Telling students' untold stories, on the radio

A freshman pledge leaves his fraternity a few weeks before initiation, straining ties with his closest friends. A video-game fanatic makes a name for herself by organizing an intercollegiate league for gamers. Players on the sprint football team come to grips with a dismal losing streak on a campus where most athletes excel.  

These are a few of the stories featured in Back Story, a two-episode radio show produced by undergraduates in the fall course “The New Audio Age of Journalism” and scheduled to air Feb. 7 and 14 at noon on WPRB. The show aims to give an honest view of student life at Princeton, according to executive producers Eben Novy-Williams ’10 and Aku Ammah-Tagoe ’11.  

Visiting lecturer Dan Grech ’99, whose multimedia background includes work for the public radio show Marketplace and PBS television’s Nightly Business Report, knew that his students would be passionate about exploring campus life. The theme also seemed practical. “When you’re dealing with something as new and as complicated as producing audio, it’s better to give them a subject that they already know,” Grech said.