Instructor: Megan Calcote, Podcast Producer

You’ve heard podcasts are hot again. But how do you launch one?  

Podcasting is experiencing a resurgence, with an increase in American podcast listeners, connected cars, the launch of podcast divisions by traditional media outlets such as WNYC and the rise of networks such as Podcast One, Radiotopia and Panoply.

Find out how to join the movement and maximize your audience in this training that will tell you everything you need to know to get started in podcasting. We’ll show you how to equip a studio where you can produce professional-caliber audio with minimal investment. Learn tricks for developing, capturing and editing the content of your podcast. Find out which networks your podcast should be on to attract your audience and learn the basics of social media marketing.

What you’ll learn from this training:

1. How to create a podcast from scratch with a minimal tech investment
2. How to structure the content of episodes and create a series arc
3. Where and how to distribute your podcast to attract and retain a loyal core audience
4. How to measure your audience –subscribers, downloads and other meaningful analytics and how to interpret them

Handouts:

• The Minimalist Podcast Pro: A list of the essential technology and software you’ll need to launch your podcast on the cheap.

Who should take this training:

• Journalists wanting to add a podcast for their audience
• Bloggers and content marketers wanting to break into podcasting
• Business owners wishing to use podcasting to market their business
• Anyone with an interest in starting a podcast

Date and Time: Nov. 8, 2017 at 1 p.m. ET / 10 a.m. PT

Price: $39

Register now for the online training!

Note: If you can’t attend the live session, you can still register and see the archived video and ask questions of the instructor. Free registration for BigMarker is required.

About the Instructor:

Megan Calcote has produced multiple podcasts including “Educating Geeks,” which reaches 7,000 listeners annually, and the “How to Cover Money Podcast” for the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. She also formerly managed social media for the the Reynolds Center. In addition to podcasting and social media, Calcote also is also an experienced events planner.

The post DigitalEd: How to Launch a Podcast appeared first on MediaShift.

While planning my fall classes a couple summers ago, I realized I was sending my students a mixed message. While I told them to be creative and innovative in their work, I was still teaching core communications skills the same way I learned them years ago, when the internet was in its infancy. So I decided to start “practicing what I preached,” and turned to podcasts to teach skills in a way that sparks student creativity.

Creating podcasts is simpler than it may seem: All you need is a smartphone and laptop.  Apple’s Voice Memos app and the Android equivalent both record high-quality audio without the need for an external microphone. The files can easily be emailed or uploaded to Google Drive and edited on free programs like Audacity. There are many websites and YouTube clips showing how to use it, and I’ve found students, even those with zero production experience, can put together a good-quality podcast with a few hours practice.

While podcasts can work for many types of assignments, I’ve found they’re especially well-suited to teach three key communications skills.

1. Tell a story with a distinct beginning, middle and end

The “audio story” assignment forces students to tell a story without verbally “telling it.”  We start by listening to podcasts like Twenty Thousand Hertz, which is about sound design and everything that goes into creating effects like 8-bit video game bleeps and the sound of a closing car door, and Song Exploder, which breaks down popular songs track-by-track to help understand the power a single sound clip has to express emotion.

Then, I use an assignment modified from one designed by Professor Richard Stroobant from SAIT Polytechnic in Canada.  Students pair up and randomly choose a one-sentence story prompt I provide — things like “a groom gets cold feet,” or “a driver crashes into a tree while texting.”  Then they create the narrative using just six sounds: at least one sound they recorded directly from the environment (like a car horn), at least one sound they find in a free sound effects bank like freesound.org, at least one sound they created using Foley techniques (like running in place to simulate a chase), and a single spoken word.

This forces students to plan out a logical beginning-middle-end structure to their stories, and have narrative flow without the “crutch” of words.  At the end of class, we listen to the stories to see if other students can guess the scenario, assessing how well each group told their audio-only narrative.

