SACHA PFEIFFER, HOST:
Here at NPR and in radio in general, some job titles make it very clear what we do, like reporter and editor and host. But we also rely heavily on producers. We couldn't function without them. Before you hear any stories on the show, long before you hear the ALL THINGS CONSIDERED music kick in, NPR's producers are hard at work. They're often the ones pitching story ideas, tracking the news of the day and doing a huge range of other things.
MATT OZUG, BYLINE: We also get to do longer-term features - books, movies, TV shows - and then we also go in the field with a host.
PFEIFFER: That's Matt Ozug. He's been a producer for this show for more than a decade.
OZUG: That brings in all the different skills as a producer. You know, you're researching, sometimes months in advance, doing the logistics.
PFEIFFER: Producers also put together the audio clips you hear and help write scripts. In fact, one of our producers helped write this script - shoutout to Linah Mohammad. And producers often do this on very tight deadlines, sometimes with minutes to spare or just seconds. You rarely hear them on air, but their fingerprints are all over NPR's stories.
So for this week's Reporter's Notebook, where we talk about how we do our jobs, we're instead doing a producer's notebook with Matt and Jonaki Mehta, another NPR producer. When I spoke with him this week, I asked Jonaki how often she finds herself having to explain what she does.
JONAKI MEHTA, BYLINE: All the time. And, you know, not to call out my colleagues, but even some people within the building at NPR, I think, don't fully know the details of what we do.
PFEIFFER: Could each of you name one story or interview or other project you've been involved in where your voice may not have been heard in it, but you either really enjoyed it or you felt like your role was really important to making it happen? Anything come to mind immediately?
MEHTA: Yeah. You know. something that comes to mind, a project that I'm really proud of having worked on, is last year, I was part of a team that went to Taiwan, along with my colleagues Mallory Yu, another producer and PJ Jarenwattananon, our editor.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)
AILSA CHANG: And I'm Ailsa Chang in Tainan, Taiwan, which, you know, hasn't been the seat of government in Taiwan in quite a while, but there is a very good case to be made that this city is still the culinary...
MEHTA: That was, you know, a rare project where we got to spend many months preparing. I mean, this was an idea we had two years before we went. And we got to do, like, eight stories on the ground there, reporting every single day. And I felt like I got to get a - do a course on Taiwan in the year leading up to it. It was incredible. Talking to people who live there, who are, you know, comedians and leaders in Indigenous communities there and other local journalists, chefs - and just getting this lesson on Taiwan and landing there was surreal to then, like, see all these stories that we had on paper, these ideas about going to a stand-up comedy show...
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)
JAMIE WANG: My name is Jamie. I'm from China. Thank you for the awkward silence.
(LAUGHTER)
MEHTA: ...Where a comedian from China and a comedian from Taiwan talk about the differences and tensions between, you know, the two places where they learned to perform, or going into the mountains where, you know, this Indigenous community was protecting its right to hunt.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)
CHANG: It's a region where many members of the Indigenous Truku tribe live.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Non-English language spoken).
MEHTA: It was surreal to see those things come to life from the page, and that's the work of producers making these connections before getting there and, you know, talking to people to make sure they're going to be able to help us tell this story to our country and to the world.
PFEIFFER: This job is like getting to get paid to learn. I mean, it's like free school.
OZUG: It's so cool. I totally agree with Jonaki. I've been so fortunate to get to travel to some places. I mean, as you know, Sacha, when you're a reporter, you get to walk into rooms that you would not get to walk into as a private citizen. And so yeah, I mean, I've gone places all over the world in my 10 years here that have - just this year, we were in Greenland. I was on a - recording while on a - the back of a sled dog with Juana Summers and our photographer.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)
JUANA SUMMERS: So we've just gotten seated on the sled. We're sitting kind of across it, so our legs are hanging off of one side. All right, the dogs are pulling. Here we go.
OZUG: And it was, like, unlike anything I ever thought I would be doing.
PFEIFFER: This is when President Trump had talked about trying to acquire or take over Greenland. And so...
OZUG: That was the - yeah, the move du jour. That's sort of fallen off the headlines, but it was really...
