The Backstory: Introducing The Long Read, Stuff's best journalism in podcast form
Tuesday, 1 June 2021
The Backstory is an occasional column from Stuff Editor in Chief Patrick Crewdson offering behind-the-scenes insight into stories and newsroom decisions. You can get The Backstory as an email newsletter.
The concept behind Stuff’s newest podcast couldn’t be simpler.
Each Friday, The Long Read delivers an example of our best longform storytelling, read out loud.
You’ve probably heard host Michael Wright’s voice before; he was behind the mic on White Silence and Collapse.
Released to mark the 40th anniversary of the Erebus disaster, White Silence won Best Narrative/Serial Podcast at the 2020 Voyager Media Awards, a gold medal at the 2020 New York Festivals Radio Awards, and was named Best News/Current Affairs Podcast at the NZ Radio Awards.
Collapse, released in February for the 10th anniversary of the devastating 2011 Christchurch earthquake, examined the disaster of the CTV building, in which 115 people died.
For each Long Read episode, Michael interviews one of our journalists to lift the veil on why they tackled this story, before either Michael or the journalist reads the story in full.
The most recent episode (which you can listen to above) featured national correspondent Dana Johannsen, who was named runner-up in the Sports Journalist of the Year category at the 2021 Voyager Media Awards.
Dana’s story, Life on the edge of the Olympics, tracked sprinter Joseph Millar over two years as he pursued his dream of reaching the Tokyo Olympics.
Qualifying for the Olympics is no easy task for a Kiwi sprinter, and Dana’s feature sensitively chronicles the twists and turns of the journey.
In the podcast, Dana tells Michael:
“We often are focused on the stars or the big-name athletes, and I was drawn to the idea of wanting to cover someone who had battled away on the fringes for a long time and was looking to qualify for the Olympic Games. Often we see these people are just footnotes at the bottom of the story but I really wanted to focus on their journey.”
Dana’s story is structured in five parts, mimicking the stages of a 200-metre race, with all its intensity and drama.
The previous week’s debut episode – Plan B and the infodemic - featured Charlie Mitchell’s investigation into how public health expert Dr Simon Thornley’s “extreme outlier” stance on Covid-19 alienated him within his profession.
As Charlie, who just won the Science Reporter of the Year prize at the 2021 Voyager Media Awards, tells Michael in the podcast:
“Simon Thornley in particular has ideas that are not accepted really within most of the public health community in New Zealand but he’s continued to make them in ways that has caused consternation to some of his colleagues.
“There’s this quite interesting issue about how to deal with ideas that are unpopular or unseemly in science, particularly at a time when misinformation is flourishing online and people are being driven towards views that confirm their preconceptions.”
A new episode of The Long Read will be released each Friday, and we’ve got a cracker for you coming this week: Charlie O’Mannin on the bounty hunters sponsored by the New Zealand Government who tried to eradicate the kea. Find it on Stuff or subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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