2. Conduct thoughtful interviews

To be a great storyteller, you must be able to ask well-formulated questions in order to get emotional and engaging quotes or sound bites. But many students feel uncomfortable going up to someone they don’t know and asking questions. To get over this fear, I have them practice interviewing using the StoryCorps app. It leads users through the interview process step-by-step, providing an introductory script, suggested discussion topics, and suggested questions like, “Do you believe in love at first sight?” The conversation is automatically recorded, and is easily downloaded for editing.

Students then listen to StoryCorps and This American Life, paying special attention to how the episodes are structured. I want them to hear how the reporter lets the subject tell his or her own story. The host comes in to provide background details and structure the podcast in a narrative form. But most of the story is told by the person who lived it.

Then, it’s the students’ turn to create their own interview-based narrative. They record a conversation with someone about a turning point in his or her life and use those clips to tell a narrowly focused audio narrative about that event. The idea is to combine the interviewee’s audio with the student’s storytelling, resulting in an audio vignette full of emotion, surprises, hero vs. villain struggles and a moral or lesson for the listener.

3. Develop strong research skills

My “History of an Object” podcast assignment is based on shows like 99 Percent Invisible – which looks at the design and hidden histories of everyday things. Episodes like The Ice Kings and Milk Carton Kids do a great job of combining an immersive narrative with fact-based research to tell a story that is both entertaining and educational. Students listen to the podcast Science Vs.  for its entertaining approach to figuring out the fact-or-fiction of things we think we know, like “organic food is good for us,” or “artificial sweeteners are bad for us.”

After listening to these shows, students choose a common object and tell a story about it using in-depth library or online research, along with recorded natural sound, interviews, and descriptive writing. The idea here is to tell an engaging story while at the same time teaching the listener something they don’t know.  This is the final assignment in the course, because I expect it to combine strong research, interviewing, sound editing, and storytelling skills in a final showcase podcast.

In addition to these three examples, I also use podcasts to teach legal and ethical issues using the Startup podcast, which looks at the issues facing startup companies, and S-Town, which has come under criticism from ethicists. I teach fiction writing using the Myths and Legends podcast, which tells fairy tales in the original non-Disney way with a dose of modern snark. And I teach broadcast performance by having students listen to a range of voices, from the eclectic, Mystery Show’s Starlee Kine, to the traditional, John Dickerson’s Whistlestop podcast.

The topic possibilities, like the number of podcasts, are endless.

For more about using podcasts with students, sign up for my DigitalEd training this Wednesday, where I’ll offer more tips about how to break out of the traditional lecture-and-paper model. Sign up here: How to Use Podcasts in the Classroom.

Ben Bogardus has been an assistant professor of journalism at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut since August 2010. He specializes in teaching media and broadcast news writing, TV reporting and TV newscast producing. He also oversees QNN – a weekly newscast produced, reported and anchored by senior journalism majors.  Before entering academia, he was an award-winning newscast producer at TV stations in Florida, Texas and Washington D.C.

The post How to Teach Journalism Fundamentals, and Creativity, With Podcasts appeared first on MediaShift.

Podcasting & Audio

“If you do not teach podcasting 101, you need to get there,” said Jason Norris, founder and owner of OntheGo.FM.

Podcasting can find a place in many journalism classrooms without a lot of training for faculty or additional expenses for schools. The tools (recording apps and editing software) are cheap and accessible. Panelists varied on their responses for editing software, but most agreed that the free program Audacity served as a starter before advancing to Adobe Audition. Panelists also varied on their responses for recorders, and many said their students prefer to do most of their audio work on their smart phones.

If you’re not quite to the point of teaching a full podcast, consider adding audio assignments, like the “audio diary.” Kim Fox of the American University of Cairo, Andrew David, a former BBC reporter, and Jennifer Williamson of Virginia State University shared their audio diaries. Each person recorded snippets of “a day in the life” and edited the audio for a short diary. This assignment could allow students to have an easy introduction to audio recording and challenge them to think critically about the natural sounds they need to tell the story. (Fox also recommends “Radio Diaries DIY Handbook,” to get started.

