Radio Story vs. Print Story: An Analysis

For the purpose of this assignment, I used an NPR story entitled, “For the Midterm Elections, A Book on ‘What it Takes’ To Win”. This story discusses the acclaimed author Richard Ben Cramer and his journey to understand what it takes to win the White House. In 1988-1989, Cramer followed President George H. W. Bush’s campaign and wrote a book called “What it Takes” where he outlines how difficult it is to run for office. This radio story is drastically different from a print story in many ways. First, the story is written as a transcript and therefore their are lines for each of the individuals speaking. Second, there are parenthetical notations that tell the reader what the presenter is doing. For example, “he writes, (reading) I wanted to know enough about these people…” This ties into the third difference which is that there are no quotation marks on quoted text from the book. Language choice and sentence structure are also different. The words used seem to fit more into a speech rather than into a story. For instance, one of the presenters used “it takes a special kind of person to run for office.” Also, the sentences are much less formal and significantly more conversational compared to a print story. Overall, the story does not suck. It is well written.