Hot Pod News→ Insider May 26, 2023 — How Kids Podcasts Compete with Screens

2023-05-30 Hi all, Happy Friday! I have a two-parter for you today. First off is a Q&A with Tinkercast — one of the leading publishers of kids podcasts — about the state of children’s audio and the challenges of adapting the medium for YouTube. How do y …›

Hot Pod News→ Insider May 25, 2023 — Is YouTube’s RSS plan a dealbreaker for podcasts?

2023-05-30 The week is almost over, and I hope it will end on a good note. Today, I dive into a YouTube pilot for RSS that likely will have a major impact on podcasters if it becomes adopted, and a…very wild night on Twitter Spaces! Will YouTube’s RSS lea …›

Hot Pod News→ Why YouTube is a tough place for kids podcasts

2023-05-27 Hope everyone at The Podcast Show is enjoying the conference (and ignoring their jet lag). While I’m still very much across the pond (like, way across) in LA, this issue of Hot Pod leads with some news from BBC Radio. I’m also digging int …›

Transom→ Happy 15th Sound School!

2023-05-23 We were digging into some numbers the other day. By “we,” I mean, Jay Allison and Jennifer Jerrett at Transom and Kerri Hoffman at PRX. And by numbers, I mean “How many episodes of Sound School have there been?” The answer is simple — 20. …›

Hot Pod News→ Insider May 18, 2023 — Why this former iHeartMedia exec is launching a podcast investment firm

2023-05-19 Hi all, Hope everyone is surviving the week. Today, I have an exclusive interview with one of the co-founders of DWNLOAD Media, a new investment firm focused on the audio industry. I’ll also take a look at the new audio app by The New York …›

Hot Pod News→ Why companies still shy away from podcast ads

2023-05-19 Hi all, Today we’re mixing it up a bit. First off, I have a post-Podcast Upfronts Q&A I conducted with SiriusXM’s Lizzie Widhelm and Scott Walker. Both Widhelm and Walker are a part of SXM Media, the massive ads operation that powers SiriusXM, …›

Source→ Collaboration can harness the power of technology and data for better story discovery

2023-05-18 By Marnette Federis A session during the Story Discovery at Scale event at Stanford University. This article was originally published at Big Local News. Email alerts sent to community journalists about newsworthy items uncovered by automa …›

Transom→ All Hear, May 2023

2023-05-16 Welcome (back) to All Hear, the Everything List for Audio Opportunities. If you’re new here, my name is Talia, I’m an audio producer based in London. Last year, I created a Google Doc compiling international audio resources. In this newsletter, …›

Hot Pod News→ Insider May 12, 2023 —AI was a hot topic of conversation this month

2023-05-12 Hi all,  Hope everyone is recovering well from yesterday’s Podcast Upfront.  For today’s issue of Insider, I’ll go over the AI hype cycle, layoffs at PRX, and some announcements and deals.  AI was topic du jour in podcasts over the pas …›

Hot Pod News→ Insider May 11, 2023 — Here’s what went down at the 2023 Podcast Upfront

2023-05-12 Today was the first in-person Podcast Upfront since the pandemic, and it started off with a bang. Well, maybe not. A glitch — in the very beginning — caused presentations from last week’s IAB NewFronts to briefly air for remote attendees (“Shou …›

Hot Pod News→ Live audio is getting another go on Bluesky

2023-05-10 Hi all,  This week is an exciting one for the audio industry, with Podcast Upfront around the corner and awards season underway. This week we’ll look at a new community audio project on BlueSky and Spotify’s expansion of its audio ad network i …›

Hot Pod News→ Insider May 5th, 2023 — YouTube is (seriously) not for every podcast

2023-05-10 Hi all, Hope everyone is looking forward to some rest this weekend. For today’s Friday issue, we’ll look at how traditional podcasts are faring on YouTube, the Vox Media Podcast Network’s debut on Podtrac, and a lightning round of new deals …›

Transom→ What’s Grabbed Antonia’s Ears?