Brian Rackham of Northern Arizona University teaches his students audio production skills, storytelling techniques, writing for the ear and alternative radio production. He realized innovation made up the missing piece, so he used radio and podcasting as an example of how to innovate. “I wanted them to make sure that they knew there was a business here,” Rackham said. “I used radio and podcasting as an example of where we are today. … We will spend a day talking about innovation, podcasting, storytelling and then have a lab day with hands-on exercises.”

Rackham capitalizes on the popularity of podcasts with hands-on assignments. For instance, his students listen to five minutes of a podcast and then discuss or write a critique. From there, he gives them an interview assignment and requires transcription. They then edit their interviews in Adobe Audition and have to write and produce intros and outros. By the end of his class, the students will have produced a podcast, found graphics and written scripts.

“They also get insights on innovation,” Rackham said. “It reinforced the idea that journalists must be able to produce content across all the platforms. Don’t get too married to one piece of software because tomorrow it will change.”

Andrew David interviews Faith Sidlow of Fresno State about her experiences teaching audio during BEA 2017. (Photo: Leigh Landini Wright)

Live Streaming

Live-streaming video dominated the discussion of social media tools, from Periscope to Facebook Live to Instagram Live.

Gina Baleria of San Francisco State sets up a “secret” Facebook account for her class, so they can practice Facebook Live skills without a public audience. Students often had issues with looking at the camera when they did Live selfies, she said, and also found switching from selfie mode to shooting surroundings a challenge.

Good Facebook Live requires good audio, Baleria said. She recommended a $50 microphone and a stabilizer. Students also have to get comfortable with responding to viewers by name and encouraging the audience to like and share the stream.

“Once you start going live on Facebook for real, you can actually format it as MP4s and include it at the end of a resume reel,” she said. “It’s practice, practice, practice. You can’t mess up going live.”

Mobile Journalism

Ask Mike Castellucci of Michigan State University what his go-to video camera is, and you might be surprised. He pulled out his iPhone and showed clips of news stories he shot entirely on his phone for WFAA in Fort Worth, Texas.

The tool is native to students, he said, though they need guidance when it comes to shooting good video, video sequences, and gathering quality audio.

Even though the phone is more than sufficient, Castellucci said his sources at times were “visibly underwhelmed” when he showed up for the story with only his phone. But still, it’s his go-to tool.

“As for the cons, I’m trying to come up with one, and I can’t,” he said.

Google: Still Cool

Mike Reilly with Google News Lab shared several fun things journalism educators can do students. Google Earth Pro can show historical images, which can make for good backgrounds in a broadcast story about a place. Google Earth Timelapse can show 32 years of changes to a location, and it’s easy to embed.

Reilly showed examples from Google Earth about the exterior of the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando. He saw several photos tweeted that showed the outside of the club where a mass shooting happened last year, but when he ran the photos through Google Earth, the photos were not of the Orlando club. This tool can be useful for fact checking.

Besides the Google Earth tools, Google Trends can help journalists discover terms that trend on Google. These trends can then be useful in news stories about comparable topics. Google Trends can also help students identify the terms that audiences search for, which could inform story ideas and SEO-friendly headlines.

With a notebook (and laptop) full of ideas and inspiration from BEA, it’s time to begin revamping classes for fall. New tools. New ideas. New energy.

Leigh Landini Wright is an assistant professor of journalism and head of the journalism sequence at Murray State University in Kentucky. Prior to teaching, Wright worked as a newspaper reporter and editor for 16 years in far western Kentucky. Her research focuses on best practices of social media in the newsroom and in the classroom.

The post Big Ideas From BEA 2017 on Podcasting, Live Streaming, Google Tools appeared first on MediaShift.

Behind the podcast boom in publishing is a remarkably successful revenue model. In fact, we see many brands redistributing their ad-spend to ensure that podcasts are allocated a significant piece of the pie. Ad performance is a key reason for that.

