For the listener, outside of what I just said, give us a quick, short download of your path to video. Because, to my understanding you started out as a neuroscientist.
Yeah. It sounds really impressive. Like I was doing brain surgery. [Laughs]
And that's why I said it! I was like, yo she’s a neuroscientist. [Laughs]
Yeah. Somehow that status of “neuro” elevates it. I majored in molecular and cell biology with an emphasis in neurobiology, which I guess doesn't make it sound like less nerdier. [Laughs] I was doing lab work.
I love science. I still do. I just don't have the discipline and the attention span to dedicate my life to studying the activities of one protein for over a year. I love learning about the big picture of things, you know, like, what does it say about us?
So yeah, I left. I worked in science for a little bit after that. And then I really loved photojournalism and I don't think I understood until late in my college career that it was an actual thing you could go do. So, I applied to J School in Missouri, for photojournalism and they didn't care for grad school that you don't have an undergrad in anything [journalism related].
So it's just a total career change, and I haven't looked back. It's been great. I started with photo and then I got an internship at NPR, and I guess I'm an NPR lifer, I don't know, but I've been there since. The role has shifted a lot from doing photo, and then being a photo editor, to doing more video. And then starting a video team, and going from primarily music video to documentary; from music documentary to news and general NPR coverage for video.
And then now I'm an editor for TikTok and other things beyond.
You mentioned that you are sort of an NPR lifer and you learned how to build teams. That's mainly what I wanted to talk to you about. You're very good at building teams. What is your approach to building a team? How do you interview people? How do you decide to hire them? What sort of things outside of ability are you looking for?
Sure. I mean, I'll say that like half of it is choosing the right mix of people. I think a lot of it is work that happens on the back end, like fostering culture. I have a lot of help with that, primarily from Becky Berger and Nick Michael, who I work closely with in the video leadership side of it.
I think early on I hired a lot of our staff, mostly through the internship program. So what I was looking for, I mean, really at that point, it was how good is your portfolio? You know, I would just look to see that there was a skill set there.
Beyond that, I think what I've always valued — and I got this from my boss, Keith Jenkins, who liked to hire folks who had different and interesting backgrounds — is different perspectives, and not necessarily traditional journalism backgrounds.
I feel like we've gotten a lot of folks that have come in from film, which has been great because I think that's a background and an education that I don't have formally. It's nice to have people who know stuff that I don't, you know, coming in as interns, teaching me.
And then, I think, a willingness to work hard, do the work you have to do, and bring ideas.
I remember when you hired me at NPR. I had always worked in video and I had only had 'job jobs.' Like, I need to wear a suit to show up for this job interview and all that.
And then right after I got laid off from Mashable, you hit me up because you had seen something that I did. And you were the first job interview I had after Mashable. I don't know if you remember this, we met at a coffee shop, and I went in there prepped to talk about what I do and how I do it, and my qualifications. And instead we just kicked it, you know what I mean? We talked about work a little bit, but it was such a chill conversation. You were asking me about me and like, less of how I do it, but why I do it. It was sort of disarming in a good way, you know, to a point where, at the end, you were like, 'yeah, if you want to work with us, then think about it. And if you want to start you can pull up.' I was like, really?
Yeah. I mean, listen, I saw the work. Like, you had a unique point of view. I liked that point of view. I knew you could do it. I think once you're past that stuff, it is a vibe thing. And I know that can get dangerous sometimes when you're just talking about culture fit and all that, because that can result in kind of a uniformity of a staff.
I want to make sure there's a good diversity of backgrounds and experience and everything, while also these are folks that you're going to be spending every day with, you know? To be able to read a passion, and then it's like, why do you do the things that you do? Why are you in this? Skills are learnable. I think having the drive and the flexibility to learn is important.
Before I left working in media full-time, I was in a position where I was hiring people, and I found that when I hired someone and I didn't do the vibe check, it usually didn't work out.
