Making a difference with my reporting

Way back in the spring of 2002, I had just started my semester studying radio documentary with Rob Rosenthal at the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies in Portland, Maine, and I was fishing around for ideas for my first radio story assignment. One of my classmates mentioned at one point that she had heard about this little restaurant called Tall Barney's, which was several hours north / downeast in the village of Jonesport. Apparently, a group of lobstermen would show up there early each morning to sit around a table and swap tall tales before they went out to get the day's catch. It sounded interesting, so I drove up there to check it out, and I ended up making a 7 minute story called The Liar's Table, which aired on Maine Public Radio.

After graduating, I managed to sell a much shorter version of my story to All Things Considered. It was only 2:00 in length, but it was my first time on NPR, so it was kind of exciting for me at the time. Anyway, at the end of my story, I included this update on the restaurant: "For personal reasons, the owner of Tall Barney's has recently announced her intention to sell the restaurant. She hasn't found a buyer yet, but if the restaurant changes, the guys may have to find a new place to tell their lies."

I left Maine, and I kind of assumed that the restaurant closed for good shortly thereafter. It's been many years, so I kind of stopped thinking about it. Then last week, I received an email from a fellow public radio producer who had recently dug up my name. During the pandemic, she purchased a old fixer-upper on Beals Island, which is just across the bridge from Jonesport. She found a local handyman to help her repair her house, and in the course of their meeting, she struck up a conversation with him about how he had originally found his way to Downeast Coastal Maine from New Jersey, where he was originally from (which is coincidentally also my home state).

It turns out that way back in the summer of 2002, he was listening to NPR and heard my two minute story about this restaurant, with my brief mention that it was up for sale. He turned to his wife that day and said, “I've always wanted to move to Maine. I’m going to buy that restaurant.” Three weeks later, they owned Tall Barney's and ended up running it for the next 12 years!

I'm still picking my jaw up from the floor. It's crazy to think that that short little piece I produced back when I was a student (that honestly makes me cringe when I listen back to it now) made such a difference for this person and this community! As journalists and documentarians, I think it's easy to often feel like we're just speaking into the void, releasing our content out into the ether, so it's incredibly satisfying to hear stories like this that prove that we're actually reaching people and they're actually listening. I guess you never know what impact you might have!

Scott Gurian is a Peabody award-winning journalist, audio producer, and public radio reporter and the host of?Far From Home, a documentary podcast where he reports fascinating stories from his travels to far-flung parts of the world.