# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
'On Our Minds' podcast explores mental health crisis and the teenage experience

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
'On Our Minds' student podcast on depression and mental health - PBS NewsHour Classroom

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
On this episode of "On Our Minds," a podcast made by teenagers for teenagers on mental health, Noah and Zion discuss the body's reaction to depression and the relationship between physical and mental illness

# data[].attributes.body
Program Leaders may create a free educator account.
Students may create a free student account.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Projects, lesson plans, storytelling resources and tutorials just for you. StoryMaker is a powerful learning platform developed by PBS NewsHour Student Reporting Labs to build the next generation of media creators.

GET STARTED

GETTING STARTED

Made easy.

Personalized Dashboard

Save your favorite project, lesson plan or other resource to your personalized dashboard in just a few clicks. Your dashboard calendar makes it easy to keep track of upcoming project deadlines, webinars and workshops.

Media Making Challenges

Inspire students to apply their story-making skills with our Challenges. These timely media making opportunities empower students to contribute their perspective to important national conversations.

Educator Community

StoryMaker supports a community of educators from across the country leading students to produce stories and find their voice. Use the directory to find and connect with like-minded educators and mentors to help you figure out the best path to success.

Storytelling Lesson Plans

Focused on understanding digital journalism, media making, audio and video production. Our standards-based curriculum resources develop communication skills, critical thinking, teamwork, and other key skills for the future.

TESTIMONIALS

Journalism teachers can be their own island. StoryMaker connects us to resources, lessons and each other. The content on the site saves us the time and anguish of building our lessons all alone!

Bernadine Judson

Etiwanda High School

​​StoryMaker is just the tool we need as educators to help our students navigate the world of media and storytelling. This generation is ready to have their voices heard, and StoryMaker is the perfect resource to amplify their voices and help shape the narrative of what is happening in our country today.

Kolinda Scialabba

Gwinnett County Public Schools

Producing video stories makes students proficient in technology and critical thinking skill sets, but it also builds capacity for tackling complex text and projects, encourages the 'figuring out' mindset and makes the scholar own their learning.

Neena Kumar

Legacy Early College High School

Subscribe to our mailing list to receive the latest news, updates, and all things StoryMaker related

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
StoryMaker is a free learning platform for educators and young storytellers

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
LEVEL UP - EP 9 How to record a Podcast.mp4

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Overview

Pre-interviews help you find the right voices (characters) for your story. In the Find Your Story Lesson, you identified potential people to interview and feature in your story. Now you will talk to them to get a sense of whether they are indeed the right people and if they will move your story forward. The pre-interview will also help you create a list of interview questions so that you can make the best use of your time, and theirs. Click on the Activities Tab to complete the lesson.

Central Questions

What makes a pre-interview successful?

Why do journalists conduct pre-interviews?

How can you prepare for an interview to ensure you get the soundbites you need for your story?

Learning Outcomes

Learn how to contact potential interview subjects

Learn how to write and ask good questions to get the information you need

Understand the importance of research and preparation

Practice listening

Learn how to use empathy and curiosity to guide a conversation -- critical communication skills for journalism and for life

When Would You Use This Lesson?

This lesson should be used as part of your student journalism project.

This lesson can be taught before The Art of the Interview lesson and before students record their final interviews.

Media Literacy Connection

Interviews are central to most stories you see in the news. By understanding the pre-interview, students will have a much deeper understanding of the process, challenges, and decisions made by reporters and editors. These are all critical parts of media literacy and understanding the different elements of journalism that result in video, audio, or text stories that you find online.

Civics Connection

Additionally, students who go outside their school walls and conduct interviews with local leaders, experts, etc. are engaging with their community in powerful and meaningful ways. Interviews help students follow their curiosity, go beyond textbooks and google, and give them a tool to explore topics in real-world situations.

A short extract or clip from a recorded interview, chosen for its relevance to the story, pungency or appropriateness.

A conversation with someone who is relevant to your story. Typically done over the phone or through video conferencing, but they can be done in person, too.

A question that comes after an interview subject responds to an initial question asked by the interviewer. A good follow-up question derives from listening to what the interviewee is saying and determining how best to help them elaborate and share more information.