But if I hired someone — and I carry this over into when I make narrative film, too — when I bring somebody onto my crew or even hire an actor, if the work is exceptional, and the vibe is really good, then that's it. That's a good marker because the work always has to be exceptional. That's the baseline. But if the work is exceptional, even better than this other person, but the vibe isn't good? Yeah, it's not a good idea for that person.
Yeah. Although, okay, here's where I want to eat my words because I almost did not get my internship at NPR because the vibe was off. I gave a terrible phone interview; it was awkward. I was in a car with other people driving somewhere, and I just gave the most stilted, awkward interview ever.
We've had great people all the time where I've not hired them a couple rounds because the vibe was off and they came off a little bit too stiff and maybe arrogant even. But then eventually, having gotten them on the team, I've learned that they were just super nervous, you know?
And to your point, it is also that act of being consciously disarming, like, “yo, you can be yourself here,” you know what I mean?
I was up for co-directing with someone who's a pretty big public figure. And when we first met, I was really nervous because this is somebody that I looked up to and had been looking up to for a long time. And you could tell that this is someone who has been in that position of power for a long time and knew it, but wanted to get that out of the way.
So when we met in person for the first time, he said, 'Listen, I'm aware of the dynamic here and I just want you to know that what would be good for me is if we did our best to ignore it. I just want us to talk.' It was so welcoming.
I bring that up to say that we are all conscious of that interview dynamic. So for the person getting interviewed, we're all taught how to interview, you know, which is like, 'hello person, I'm Quincy Ledbetter and I'm ultra professional,' you know. And for the interviewer, being open to acknowledging that stigma and being willing to, you know, call attention to it and disarm it or ignore it for the interview. Because maybe the person is acting weird for this reason.
So we're supposed to come in and pull up our chair and swing it the opposite way…[Laughs]
Yeah, put the glasses up. [Laughing]
Yeah, let’s break it down, let’s talk about it. [Laughing]
One thing that you talked about before is that you were very involved in the punk scene in D.C. back in the day. And the activity that you had in that culture and in that world sort of inspired the way you work now. Can you speak to that at all, or how that experience influenced the experiences you're having now?
I grew up and went to high school in the suburbs of D.C. in Maryland, which is incredibly wealthy and is a place where like, everyone had really fancy cars and Tiffany bracelets and Coach bags and stuff that I didn't even know what they were. And then there were a few blocks of middle income housing. I would walk to school. I think in a way, you like, lean into, the thing that you can't do.
So I was trending towards punk anyway. I think there's a contrarian in me and an activist in me. It became something that I threw myself into. Punk in D.C. is very political. And also punk in general has this ethos of 'do it yourself.' That is such a core part of it — having young people be able to participate and make things and do stuff is so much a part of it.
It doesn't have to be perfect and it doesn’t have to be good. You lean into the imperfection of it as an aesthetic, and you lean into the bugs and make them a feature, I guess.
So at that age, just being able to feel like we could make stuff, and then my more musically inclined friends were in bands. You know, you can do stuff when you're young — that is celebrated within punk rock. You have control over your means of production. Plus, being resourceful, and leaning into the things that make you different, you know? I think that has been extremely influential, especially at a place like NPR where we don't have the resources that big journalism media institutions have for video.
Just to piggyback off of what you're saying, a lot of times when you have limited resources, that brings a team closer together. When you have limited resources, you have to bring everybody else in, and say, 'look, we have $10, what can we do with $10?' And then everyone's throwing ideas out about the time that they only had $10, and what they did with it. It just brings everybody closer.
Yeah, definitely being in the trenches together. I don't want to glorify it too much because also, like, pay your people.
Yeah.
It would be nice to not be struggling against it all the time. There are ambitious things that we want to do. I've had the luck at NPR of having bosses that really do champion our work and get us funding to do ambitious projects when we need to. Huge props to Anya Grundmann and Keith Jenkins who have really made video at NPR possible.
Yeah. Major props, and the work is consistently really cool. It's singular and its own thing. I find that a lot of times people are just doing what works for everybody else. NPR has always been — at least the experience that I've had with NPR and the work that I've done with you — like, wow, I've never done this before. I've never approached it this way. So props to you and your team for that.
