3 Things We Learned From 'Brave Little State' Host Angela Evancie's Reddit AMA

No concerns at all! I think there's a broad misconception in newsrooms that audiences "don't care" about dry topics like utilities. In fact, our very second episode was about utilities. The difference, perhaps, is that readers/listeners might appreciate a different story frame than journalists would think to use. I always think of that (bad) joke: "How many journalists does it take to change a light bulb?" "How many?" "None. We did that last year." You and I both work in the newsroom, Taylor, and we've been trained that you have to pitch a story a certain way to make it new and fresh — when sometimes people want to get into the topic from a more basic angle that we'd feel sheepish about proposing on our own. (Like, "How does the Iowa caucus work?")

Right now, I am completely addicted to The Daily, the news podcast from the New York Times, hosted by Michael Barbaro. Every morning, there is just this super informative and deep and well-produced almost mini news-documentary waiting for me to listen to while I butter my toast. I transition over to it after listening to NPR One, which is also a new thing for me — I get the national newscast and VPR's newscast, and NPR's Up First (which is sort of similar to The Daily) and a bunch of great national/local stories and interviews. So that is pretty much the routine I can't live without — perhaps more than you were looking for!

It's funny, because I sometimes have thoughts along these lines, like, "Man, I really wish someone would submit a question about ____ (most recently about what it's like to have Lyme disease, and also what Neko Case's life is like in the NEK)." But then I remember that I work in a newsroom and I can just tap a colleague on the shoulder and share my curiosity with them, and there are resources available for them/us to pursue the answers in-house. And the whole point of BLS is to empower our audience to direct our work — because there are topics and angles out there that we'd never think of on our own. One thing I WOULD like to do is interact with more humans and gather questions in-person at events and happenings around the state. (Got any suggestions for places where we could find some curious folks?) We've also been getting a lot of super big-picture questions lately, and I'd like to get the word to our audience that it's OK to submit Qs about, for example, specific towns/landmarks ("What's the story behind ____?")