A Guide to Centering Marginalized People in Your Podcast
Juleyka Lantigua-Williams, the creator and executive producer of 70 Million, a reported open-source podcast about criminal justice reform, offers insight from a career telling the stories of people on the outside.
Here’s what we know about inclusion and diversity in traditional media:
- It usually ends up with an empty and tokenistic gesture.
- It always requires group-think and committee work, for some odd reason.
- It cannot be assigned to people in power because it’s generally a conflict of interest for them.
- Assigning people on the margins to fix a problem they did not create is almost always a bad idea.
Lucky for us podcasters, we’re the new kids on the media block and can do things differently. But that doesn’t mean we will automatically do things better. Being inclusive requires intent and measurable goals.
Pulling from a career centering people in the margins, and from what the 70 Million team has practiced in our reporting, I’ve gathered an informal toolkit which I have tried to summarize here. I’m thinking of independent creators who do not have any or much formal journalism training or who do not work in media institutions. I’m especially interested in reaching podcasters working on non-fiction and interview shows whose work is proving pivotal in centering the marginalized. (See Undisclosed and Believed).
I’ve organized my suggestions into segments and used bullet points (because you’re probably reading this on your phone).
Part 1: Identifying the Best Subject/Source
If you’ve decided to write about or report on a group of people generally understood to be marginalized in a society — even if you belong to that group — keep a few things in mind as you narrow down who to interview:
Identify 2–5 writers/producers who belong to that marginalized group and become familiar with their work over the last year (i.e., read, watch, and listen to everything). Take note of controversies, dissenting opinions on popular takes, and metanarratives not surfaced in broad channels. Analyze how facile arguments/perceptions/beliefs about the group are discussed and parsed by these writers/producers.
— Look for someone whose personal story or experience exemplifies the themes and threads you’d like to focus on for your story. Unless you’re covering breaking news, your story will have a longer life and appeal to a wider readership if there’s a personal/individual story that anchors it. As the saying goes, the personal is universal. It will take many calls and many emails to find this person, but it will be very much worth it.
— Avoid anyone who comes across as a “Professional X.” That is, avoid featuring people who make a living by selling themselves as professionals in the marginalized identity they claim. These people are always self-serving and highly suspicious within the groups they claim. (Social media bios usually help in quickly identifying these folks.)
— Make a list of primary and secondary sources. Primary sources are the people whose personal or professional experiences will create the narrative for the story. Secondary sources are people who can offer context and analysis for what an individual’s story represents in contemporary society. (e.g., Primary: a former incarcerated person. Secondary: pro bono lawyer who won her case.)
Part 2: When You First Reach Out
Let’s be honest: traditional media has made a real mess of seeking out, representing, and engaging with the perspectives of people who are not cisgender, white, and middle or upper class. That has left a massive trust gap between anyone not in that category and anyone on the other side of a microphone, camera, or digital recorder. So those of us who are now trying to include and amplify perspectives from all sides are already coming into situations with some serious stigmas to overcome. That requires that we humble ourselves before the task ahead of us right from the start. I suggest you:
— Explain who you are/the work you do
— Include work samples/links to websites, episodes, LinkedIn
— Explain how you found them
— Detail what you’re working on
— Explain why you want to speak to them specifically
— Provide full contact info: email, phone number
Part 3: Before Your First Meeting/Call
As the person who set up the interview, you automatically have the power. So you have to make real overtures to allow the person being interviewed to share in that control. Doing this will put them more at ease, establish some trust between you two, and give them confidence to speak openly during the interview. Before you meet in person or speak over the phone:
— Provide a brief list of some of the topics you’d like to cover, not exact questions (unless you know the person may have relevant documentation to answer some questions)
— Invite them to bring someone along, if that would make them more comfortable
— Let them decide where/when to meet you
— Arrive early to have yourself and your equipment set up
— Find out if your state requires verbal consent to record someone on the phone or in person (here’s a primer from Rev.com)
— I recommend getting consent before you start recording and then asking them again to get it on tape
Part 4: During the Meeting/Call
In telling these stories, you’ll likely often deal with people who have never been interviewed, so you’ll want to set parameters very clearly. Remember to:
— Explain how your equipment works
— Inform them of the law in your state regarding verbal consent (here’s a state-by-state list)
— Request their permission to record the interview (these 5 tips are good ones)
Inform them of their rights to:
— Not answer a question
— Retake an answer during the interview or at the end
— Go back any time to clarify/restate anything
— Say “I don’t know” or “I’d rather not talk about it”
— Refer you to someone else who would have more info/knowledge
— Tell you if you’re making them uncomfortable in any way, and make the necessary adjustments then and there
Part 5: After the Meeting/Call but Before Publication
Again, given that your subject may have little to no media experience, and part of your job is to build trust, you’ll want to:
— Thank them for their time
— Tell them what the next steps are in your process
— Offer a soft timeline for when they might hear from you for fact checking or follow-ups
— Provide an estimated publication date
— Invite them to call or email you if there’s anything else they think of for the story
— Ask them if there’s anyone they think you should also speak to, and get their contact info then and there
— Call or email them to confirm spellings, dates, locations, timelines
— Give them a chance to respond to/refute anything someone else said that contradicts/questions something they may have said (especially if you have a documentation to the effect that you intend to use in the story)
There are lots of steps in between these, depending on what medium you work in (for example, in radio this could mean logging tape, running transcripts, time stamping selects….) but always remember that the central idea is to move beyond the obvious to the specific when centering people from the margins.
Some good resources:
ASME Guidelines for Editors and Publishers
Juleyka Lantigua-Williams is the CEO of Lantigua-Williams & Co., a digital media studio whose original shows include the award-winning open-source 70 Million podcast about criminal justice reform, Latina to Latina, which features trailblazing women, and Feeling My Flo, a reported podcast where menstruation as an event that happens to all types of bodies.
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