'This American Life' host explores storytelling, journalism

For the first five minutes of Ira Glass's show at the Pantages Theater in Tacoma, Wash. last Saturday, you couldn't even see him.

The lights went out and a dark silhouette walked out and began to speak, leaving spectators with no visuals.

"It is a radio show," Glass reminded the audience.

Glass, the charismatic host of the wildly popular National Public Radio program "This American Life," visited Tacoma to speak on the art of storytelling, the state of journalism and the secrets behind his show's success.

"This American Life" has won three Peabody awards in its radio form and two Emmy awards for the television version that aired on Showtime from 2007 to 2009. The podcast version of the show is frequently number one on iTunes' top download list and is downloaded by so many fans each week—400,000 on average—it has run the show into debt due to the cost of maintaining viable bandwidth.

Glass shared with the sold-out crowd his opinion on why he feels broadcast journalism is dying.

"Local news stations are so corny," Glass said. "TV journalists assume this authoritative voice they feel like they have to have; they all speak in the same terrible, rigid way."

Glass, known for his unusually personal approach to journalism, suggested journalists speak the way they actually speak in real life–conversationally.

"I feel like we need to crush this standardized form of broadcast," Glass said, "or else we're not going to be able to compete."

Glass cited the sharp rise of "infotainment"—shows like The Daily Show or even the O'Reilly Factor—in contrast to the steadily declining ratings of "real broadcast journalism" as proof that things need to change.

Segments from "This American Life"—recordings of interviews mixed with Glass' narration and music—were played live. Glass stopped and started the pieces to explain step-by-step what he was doing to create the story and make it interesting.

As an example, he took a banal story about a man in an office with his daughter and made it a suspenseful tale the audience begged him to continue after he stopped.

"If you give a story motion, a feeling that you are moving forward, you are naturally wired to want to hear more, no matter how mundane that story is," Glass said.

The question and answer section at the end of the show revealed Glass' methods for choosing music cues on his show, the origin of the name "This American Life" and what books he is currently reading—one of which is not the book a crazed fan wrote and tried to market to him awkwardly in front of the whole audience.

"For those of you on the balcony who can't see," Glass said, "there is a lady down here waving her arms in the air telling me about a book she wrote, I think."

The rest of the crowd, though, expressed their admiration in a more sensible way, giving a rousing standing ovation to the weary jet-lagged talk show host as he took his leave from the stage to board a long flight to Chicago.

Kelton can be reached at ksears@su-spectator.com.