After someone reviews your work, it is good practice to receive feedback, or an evaluation of your work based on certain standards. Feedback from multiple perspectives is an important part of the process. Masterpieces are rarely created in isolation.

Introduction

The pre-interview is a conversation with someone who is relevant to your story. This will help student journalists identify the beginning, middle, and end of their story, create a shot list for b-roll, and figure out the other perspectives necessary for the story to be accurate, fair, and newsworthy. Use these slides to walk your students through the research and preparation for a pre-interview.

Learn about your subject

The first step to a successful interview is research. Use the slides to walk through the research strategies to learn about your interview subject(s). Key points:

If you have access, look at all of their social media for the past few months.

Google their name, check LinkedIn (a popular career website) and local news sites.

If possible, watch videos to see how comfortable they are being interviewed and speaking in front of the camera.

Begin to learn their story and gather strong details that would make your story stronger.

Write your pre-interview questions

Even in the pre-interview, which is informal, practice actively listening, writing down the answers, and reacting appropriately to what the other person says. Remind students that the pre-interview is a form of research. They are asking for details and should avoid yes or no questions.

Useful ways to start questions include:

Conduct a pre-interview

Pre-interviews should be conducted on the phone or video call. One of the hardest parts of pre-interviewing can be reaching out to people you have never met before or otherwise known as cold calling. Talk with students about any reservations they might be having.

Students can use this template: "Hi, my name is _______, I'm a _____ student at ______ School and I'm doing a story about ___________ for the PBS NewsHour Student Reporting Labs program. I'm hoping to talk with a professor at the university about ___________. Could you please suggest some experts I could learn from? Here is my contact information, as well as my teacher's. Thank you so much for your time."

If students are nervous about writing down the answers when they're talking to their potential interview subject, they can ask to record the conversation.

Draft the questions for your video interview

If the pre-interview went well and your student thinks the person will be great in their story, arrange to record an interview. This could be done in person or virtually. Remind your students:

A good way to prepare for the real interview is to recap what you learned from the pre-interview to a friend or family member. What was the most memorable part?

Write down the details you will need them to repeat to get the most compelling information.

What more do you want to know? What are the follow-up questions you have now?

Reflection

Ask students: What did you learn from working on this project? What did you like best about it? What did you dislike and why?

Ask students: How might interviewing skills be useful in your life right now? In the future?

Exit Ticket

What is the purpose of a pre-interview?

What is a follow-up question and why would you use one?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Pre-interviews help you find the right voices (characters) for your story. In the Find Your Story Lesson, you identified potential people to interview and feature in your story. Now you will talk to them to get a sense of whether they are indeed the right people and if they will move your story forw…

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Overview

Preparation and practice are the keys to a successful interview and amazing story. The goal of the interview is to get soundbites that connect with your audience, illuminate the topic, and move your story forward. This lesson can be used alone or in conjunction with:

Central Questions

What makes an interview successful?

How can you prepare for an interview to ensure you get the footage you need for your story?

Learning Outcomes

Learn how to write and ask good questions

Understand the importance of research and preparation

Practice listening

Learn how to use empathy and curiosity to guide a conversation -- critical communication skills for journalism and for life

When Would You Use this Lesson?

This lesson is used when your students are ready to record a remote or in-person interview.

Media Literacy Connection

Interviews are central to most stories you see in the news. By doing an interview, students will have a much deeper understanding of the process, challenges, and decisions made by reporters and editors. These are all critical parts of media literacy and understanding the different elements of journalism that result in the video, audio, or text story that you find online.

Civics Connection

Practicing interviews will help students understand how people talk with one another and explore different perspectives. Additionally, students who go outside their school walls and conduct interviews with local leaders, experts, etc. are engaging with their community in powerful and meaningful ways. Interviews help students follow their curiosity, go beyond textbooks and google, and gives them a tool to explore topics in real-world situations.

A conversation between two or more people where the purpose is to gather information and facts. The interviewer asks questions and the interviewee provides information based on their knowledge about a specific topic or issue.

The term "empathy" is used to describe a wide range of experiences. A generally definition is the ability to sense other people's emotions, coupled with the ability to imagine what someone else might be thinking or feeling. In media-making, creators can have empathy for their subjects and the audience can empathize with the characters.

A short extract or clip from a recorded interview, chosen for its relevance to the story, pungency or appropriateness.