2023-05-09 Remember back in high school, when a student would raise their hand and ask the teacher “How long does the report need to be?” I clearly remember one teacher saying, “Long enough to answer the question!” Good one, right? The teacher was clearly …›

Hot Pod News→ Insider May 4, 2023 —Podcast ads are saving the audio biz

2023-05-04 Hi all,  There’s been a whole flurry of earnings reports from the audio industry over the past couple of weeks — so I dove into what we’ve learned about the state of podcast ads today. I took a closer look at iHeartMedia’s earnings, as wel …›

Transom→ Starting Out: Issue 19, with Stephanie Foo

2023-05-02 Introduction Hey y’all,  Welcome back to Starting Out, from me and Transom. It’s season four of the newsletter! And my first season of the newsletter on Substack.  I switched platforms because I want us to be able to connect more — and …›

Transom→ The Fingerprint of Chris Brookes

2023-04-25 For this episode of The Sound School Podcast, I took Chris Brookes’ advice. “I believe in finding a talisman,” Chris wrote on Transom back in 2011. He says he digs up a talisman for a story he’s producing, something that’s “connected in som …›

Source→ How newsrooms pay journalist-coders today

2023-04-19 By Dilcia Mercedes SRCCON attendees come together every year to talk about roles, careers, and salaries—we hope this latest data feeds into a new round of conversations like this one, which is part of what kicked off this survey. (Staff ph …›

Transom→ All Hear, April 2023

2023-04-18 Hello! Welcome back to All Hear, the Everything List for Audio Opportunities. If you’re new here, my name is Talia, I’m an audio producer based in London. Last year, I created a Google Doc compiling international audio resources. Every month, I …›

Source→ Using data to investigate inequality, and building a network to find solutions

2023-04-18 By Delgerzaya Delgerjargal Participants in the Data Lens hackathon at Ulaanbaatar's Innovation Center came together last month to explore data about air pollution, traffic, and public transportation. (Photo by Delgerzaya Delgerjargal) On t …›

Transom→ Producing a Non-narrated Obituary

2023-04-11 “You don’t want the music to take over or even be noticed very much.” I think that’s the most important observation Quil Lawrence made when we talked about a non-narrated, audio obituary he produced. Quil reports on veterans for NPR. The obitua …›

Source→ How to tell the story of your work (or, one journalist’s process for career success)

2023-03-30 By Michelle Faust Raghavan “Work” by Seth W. is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0. Journalists love telling other people’s stories–and we’re good at it. But many journalists struggle to tell their own stories, particularly when …›

Transom→ What’s Next for Munira?

2023-03-28 If a podcast drops in Tanzania, does it make a sound? Munira Kaoneka is asking just that question when producing a podcast from her home in Dar es Salaam. Some days she wonders who’s listening because, as she puts it, “podcasters are struggling out …›

Transom→ All Hear, March 2023

2023-03-21 Hello! Welcome (back) to All Hear Hello! Welcome (back) to All Hear, the Everything List for Audio Opportunities. Before I get into this month’s Spotlights and opportunities, Transom has some exciting news! They are considering (re)starting some prog …›

Source→ Choose Your Own Mad Libs (or, how you can plug data into automated stories and free up lots of reporting time)

2023-03-21 By Mike Stucka Photo by Erik Mclean What if you could click on a few things, run a few computer commands, and generate hundreds of stories? You can. I did. I drafted more than 1 million words under my byline in a month. The approach I us …›

Source→ Sincerely, Leaders of Color: You need to be a different kind of leader in the bad times

2023-03-17 By P. Kim Bui (Background photo by Amy Orban on Unsplash) About this series: Sincerely, Leaders of Color is written for everyone in the journalism industry who cares about creating a more supportive environment for journalists of color to …›

