The secrets behind successful journalism podcasts

Professor Mia Lindgren, Dean of the School of Social Sciences, Media, Film and Education at Swinburne University of Technology has released research called Intimacy and Emotions in Podcast Journalism: A Study of Award-Winning Australian and British Podcasts.

 

Lindgren says podcast journalism is a fast-growing area, illustrated by the success of The New York Times, The Daily and Australian news podcasts such as The Signal and 7am.

 

Both listeners and publishers see the attraction of audio storytelling. Lindgren says audiences for The Guardian’s podcast Today in Focus are now greater than those of the newspaper. And it attracts younger and more committed news consumers.  

The latest ABC podcast research reveals that nine in ten Australians know about podcasting and three in ten listen to podcasts regularly. Of those who listen to podcasts, they listen to on average six episodes per week.

Lindgren identified five reasons why we love podcasts:

An intimate act

When you listen to a podcast is an intimate act. It's like the host is whispering into the ears of the listener.  It is concentrated – it feels like one person communicating with one listener. Because there’s no visual, it relies on the active imagination of the listener. That's why the narrative form works so well.

The news becomes a narrative

Podcasts overwhelming ditch traditional newsreading techniques for storytelling. The most popular informational podcasts deep dive into a topic or embrace serialisation, where people interviewed become characters and the journalist (or podcast host) almost falls into the detective trope. A podcast might be broken into scenes, and it will usually have a beginning, middle and end.

Going behind-the-scenes

Podcast journalists are doing something quite different from the almost disembodied journalism of radio. Self-reflexivity and transparency of the reporting process have become staple ingredients of podcasting. Because the audience is invested in the podcaster as the detective or investigator, they want to know how the person came to information, their realisations and even their reactions. This is the DNA of podcasting, particularly in true crime.

The emotion

Doing away with the media training voice (deep, even, impersonal), podcast journalists and hosts will let their anger, passion, joy infect their speech. They convey emotion through hesitations, silences, tone and emphasis. It’s naturalistic, it allows for diversity of voices and it allows people to bring their way of speaking – to the point where audiences can become obsessed with the host’s voice, as happened with Michael Barbaro. The voice hooks the listener.

Journalists as friends

The old approach saw journalists as trustworthy because they are unbiased, fact-presenters. The idea of the objective journalist was always flawed. It was easier to do in print – but as soon as you see them on TV or hear them on the radio, that falls apart. Podcasts have shown that journalists are not less professional for expressing their emotion, personality and opinion. A journalist can be trustworthy and personable at the same time. In fact, they may seem more trustworthy because we feel like we know them as a friend.