio.
It translates really beautifully to the rest of these different mediums that I'm talking about. Because you can really elaborate on a sentence when you're writing for print. You can make it more editorial. You can make it flowery. And when you're illustrating, obviously, you can draw it all out and make it something beautiful and captivating.
But it all starts kind of with that seed, with that anchor, which comes from writing from radio."
Eda on speaking for radio
It also came through in her expressive nature. During the early part of the interview, Eda sometimes gestured, rocked forward, and utilized a variety of facial expressions to convey points. About eight minutes into the interview I asked her about that.
"That's a huge thing. My eyes get wide, my whole body moves, I use my hands. I do think that's a very Turkish thing, a thing of that region, for sure, and it's just who I am, I'm, I'm very expressive, and it's huge for the radio, actually, because there's a huge difference from if I'm talking like this (monotone). I'm not smiling, my mouth is smaller, you can tell that there just isn't that much spirit in me when I'm speaking.
But when I open my mouth really large and when I make space for the air between my teeth, it's easier to enunciate, first of all. And second of all, you can hear there's a bit more excitement. The first time I anchored, which wasn't that long ago, I was FaceTiming my family. They were on mute.
My dad texted me, and said, you don't have to smile like that, they can't see you. And I said, oh, but you do! You do have to smile!
I think the point of radio journalism for a lot of people is when you tune in, you want to feel like someone's talking to you, not talking to a wall. And so I think that's (being expressive) one of the best ways to do that."