• Podcast
  • Blog
  • FAQ
  • How to Podcast
  • Newsletter
  • Take a Survey

It's All Journalism

The broccoli of media-focused podcasts.

  • Podcast
  • Blog
  • FAQ
  • How to Podcast
  • Newsletter
  • Take a Survey

#114 – So you wanna podcast? Tips on how to be an online audio star

1October 2, 2014 by ItsAllJournalism
http://podone.noxsolutions.com/launchpod/ItsAllJournalism/mp3/IAJ-2014-10-02-134.mp3

Why not podcast?

I was a student in American University’s Interactive Journalism program when the idea first came to me.

How to podcast

It’s All Journalism producers Megan Cloherty, left, and Michael O’Connell give a presentation at the 2014 Online News Association Conference on how to podcast. (Photo courtesy of @DaveColePhoto)

What I liked about the AU program were the discussions we had about how the journalism industry was changing. We also got to meet innovative journalists who shared their experiences working in digital newsrooms.

This was heady stuff for me, a 50-something editor in the midst of a career crisis. I’d learn these lessons on the weekend and then turn around and apply them Monday morning in my job as a Web editor at a chain of weekly newspapers.

But as the program wound down, I wanted to find a way to continue these discussions and learn more skills from smart journalists.

I switched jobs, becoming a Web editor at a radio station with two of my classmates, Megan Cloherty and Jolie Lee. I shared my idea and together we developed a weekly podcast where we interviewed professional journalists about how they did their jobs.

The original idea was that we were doing these interviews for people already in their careers, who were trying to make sense of an industry changing around them.

But very soon we discovered there were many new journalists, recent grads who couldn’t find jobs because they’d never learned the skills they needed to compete in a digital newsroom.

But how do you podcast?

In deciding to do It’s All Journalism, we discovered that starting a podcast involves a lot of things we didn’t know how to do.

View a pdf file of our ONA 2014 presentation on podcasting

We knew our theme, our target audience, more or less, and our format — audio interviews with media professionals. But how would we record the audio? How do we edit it? Where would we post it? How often are we going to post it? How do we get it on iTunes? How do we promote it?

The recording and editing were pretty easy problems to solve. We worked at a radio station, so a lot of the tools were already available to us. But not everyone who wants to start podcasting has that advantage.

On Saturday, Sept. 27, Megan Cloherty and I did a presentation at the 2014 Online News Association Conference in Chicago about how to do a podcast. This week’s episode is the audio from that presentation, where we go over the basic steps of podcasting.

We don’t claim to be experts on the subject, but these are some of the lessons we learned along the way. Hopefully, they’ll be useful for fledgling podcasters.

Come on in. The water’s fine.

— Michael O’Connell

Podcast Tools

  • Audacity – editing program
  • Blubrry – Podcasting platform
  • iTunes – Podcast listing
  • SoundCloud – Audio platform
  • Stitcher – Audio/podcast hosting site
  • Voddio – Mobile audio/video editor
  • WordPress – Website hosting service

Similar Podcasts:

#10 – Taking old school radio, mobile — WTOP reporter Neal Augenstein shares how

Share Button
If you like this post, please share it along:

Previous Post


#113 – Let’s get social with Jeff Jarvis and Mandy Jenkins

Next Post

Umbreen Bhatti and Kaizar Campwala
#115 – Diversity, entrepreneurship and making podcasts more visible

Trackbacks

  1. Learn how to make a podcast says:
    February 17, 2016 at 5:38 pm

    […] #114 – So you wanna podcast? Tips on how to be an online audio star […]

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply




Related Posts

  • #381 Journalism, anxiety and video therapy
  • A Curious City reporter tries some community outreach. (Courtesy of Bill Healy/WBEZ)#258 — Old-School approach sometimes the best path forward
  • #68 – Leonard Downie Jr. & Chad Garland — Building a future for investigative reporting
  • Lauren Ashburn#20 – Love to hate the media? Download a daily dose of media criticism

Learn How To Podcast

Turn Up the Volume equips journalism students, professionals, and others interested in producing audio content with the know-how necessary to launch a podcast for the first time. It addresses the unique challenges beginner podcasters face in producing professional level audio for online distribution. Beginners can learn how to handle the technical and conceptual challenges of launching, editing, and posting a podcast.

Order this new book by It’s All Journalism Producer Michael O’Connell.

Take a Survey, Earn Some Swag

If you haven’t heard, we created a five-question online survey to help us assemble a toolbox for journalists that we’ll share on our podcast and website. Please take a few minutes to share the tools that help make your job easier.

We’ve also just launched a new survey on how to improve our podcast. Let us know how we could do better.

To those people who complete one of our the surveys, we’ll be sending out a limited number of It’s All Journalism coffee mugs while supplies last. Show your support for good journalism by taking the survey and get a reward in return.

Help Support Our Podcast

Promoting good journalism is essential in a democracy. By donating to the It’s All Journalism Patreon page, you will help ensure that we continue producing the weekly podcast that focuses on good journalism. You’ll also help to boost us to the next level with live events and exclusive content. Donate here.

Sign Up for Our Weekly Newsletter

Latest Posts

  • 445. Investigative reporter exposes maid abuse in Beirut
  • 444. How Documented uses WhatsApp to reach its audience
  • Better News: Use Slack to host cultural conversations in your newsroom
  • 443. Tucson newspaper proves to be a vital source for the Latinx community
  • Top 10 podcast episodes of 2020

Copyright © 2021 · Pintercast Child Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in