Get Over It… Podcasting Is No Different To Any Other Media
Why do we need to have a community of podcasters?
Simple question, let’s have an answer. Because I’m looking around and I don’t see a carefree social group of newspaper editors anywhere on the internet. I can’t see the heady memorable days of Robert Maxwell and Rupert Murdoch organising cheery get-togethers in London bars to discuss the one and only way to do a tabloid paper. I don’t recall all the other journalists leaving tounge deep messages of congratulations when some of them were moved to Wapping.
Oh that’s right. Podcasting is different.
I don’t see columnists remaining loyal to the man that gave them their first big break in print and staying there forever more, held over by a small gratuity from a monolithic advertiser. I don’t see media conglomerates giving equal time to their rivals in the interests of openess and 2.0 monikers. I don’t see networks jockeying for position, looking to get their firsts, their awards, their readership and their stories into the daily conversations of their readers.
Podcasting is different.
I don’t see A&R men asking if people are “happy.” I don’t see dirty tricks campaign to get photos or exclusives out to spoil long planned and trailed events. I don’t see hangers on trying to rule from their ivory towers about how every news channel must speak only when they have a 110% ethical record. There’s no marketing departments stuffing ballot papers in monthly popularity polls or digging for better coverage.
Podcasting is different.
Podcasting is different? You keep repeating that. You stay in your little safe shell. You stay right there. Don’t get yourself dirty. Don’t learn from what’s in the past.
You stay there while I go and work this toolbox.
yeah and find me a big media website that has google ad-sense in three different places on a single page!
I hope it pays, cause it looks awful – especially with hemingway – rather defeats the object of having such a minimalist theme.
Hey Conrad, I’m sure that a few minutes on news sites (eg Fox News) and start advert counting – you’l pass three very quickly. Hand me a sales dept and I’ll switch out from ad-sense, but till then, AdSense does pay [winks]. And while the initial designer thoughts for heminway was minimalist, that’s not where my goal is.
Ewan, maybe I’m just not cool enough … but I thought podcasting actually /was/ different.
Running a comparison with a newspaper doesn’t seem to make much sense to me: a newspaper takes a large team of people and a vast amount of money to get going with, plus large amounts of expensive equipment and needs to run to a schedule. They also have huge coverage — show me someone who has never bought and read a newspaper or looked at one online.
Podcasting on the other hand can be done by one person on their own, with a cheap computer and a microphone, at the cheapest end of the spectrum. I’m sure if I looked, there are places doing free hosting for podcasts. I can show you plenty of computer-literate people who have never downloaded a podcast, let alone listened to one.
There is a community of podcasters because it’s a (relatively) new thing, and discussion helps solve problems and generates ideas. The Internet allows that discussion to be quick, easy, asynchronous, global and fun. It also helps build some confidence in what is being done.
Have I missed the point of what you were saying here?
Hear, hear!
Podcasting is a tool. You don’t have groups of hammer-users, and you don’t feel anything in common with other people who use cell phones.
Yes, at first, as long as podcasting was just a hobby of a small group of people who were interested in podcasting because of the medium itself, it was a community. And in Finland, it still largely is (we still got something like a dozen podcasts). But once people get interested in it as a medium and a tool as opposed to the technology, the happy and fuzzy community aspect is gone forever.
Podcasting is just like everything else :-)
Of course podcasting is different to other media, from the roots upwards, but not from mainstream media downwards.
Ewan, you are one of very few “pro” podcasters out there. The vast majority of podcasters are what the cuddly Americans refer to as “weekend warriors”. Only 2% or 3% of podcasts have any real enterprise purpose except the creative fulfilment of their producers. Very few make any money, in fact, for most people podcasting is a COST not a PROFIT. In all other media, this would be unthinkable. Which makes you different, as well as being inside a very small minority.
I don’t understand why people want to make money out of grass roots podcasting – it’s doesn’t feel right to me.
Why do you do it?