Consumers in fact prefer ads in podcasts over other channels. AdWeek recently reported that people prefer ads in podcasts over ads on any other digital medium, referencing that podcast ads are found to be the least intrusive.

Podcast ads also encourage consumers to take measurable action. Importantly, listeners seem to be moving through the purchase funnel after hearing an ad. According to ComScore — a U.S. study of 2,000 respondents aged 18-49 — two-thirds of podcast listeners reported responding to podcast ads by engaging in research and/or purchase-related behaviors.

With 67 million Americans listening to podcasts every month, brands would be remiss not to consider investing in this increasingly effective medium. As the on-demand audio space continues to see success, many do seem to be taking note. According to Statista, U.S. advertising spending in podcasts is estimated to reach $256 million in 2018, up from $133 million in 2015. That’s huge!

Still, some brands and advertisers are hesitant to make the podcast advertising leap because not everyone agrees on how to measure success.

How to Measure Podcast Advertising

The most basic podcast metric is the download.

But determining how many impressions a podcast ad has received is an imprecise science. Some advertisers gauge success based on number of downloads, but this doesn’t show them whether the ad was effective in pushing listeners to take action — or even if a listener has completed the full podcast (88 percent of podcast listeners say they listen to most or all episodes of the shows they subscribe to, but there’s no real way to tell).

Other advertisers gauge success by looking at increases in social mentions or web hits after a podcast ad airs. It can be difficult to prove that a podcast ad is responsible for any bump in traffic, though, because direct traffic is not exactly trackable.

So, what’s worked? For many advertisers, a call to action that includes a promo-code or vanity URL offering specific discounts for listeners has been the key to monitoring effectiveness. Direct response provides a clear way to track clicks and purchase activities. However, the technologies that measure these analytics are still not as sophisticated and standardized as they are in other forms of digital media advertising, hence the hesitation.

Beyond benchmarks and measurement, advertisers and publishers need to understand the elements of an effective podcast ad: what do they need from the brands being advertised to ensure success? For many, the answer is clear — yet difficult to measure.

Advertisers need the freedom to be creative and experimental, as well as a thorough understanding of the tone and theme of the show on which they’re advertising. Look at SquareSpace and MailChimp, two popular brands that launched original sponsored songs (and even rock operas) on the “Back to Work” podcast. While this is certainly an unconventional method, it meshes well with the content of the show — and as a result, it works.

Photo by Kaboompics and used with Creative Commons license.

How to Beat the 15-Second Skip Button

For some brands and advertisers, the challenge of podcast advertising isn’t in creating interesting ad content, but rather in convincing listeners to actually consume their ads. As consumers become more tech savvy and regularly interact with their favorite brands on various digital platforms, they’re becoming more skeptical of the often-forced nature of advertising. Many listeners automatically skip past ads – whether it’s fast-forwarding on TV using DVRs, changing the station on the radio, or immediately skipping past digital ads online.

In the podcast world, there’s the infamous, untraceable 15-second skip button, as well as the issue of listeners simply glossing over the tracking code provided because it’s audio, not visual.

The key to reducing ad-skipping and driving consumers through the purchase funnel comes down to how the ads are delivered on podcasts. Unlike any other digital medium, the most effective podcast ads are incorporated within the show itself through live-reads, featured more like an audio product placement than a traditional radio advertisement. Live-read ads are organic, with the host creating a natural segue into a discussion about the product or service. Teamed with the host’s endorsement, this presents a powerful way for the ad to be delivered.

To add to this, advertisers can tap into and measure the host’s digital influence as many of them will share details of the product or service on their social media channels, extending an ad’s reach and impact.

How to Increasing Ad Listens

Brands and podcast producers have a shared goal when it comes to ad listenability. Everyone wants paid ads to be heard as many times as possible. How does that happen?

