Nome Dogs Allowed

Instructions: Hoover over blue text to reveal explanations.

ANCHOR LEDE: Few things build community like sports. People coming together to confront – and achieve – something bigger than themselves. Ask any fan. Cheering for your team can cultivate a powerful sense of belonging. And in remote places, the unity of sports takes on a deeper meaning. Francesca Fenzi traveled to Nome, Alaska for this story.

{tooltip}There’s this race that I’m kind of obsessed with.{end-texte} Conversational start. Like the reporter is speaking directly to the listener, as a friend.{end-tooltip} It’s called the Iditarod.

VERY QUICK – CLIP FROM TV NEWS

It’s a sled dog race — one thousand miles across the Alaskan tundra, in temperatures well below zero. The whole thing takes about two weeks. And people get super into it. People other than me, I mean. {tooltip}Take Angela Veeder.{end-texte}Identification of the speaker before a quote.{end-tooltip}

{tooltip}AV: I’ve always been an Iditarod follower and a big fan. And I found out they needed help, needed volunteers, so I couldn’t sign up fast enough.{end-texte}Audio “select” formated as a quotation.{end-tooltip}

She started volunteering at the ceremonial start in Anchorage.

AV: Then I wanted to check out the rest of the checkpoints. Nome, of course, being the next big draw. The finish line.

Nome, Alaska. Population: less than four thousand.{tooltip} It’s {end-texte}
Use contractions! No one says “it is” or “can not” in speech. {end-tooltip} only about a mile square, built right on the Bering Sea. Colorful square buildings dot the landscape, like Legos misplaced in a freezer. You can’t get here by car. In winter, even the sea freezes over and plane or dog sled is the only way in.

CW: It’s so windy. And it’s snowing now, and we signed up to stand outside in subzero temperature for four hours because we’re obsessed with this thing we call Iditarod. For no pay, just for the love of dogs.

{tooltip}Caitlin White is a reporter from Rochester, New York.{end-texte}Back-announce. You can introduce a speaker and their relevance to the story after a quote to help with flow. {end-tooltip}She flew over three thousand miles to get to the race finish line in Nome.

Now she patrols the dog lot – a cordoned section of ice where Iditarod racers, or mushers, house their teams after the race.

{tooltip}Dogs howling and barking – fade under tracks.{end-texte}This notes where the final audio mix will incorporate ambient or scene audio.{end-tooltip}

{tooltip}It’s pretty loud.{end-texte} Remarking on the sounds of the landscape help to keep listener grounded in the scene.{end-tooltip} But that doesn’t seem to bother the locals. If anything, it provides an attraction during the week-long string of Iditarod events.

Nome residents Jeff and Laura Collins, have been to more than a dozen races between them. Today, they’re taking their four-year-old son Miles to visit his heroes.

JC: Oh, we’re here to see the dogs. That’s his favorite part.

Miles got a book last year called “Zig The Warrior Princess” – about a real-life dog on the musher Jeff King’s team.

JC: So when Iditarod came along, Miles was really excited to see Zig. But she got dropped off in McGrath. So he just got to see Jeff King – which wasn’t really exciting. Because Jeff King isn’t a dog.

Jeff King is just a five-time… human… Iditarod champ.

Now he, and every other musher to make it the full thousand miles, will spend up to a week in Nome waiting for the last-place finisher. Between the racers, their helpers, volunteers and fans – the population of Nome virtually doubles. That leaves business owners, like Erica Pryzmont, scrambling to accommodate the newcomers.

{tooltip}E: I’ve been coming to work at four, or four thirty. Five at the latest. Just to be open for breakfast at eight-thirty.{end-texte} The exhaustion in Erica’s voice is audible. By explaining WHY she’s tired before the quote, that emotion in her voice adds an element of evidence and character to the story.{end-tooltip}

Erica owns and cooks for the immensely popular restaurant: Pingo’s. {tooltip}A combination bakery-and-seafood joint that feels uniquely “Nome”.{end-texte} Don’t lose sight of the fun and beautiful moments that gave you joy in reporting this story! As soon as Erica said “halibut pizza” I knew I had to find a way to place her menu in the piece.{end-tooltip}

E: We have a seafood omelet that we serve on weekends. We have halibut pizza. We have croissants, danishes, cinnamon rolls that we make by hand and serve. Hence the early mornings and late nights making extra dough.

Despite her exhaustion, Erica says she actually loves and looks forward to Iditarod every year.

E: It’s so fun that you see people you remember from past years…They’re going to pop through and you’re going to feed them and it’s great. It’s really, really fun.

{tooltip}That’s the beauty of living at the edge of the world, Erica says. {end-texte} Conclusion. What can a listener take away from this journey to a far-flung place? Ideally, this should book end the framing you created in your lede. {end-tooltip}There’s a sense of community — an understanding that we’re all out here together. And nowhere is that more evident than under the “burled arch” of the Iditarod trail finish, where residents and visitors both gather to show their support.

From the Iditarod finish line in Nome, Alaska… {tooltip}I’m Francesca Fenzi. {end-texte} This sign-off is called a “standard out cue”. It’s like the audio equivalent of a byline. Don’t forget to id yourself!{end-tooltip}

{tooltip}ANCHOR OUT: {end-texte} Anchor or host outros are an optional, but nice, place to add information (like developing news updates) to your story after the fact. {end-tooltip} The Iditarod sled dog race ended this weekend, with the arrival of “Red Lantern” finisher Magnus Kaltenborn (mag-NESS call-TEN-born) in Nome on Sunday. Both he and the 2018 race winner – Joar Liefseth Ulsom {tooltip}(YOUR LEAF-sith all-SOME){end-texte}For unexpected pronunciations, or proper nouns, include a phonetic guide to help you (or anyone else reading the script) to say names correctly. {end-tooltip}
– originally hail from Norway.