At my newspaper, it is not uncommon for a reporter to gather audio and give it to me to edit down, only for me to find that the audio is unusable. Unfortunately, because reporters are not yet editing their own raw audio, they do not hear the mistakes they make and then do not correct them.

This video is meant to address one of the most common of mistakes, placement of the audio recorder. When out on assignment with reporters, I have seen audio recorders set down on tables, held at the hip and placed under notepads, when where they really should be is a few inches from the interviewee’s mouth. The video below shows how audio sounds when the recorder is used properly, and what the audio sounds like when used improperly.