1. Ensure a high share of voice. Most podcast listeners are actively searching, subscribing and downloading audio content that interests them. This inherently makes listeners more engaged, as they’re less inclined to switch the dial and tune out when ads begin to run. Most podcast platforms limit ad segments to three or four spots for a one-hour show, offering advertisers a higher baseline share of voice than other digital mediums.
2. Generate a personal connection. Most podcast listeners engage with audio content through headphones in an intimate, one-to-one setting, as opposed to the radio which is often consumed by a group of people with broad content. As people build familiarity and a relationship of sorts with their favorite shows and hosts, they inevitably begin to pay attention to, and trust, the ads they’re exposed to.
3. Take advantage of influence. Generally, hosts who deliver ads are given the products/services to test and try for themselves, which helps add a level of authenticity to their advocacy. Due to the trust and rapport that have with their dedicated audience base, podcast hosts become influencers, just like bloggers and celebrities on social media. As a result, endorsements from hosts have proven ROI.

A successful ad is beneficial for all involved parties – the brand, the advertiser on behalf of the brand, the podcast host, the podcast platform, and the listener. The data about the medium’s rising influence on business’ bottom lines speaks for itself. For brands and advertisers, approach podcast advertising with a tailored strategy according to what the medium dictates, and measure your results.

Thomas Mancusi is the VP for sales and development for AudioBoom.

The post You Can Measure Podcast Downloads, But What About Ad Delivery? appeared first on MediaShift.

But the medium has a sort of “Wild West” quality to it – there’s a lot to be figured out yet.

Sam Gill, Vice President of Learning and Impact, Knight Foundation.

The Knight Foundation, which supports journalistic endeavors around the U.S., recently invested in several podcasting efforts – including Project Carbon, Radiotopia, Gimlet Media, New York Public Radio’s Discover App and Radiopublic PBC – in order to support programming made available through on-demand audio formats.

Sam Gill, the vice president of learning and impact at Knight Foundation, said the Foundation can provide risk capital that can be used to experiment with business models.

The Knight Foundation recently published a report based on lessons learned from those five investments.

“What we saw was a way to ask ourselves these sort of in-depth and tough questions about where this field might be going at a time when there’s a lot of interest in it,” Gill said about the report.

Below are three of the takeaways from the report:

1. The ‘Two Dudes Talking’ Stereotype Still Exists

From The Knight Foundation’s “From Airwaves to Earbuds: Lessons From Knight Investments in Digital Audio and Podcasting.”

Most voices heard on podcasts are white and male, according to the report. And podcast audiences reflect that.

Jesse Holcomb, associate director of research at the Pew Center, told Wired Magazine in 2015: “They’re more likely to be male, young, have higher incomes, be college graduates, live in an urban area.”

Sixty-three percent of podcast listeners are white, according to the report. Sixteen percent are African-American, 12 percent are Hispanic, 4 percent are Asian and 5 percent describe themselves as “other.”

Only a handful of podcasts that were created by public media outlets to reach more racial and ethnic groups have made the top-100 podcasts in iTunes.

But, some good news: the gender gap is closing, albeit slowly.

Recent statistics show that 22 percent of podcasts are hosted by women, as compared to only 11 percent in 2013.

Gill said many publishers are dedicated to diversity, but reaching more diverse audiences is “a work in progress.”

One way of overcoming that obstacle is to hire a wider range of producers and hosts, he said.

2. Infrastructure is Lacking

Stakeholders interviewed for the report said that collaboration has feel that considering new opportunities for collaboration to build a better technical backend for digital audio.

According to the report:

Areas of need cited by those interviewed include more seamless local-to- national and local-to-local content management systems; negotiated sharing agreements across digital audio platforms; widespread adoption of mechanisms for dynamic sponsorship and advertising as well as donation mechanisms; shared metrics and data capabilities; and targeted resources for production and experimentation, including in local reporting and research and development.

There are several platforms, including Radiopublic and WNYC’s Discover App, both of which are supported by Knight Foundation, that were designed to solve some of these problems, but several challenges still remain.