PFEIFFER: Why we decided to go take a look at that country, a closer look.
OZUG: Exactly, and talk to people there about, you know, what they thought about all of this, being in the spotlight. But we really tried to get beyond the headlines and beyond the politics and talk to ordinary people, like this young woman who's - runs a sled dog operation.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)
STELLA DAVIDSEN OLSEN: In some areas, you can see, we don't have snow.
SUMMERS: No.
OLSEN: So it's harder for the dogs to pull, but it's easier when we have snow.
SUMMERS: Yeah.
OLSEN: So at least 10 dogs or more, I need.
SUMMERS: Ten or more. OK.
OLSEN: Yeah.
SUMMERS: That's a lot of dogs.
OZUG: So the travel stuff is certainly the thing that I look back on and say, wow, I can't believe I got to go there. In terms of the production, I mean, you know, there's so many, but I'm looking back at the stories that I've produced, and there's one that I want to flag. It's - this is a couple of years ago, a couple of summers ago. It was the short history of competitive eating, and...
(LAUGHTER)
PFEIFFER: It sounds very fun, right off the bat.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)
JASON FAGONE: Sometimes I wake up in the morning, and I remember that I spent two years in the 2000s following competitive eating around the country and the world.
OZUG: It was so fun. And, you know, this is one of these pieces where the germ of the idea was just me thinking, Hey, Nathan's Hot Dog Contest is coming up. I wonder why we do this. And there is a whole history. And I found a guy, Jason Fagone, and he wrote this book, "Horsemen Of The Esophagus: Competitive Eating And The Big Fat American Dream."
PFEIFFER: (Laughter).
OZUG: And I got to talk to him about his research and weave in music, and it's - you know, it was hours if not days of work to put that piece together, but what a joy, you know?
PFEIFFER: Yeah.
OZUG: And similar to reporting a story, but, you know, the palette of raw materials is just a little bit more limited 'cause I - my voice is not in that piece. You know, it exists using Jason's interview and then a bunch of found sound, which...
PFEIFFER: Yeah.
OZUG: ...Is a challenge, but when it comes together, it's really fun.
PFEIFFER: And you get to do so much research, and it's just really a lot to learn in the job. Jonaki, I went back to my notes to look up the various stories that you and I have worked on over the years, and they include interviewing Pete Buttigieg - Matt, you actually edited that one - interviewing a newspaper staff that won a Pulitzer, Supreme Court ethics, gun violence, training OBGYNs, a study on rectal cancer, the Russia-Ukraine War - so many more.
MEHTA: Wow.
PFEIFFER: I can see how that would be both invigorating but also head-spinning. How do you feel about that range?
MEHTA: I love the range. And we have this great privilege of getting to process what's going on in the world and getting paid to do it. Like, you know, people - my friends who don't work in news, my family will often say, like, don't you just feel so bogged down working in the news? And of course, like, there are moments where it's really difficult. But as you might know, too, Sacha, like, I feel like everybody is experiencing the news. We get to process what's happening through our work, and we get paid to do it. And I love the range. I love the different ways that we get to be creative and the privilege of asking people questions and, you know, giving the public those answers.
PFEIFFER: Do each of you feel like there could be a better name for a producer? And if so, what title would you pick?
OZUG: Ooh. Good question.
MEHTA: That's a really good question. I know, producer can - it - the word can feel a little bit dehumanizing sometimes, like we're just machines that produce - put things out. But, you know, I think - I don't know if I would - I have a single word that I would say to replace producer with, but what I think would be helpful for people to know is that producers are journalists, that, you know, most of us here, the people who work in the newsroom doing editorial stuff - we're all journalists. And I think perhaps I would add that to the definition of how people think of producers.
PFEIFFER: That's NPR's Matt Ozug and Jonaki Mehta, producers and journalists at NPR. Matt and Jonaki, thank you so much for everything. You really are the creativity behind the scenes. There have been times I've been hosting, and it's a panic day, and it's so helpful to have someone having done so much research that I can rely on.
OZUG: Oh, it's an honor. Thanks, Sacha.
MEHTA: Thank you, Sacha. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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