Description

Radio Diaries, Inc. is committed to producing a new kind of oral history. Our mission is to find extraordinary stories in ordinary places. We work with people to document their own lives for public radio: teenagers, seniors, prison inmates and others whose voices are rarely heard. We help people share their stories?and their lives?in their own words, creating documentaries that are powerful, surprising, intimate and timeless.

We train diarists to be radio reporters and give them a tape recorder for three months to two years. They conduct interviews, keep an audio journal, and record the sounds of daily life?usually collecting over 30 hours of raw tape. We collaborate with each reporter, editing the material into radio documentaries for National Public Radio's All Things Considered.

Radio Diaries, Inc. is a not-for-profit organization. We are funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, The National Endowment for the Arts, The New York State Council on the Arts and others and listener donations. Our series have won many awards, including The RFK Journalism Award and The Casey Journalism Award and the Sigma Delta Chi Journalism Award.

We also publish an oral history guide for young people, the Teen Reporter Handbook, which is used in schools and community radio stations across the country. Contact us for more information.