Introduction

Interviewing requires you to actively listen, focus, think on your feet, and react appropriately to what the other person says. When you plan for an interview, you need to assess what you don't know-a metacognitive skill-and learn a lot about the interview subject because otherwise, the interview will be awkward. This is real life, with real consequences if you're unprepared and a real payoff if you do well-the heart of project-based learning.

Listening and really trying to appreciate where the other person is coming from is also an exercise in empathy and discovering how to connect. These life skills will help prepare students for college and jobs, and interviewing is a great way to address high school ELA and NGSS standards around communication, evaluating pertinent information, pulling important quotes, and emphasizing salient points, as well as ISTE and media literacy standards of digital production and multimedia presentations.

Use these slides with your students to help them prepare for their interview.

Explain what makes a good interview question

Ask students to fill in their pitch sheet and, if they have not already done so, spend 10 minutes writing their interview questions.

Use slides 7-12 and explain that reporters avoid yes or no questions. Call on a student and answer, "Do you like pizza?" Then call on other students with the more useful questions "Describe your favorite pizza"

Point out the imagery in the student's answer (ie: pepperoni, flat crust, from a certain pizza place) and how that offers direction for b-roll and visuals.

Suggest students ask a general question like "please explain who you are and what you do" at the beginning and repeat the question towards the end several times so that the subject becomes comfortable and gives the reporter several versions to use.

Learn to listen and use follow-up questions

Explain that good reporters ask follow-up questions.
Play one of these two interviews and ask students to look for follow-up questions. You can use the transcript to highlight the follow-up questions and ask students why the reporter had to follow-up.

NewsHour Chief Correspondent Amna Nawaz interviews Afghan President Ashraf Ghani
VIDEO + TRANSCRIPT

NewsHour Correspondent William Brangham interviews the CEO of the Dakota Access Pipeline
VIDEO + TRANSCRIPT

Interview strategies

Review what makes a good interview (slides 15-29)

Share your enthusiasm. Why are you interested in this person? Start off by explaining why you want to do this story.

You can ask your subject to repeat an answer.

"My questions will NOT be part of the final piece so please answer in a full sentence or please include part of the question as part of your answer."

Ask them to restate an answer if it goes on too long, or seems incoherent. It is OK to do this.

"That was a great response, and it really covers a few areas. Can you talk about the first area a little more?"

"That was a great response, can you say that again in under 20 seconds?"

Respect their time! Preparation helps you be efficient and make fewer mistakes.

Keys to being a good interviewer:

Transparency.

Build trust: as the producer, you want them to look and sound good.

Your subject should feel that you have their back.

Before you end the interview:
"What would you like to add? Something we did not cover?"

"What are some misconceptions you'd like to clear up?"
Always debrief after an interview write down your impressions

Write your questions, get feedback

Divide the class into groups of three to practice their questions.
Explain that each student is going to read their questions and look at their subject as they would in the real interview. Then, students will share feedback to make their questions stronger.

After the group activity, ask each student to share out a question that they want to make better and engage the class in brainstorming ways to make it stronger.

Transcribing

Explain that after the interview is complete, they will transcribe the audio file.
Transcribing is the key to understanding what to use in your story. Play this video produced by students at Etiwanda High School in California to understand why students will not want to transcribe, but really need to!

When your students have finished their transcriptions, the next step is Scripting

Reflection

Ask students: What did you learn from working on this project? What did you like best about it? What did you dislike and why?

Ask students: How might interviewing skills be useful in your life right now? In the future?

Exit Ticket

What are four words you can use to start a question that will help get strong and useful answers?

What is a follow-up question and why would you use one?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Overview Preparation and practice are the keys to a successful interview and amazing story. The goal of the interview is to get soundbites that connect with your audience, illuminate the topic, and move your story forward. This lesson can be used alone or in conjunction with: Central Questions What makes an interview successful?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Description

An interview, video diary, or news package is enhanced when you can get some shots that visually represent what was said on camera. In this Level Up tutorial, SRL will show you how to use your phone to record b-roll.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Description An interview, video diary, or news package is enhanced when you can get some shots that visually represent what was said on camera. In this Level Up tutorial, SRL will show you how to use your phone to record b-roll.