Creative compulsions are strange, aren't they?

I guess don't need another project. But I'm sure feeling like I do.

Hello, World.

I’m not sure yet what exactly this newsletter/blog is going to become. But I’ve had a bunch of ideas rattling around in my head for a few weeks and figured if I’m going to do something I might as well just work the kinks out in the wide open.

Just to go ahead and get it out of the way, I’m going to blame my buddy

Giles Snyder

for my jumping on the Substack wagon.

He and I co-publish

60 Days with Giles Snyder and Dave Mistich

. We’re both journalists from West Virginia — and he talked me into writing a daily newsletter with him about the Legislature’s 60-day regular session this year. If you’re from West Virginia or just generally interested in state-level politics, I’m willing to bet you might enjoy what we’ve been putting together over there.

That said, it’s entirely possible we (as in you, the reader — and, me, Dave) already know one another and that’s why you clicked on this site or subscribed. But, given that it’s also possible I’m just some random dude on the planet sucking precious oxygen, I suppose I should introduce myself a bit more.

I live in Morgantown, West Virginia and work in news in public radio. To be a bit more specific, I’m the weekend overnight producer for NPR’s newscast unit.

While the adjectives “weekend” and “overnight” speak for themselves, I feel like the word “producer” is rather vague and esoteric (and has a lot of different meanings in a lot of different fields). And, to be honest, it took me years of making news on the radio to understand exactly what people with that title in broadcasting even do. Sometimes, I feel like I’m still learning about the gig and how to explain what it’s all about.

In its essence, a newscast producer reels in material as news breaks and makes sure the anchor has everything they need in place to deliver the latest, most important stuff each hour.

I like to think of what I do as a combination of a few things:

• Being the giant eyeball in the sky to anticipate news events and monitor them as they unfold.

• Acting as a mechanical arm that puts stories on a figurative conveyor belt running on an infinite loop. I’ll sometimes make little tweaks here and there to those stories to make them fresh and send them back on their way. And other times, I rip them off and throw them out because they just don’t work anymore. Best be sure, there’s another thing coming in to replace it.

Before stepping into this role in October 2021, I had been around NPR’s newscast unit as an associate producer and editor for a few years. Those two roles are the right and left hands for the producer and anchor. (I’m not sure whose right or left hand gets used by whom. But you get the idea.)

Not to bore you too much longer with my professional history (although, I guess I feel a need to make the case that whatever this blog becomes might be something you’re interested in), but:

Before making NPR my main gig, I spent almost a decade reporting for West Virginia Public Broadcasting, a statewide public radio and TV network. It’s known in the business as an “NPR member station” (meaning, they carry NPR programming and reporters at WVPB sometimes work with national editors on stories).

While at WVPB, I reported on the state government, elections, climate / environmental / industrial disasters, and big court cases — and generally just whatever was news that day that didn’t fall in someone else’s territory. I worked on a couple investigations that scored some plaques that hang on the wall of my home office. Also, I wrote and produced an audio story about the Island of Misfit Toys beer league softball team I play on.

While I do some reporting for the newscast unit from time to time (I like to think of my contributions as the low-hanging fruit that are needed to be picked when resources are thin and no one else is around to do it) and offer up a feature story to the newsmagazine shows every few months, it’s hardly my main focus at this point.

To be honest, I miss reporting day in and day out.

It can be a lot of stress — and it’s generally the kind of job in which somebody always hates you. But there’s something about paying close attention, learning something and then distilling it all down for a curious and attentive public to feel however they want to feel about it.

But other than the reporting part, there’s also the writing — which is really what I miss the most. For me, there’s this period of frustration, followed by a feeling of nervous accomplishment once it’s finally published or going out over the air. (It’s difficult to describe, but it’s almost like: ‘I did that, it’s done. I’m satisfied enough and hope someone else gets something out of it.’)

That’s why I am blathering right now. I guess I feel a compulsion to relish in self-inflicted anguish — only to hope someone finds the end result useful (or entertaining, or whatever).

I have a lot of interests and things on my mind these days.

• Wrangling a 9-month-old Labrador-Retreiver puppy, Sammie.

• Building out a home office/studio.

• Trying to be a real adult, pay off debt and boost my credit score.

• Cooking.

• Hoping to wake up one day and my slowly-greying beard be fully grey — and the hair on my head still dark.

• Finding a way to get to sleep after working all night and learning to function like a normal person on my days off.

• Going to Europe in June for a radio journalist exchange program — and then tacking on a few extra weeks there as a vacation.

None of that stuff makes me particularly interesting, I don’t think. But given what I do most nights of the week while you’re likely sleeping, I am wildly fascinated by how and why people connect to things. And so, I have to believe there’s something universally special in whatever is seemingly unique or crushingly mundane.

Given that Substack seems to integrate well with podcasting — and that I know how to do audio stuff and have plenty of gear to make audio stuff — I’ve also been kicking around what I might be able to do in the audio realm outside of work.

A bit of an admission: I don’t listen to any podcasts routinely. A few things catch my ear from time to time. But I am not at all the kind of person that listens to anything week-in-and-week-out. So, if I am going to do a podcast on anything, it’s gotta be something I’d want to listen to myself.

That said, I have a lot of figuring out to do.

Maybe this tiny corner of the internet turns into an outlet for some investigative reporting that doesn’t have an immediate or obvious home elsewhere. Maybe I geek out and start reviewing audio gear. Maybe I return to my as-of-yet unfinished master’s thesis on the concept of authenticity in rock and roll criticism as traced through the pages of Crawdaddy! (the first true rock rag in the U.S.) Maybe I go down the rabbit hole to learn more about my grandfather that I never met — whose mugshot landed on an FBI wanted poster and J. Edgar Hoover’s signature on it. Maybe it becomes a notepad for a couple book-length ideas I have sat on for way too long. Maybe it becomes a place I just dump my thoughts after a busy overnight shift. (Such as, noting that a full-on breakfast is good anytime of the day, but it’s especially good at 5 a.m. after working all night.)

Or maybe, I should just take a poll:

Fair warning: I may or may not adhere to the results of this poll. Some of it might have a longer lifespan than other stuff — and while I am interested in allowing it to evolve, I’m the kind of person that likes to find my way to the thing and stick to it.

Whatever it becomes, I promise you it won’t be a rehash of my real job. That’d be redundant and rather pointless. It’d be impossible to match that level of quality on my own. And, besides, it would raise some eyebrows and get me in trouble. I truly enjoy my real job and want to keep it.

So bear with me as I fumble around for a little while trying to figure out what this space becomes. I’m not sure when I’ll be back or what it’ll be, but I promise to try to make it worth it.