Nutshell: Kari Hesthamar

“There is a big hunger for radio journalists at NRK to do crafted radio and to have the tools for this, both in every day production and in longer formats. Our impression is that the focus on this has become stronger the past years. The radio feature group at NRK have a yearly course that runs over one and a half weeks where we train people in the basics of storytelling on radio; interviewing techniques, dramaturgy, narration and sound. We also do a lot of teaching both in house and at the institutes of journalism. This results in crafted radio documentaries and in better radio also in shorter formats aired daily. Our strength and challenge is our long format of 45 minutes, which has a build up that demands concentration. We are today not allowed to podcast documentaries that contains more than 3 minutes of music, which is a great problem for us. We discuss our future in the web world a lot. Our documentaries are in general published on the front page of NRK.no, which is the second largest website in Norway, because they see what we make as exclusive stories told in a way that the public want and that newspapers and other websites can’t offer. We also publish all our features on facebook and twitter. We have an increasing number of listeners, but see the opportunity to listening on demand as crucial for our future. Our experience is that the radio documentaries are popular among all ages, but for the young to listen we are especially dependant on podcast and online listening. In short - the way of distributing the stories is in rapid change, but the interest for good stories and important topics never change."

Kari Hesthamar, NRK, editor, Norway