Well, that's definitely out of the limitation, right? Like why do it? Why just do it and make another video that's just like other ones about this subject just to have it on npr.org, right?
But at the same time, it'd be great to have more. We spend a lot of resources and effort to make something good, but then we can only make so many of them a year.
I got one more question for you.
First, a statement and then a question. I've always regarded you as being one of the most creative people I've encountered in media. Is it something that comes natural to you, or is it something that you're more deliberate about? Are you pushing yourself? When you have an idea, are you pushing yourself to be like, how can I be more creative about this idea? Or does it come naturally?
I hate when people say, 'I don't know, I just am this way.' [Laughs] Like, great, good for you. I'm not learning anything from this. I think probably the one thing that I bring to it that feels a little more just, like, part of who I am is a contrarian nature. But I think that's something that you can learn and apply and also just borrow for whatever project that is.
I like to question assumptions. Absolutely. That is something that comes from punk rock. If you're given a project or a prompt, I think to always question the assumptions that are being made.
I think this can be annoying for some of the people that I work with. When I start on a project the first thing I do is like, knock the legs out from under it. Where is this coming from? Let’s start from the beginning. Where is this all coming from! [Laughing]
What that does, is it actually breaks open your play-space of what you have, an area within which to do things. Because if you're given a prompt, you're like, it has to be this.
But then if you question why are the structural beings here? Why are the walls here? And you actually figure out, well, the real purpose is to get this done, then you can open your arena up a little bit so you have more space to play. So that's the first thing: figure out what the real goal is. Always find out what the goal is. Don't just take the instruction and someone else's assumption of what you need first, right?
And then, I think the other thing is I always think about how to stand out, how to do something differently. Anytime we have a project — and this is partly a process that we've developed as a team — we think about framing. Which is to think about the topic, the thesis, and what it is that you actually want to say. So the framing is a big thing to pay attention to.
I always like to think: what's the headline? Because it does help clarify these things. But the framing is the thing that you can have the most fun with, and that's how you tell a story, about like, 9/11 or, you know, Frederick Douglass, or the 4th of July. Right?
I always like to have a framing that has a little bit of a point of view and has a twist to it. And it's a sharp framing where you're like oh, that's interesting they told this story, and they told it in this way.
For example, we were doing a piece for the 20th Anniversary of 9/11. You can identify what you maybe expect from places, and what the most obvious kind of starting point is. But get people to talk and brainstorm, and just throw more ideas in the pot and find weird combinations of things until you get there. What is the heart you are trying to get to? What is the thing you are ultimately trying to explore?
So what we did was put an old New York City telephone booth in Brooklyn Bridge Park, with the background of downtown Manhattan. We had folks who had lost people in the Towers come and have a conversation in that phone booth with their loved one 20 years later.
This came out of, what is the idea that we want to explore? And what we got to was: what is 9/11’s impact on our culture? Besides the legacy of all the politics and all the aftermath, it still feels like grief. It's a symbol. It was a moment of collective grief.
One of the things that I remember being most impacted by when I went to see the 9/11 memorial was they have a station where you pick up phones and you hear the voicemails from folks who were friends and family of people on the planes; they were calling and checking on them. They were saying, 'Oh, I hear there's something going on and I’m sure you're good.' And then they progressively get more worried. It's so impactful, visceral, and intimate. I think there's something about the phone, and having that intimate conversation. There's something about that, that audio that's also very NPR. There's an intimacy there.
Creativity is an exercise. That's also the reason for having more people on the team who have different ideas and being able to be like, 'Oh, I went to this thing once,' or like, 'Hey, there's something that, you know, that happens over here.' That's a cool thing, that you can just mash ideas together. The synthesis is the creativity.
That's amazing. Thank you for that. And thank you for doing this. I'm so glad that you agreed to do this. And you know, I feel like we don't talk enough.
We need to, I know.
And I feel like this is a good excuse to just, like, kick it with the homie, you know?
Yeah. For sure. It's been so great. Just like working with you, you're just such a cool collaborator.