Transom→ Starting Out: Issue 18, with Alana Cassanova-Burgess

2023-03-16 Introduction    Welcome back to Starting Out, from me and Transom!  There won’t be an issue of Starting Out next month, since I’ll be hard at work preparing the next season of the newsletter for you. Do newsletters have seasons? …›

Transom→ Still More Darts and Laurels

2023-03-14 If a humpback whale could talk to us, what would they say? Dr. Geraint Rhys Whittaker decided they might say the same thing someone who lived through a bombing would say. And then he made an audio piece called “First Contact.” It’s intriguing rig …›

Source→ I tested how well ChatGPT can pull data out of messy PDFs (and here’s a script so you can too)

2023-03-01 By Brandon Roberts A video demo of the data extraction process for this experiment. I convert a ton of text documents like PDFs to spreadsheets. It’s tedious and expensive work. So every time a new iteration of AI technology arrives, I w …›

Transom→ Think of a Radio Station (Or Podcast) As a Musical Instrument

2023-02-28 Steve Junker makes it sound easy. A year or so ago, he was stuck inside during a cold Cape Cod winter while Covid was still a thing and he was feeling restless. “And so I started thinking about like how we can bring the world to us,” Steve told me. …›

Transom→ All Hear, February 2023

2023-02-21 Hello! Welcome (back) to All Hear.  In case this is your first time: my name is Talia, I’m an audio producer based in London. Last year, I created a Google Doc compiling international audio resources. Every month in my newsletter, I’ll rem …›

Transom→ Dear Birth Mother

2023-02-14 “Should I? Or shouldn’t I?” “Should I? Or Shouldn’t I?” I must have asked myself that question a thousand times. My internal dialogue never seemed to end. “It’s one of the most important events of your life! Bring a recorder!!” “No, …›

Transom→ Starting Out: Issue 17, with Ariana Martinez

2023-02-02 Introduction   Hey y’all — Ariana Martinez has been on my “to interview” list for a while now — they’re an incredibly talented sound designer and make truly delightful stories. But what I was most excited about was how they push t …›

Transom→ Studs Terkel Meets Brian Eno in the Woods

2023-01-31 I think my favorite quote from Brian Harnetty on this episode of Sound School is when he told me his work as a sound ethnographer is “basically, curiosity that’s rooted in sound.” As he conducts his research, he says he pays attention to the “s …›

Transom→ All Hear, January 2023

2023-01-24 The Everything List for Audio Opportunities Hi there! My name is Talia, I’m an audio producer based in London. When I entered the industry a couple of years ago, I really struggled to find opportunities. Eventually I started compiling a small list of …›

Transom→ All Hear Coming Soon!

2023-01-20 The Everything List of Audio Opportunities When I was just starting out, it was hard to learn about what opportunities were out there in the audio industry. It felt like you had to know someone who knew something, or look in a million places, or pay fo …›

Transom→ Small, Random, and Meaningful

2023-01-19 A call for submissions for the Transom Specials We want to help support your passion project — a small, random, one-off story or audio experiment that means a lot to you. And one that might not fit anywhere else. This call is for (ideally) finished p …›

Transom→ This is Good, But I Have a Question

2023-01-17 I subscribe to far too many podcasting emails. I probably need to cut back. But, I won’t. It’s the best way for me to stay in touch with what’s happening outside my radio/podcast bubble where I live in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. I just wish these …›

Transom→ Starting Out: Issue 16, with James Kim

2023-01-10 Introduction   Hey y’all,  As longtime readers of the newsletter know, I’m a gardener. Which means I have a tough time in January. It’s too early to start my seeds for spring, most of my fall crops have been knocked out by the cold …›

Transom→ Jeremy Hobson

2023-01-05 Live In The Evening When I first got obsessed with radio around age six or seven, it was because I would listen at night. After it was time for bed, I could turn on the radio and hear a live person on the other end. Someone who was speaking to me. A fr …›