3. There’s No Good Way to Measure Data

There’s no industry-wide standard of measuring analytics – meaning missed opportunities for gaining insight into audiences or new opportunities for revenue streams. Interviews with advertising sales staff revealed that sales calls were often dedicated to explaining to potential buyers which metrics do or do not exist, rather than the programs themselves, according to the report.

However, some stakeholders are working to develop better standards.

Despite all of the challenges that lie ahead, low barriers to entry and more creative freedom means plenty of opportunities for podcast producers too.

“I have yet to hear anyone say with certainty and conviction that they know exactly where this field is headed,” Gill said. “So there’s plenty of room to experiment.”

The full report is available for download here.

Bianca Fortis is the associate editor at MediaShift, a founding member of the Transborder Media storytelling collective and a social media consultant. Follow her on Twitter @biancafortis.

The post Knight Report on Podcasting: Diversity, Infrastructure, Better Analytics Needed appeared first on MediaShift.

The post DigitalEd: How to Launch a Podcast appeared first on MediaShift.

Click on the photo or here to see the full series. Creative Commons photo.

It seems pretty universal that 2016 was a crazy year – and the media industry was not left unscathed. From the widespread misinformation across the internet that may have influenced the U.S. election, the continued renaissance of podcasting and the advent of new virtual reality technologies, 2016 turned out to be a significant year in media, technology and journalism.

Read on for our recap of the top media stories of the year and our predictions for what lies ahead.

1. Rise of Fake News, and Failure of Polls and Predictions on the Election

Following the failure of the media and pollsters to correctly predict that Donald Trump would win the 2016 presidential election, journalists were forced to rethink the way that they cover certain communities and what they could do to regain the public’s trust.

Some are still wondering if we’ll ever be able to trust polls again.

And despite the emphasis on fact-checking during this election cycle, fake news arguably had a bigger influence on the ultimate outcome. A BuzzFeed analysis found that fake election news outperformed real news on Facebook; meanwhile, professional fake news writer Paul Horner actually took credit for the election of Donald Trump.

“Honestly, people are definitely dumber,” Horner told the Washington Post. “They just keep passing stuff around. Nobody fact-checks anything anymore — I mean, that’s how Trump got elected. He just said whatever he wanted, and people believed everything, and when the things he said turned out not to be true, people didn’t care because they’d already accepted it.”

Of course, social media platforms were the primary distribution method for fake news sites, but Mark Zuckerberg initially denied all culpability, saying the idea that fake news influenced the election was “a crazy idea.” Following pressure to do more to stem the flow of misinformation, Zuckerberg later issued a statement about what the platform would do to combat fake news in the future. His plan includes stronger detection of fake news, easier reporting, third party verification and warning labels.

Others, including journalists and developers, are working on their own tools to help combat fake news.

Prediction: The fact that new innovative tools and methods are being developed to help prevent the spread of misinformation across the internet is certainly a positive one. However, it’s going to continue to be a cat-and-mouse game between purveyors of fake news (i.e. propagandists) and those trying to tag and filter it out.

2. Social Platforms: Highs and Lows for Publishers

Fifty-one percent of people use social media as a source of news each week, according to a report published this year by the Reuters Institute.

It’s clear that platforms are the gateway to digital audiences, but the relationships between traditional publishers and platforms are anything but simple – the two often operate more like “frenemies.”

On the other hand, digital publications specifically engineered for publication via social media platforms – Insider, Now This News and Vox, notably – find relationships with platforms far more cordial.

“When they see publishers like the three of us doing their best to build audiences on their platforms, they’re doing everything they can to work with us,” Versha Sharma, managing editor for news and politics at NowThis, said at a Daily News Innovation Lab event in November.

This year Snapchat made it far easier to find partner content by using its Discover feature – you can even subscribe to publishers. Snapchat also eliminated its “Live Stories” feature, which were curated by in-house editors.

Prediction: Publishers already admit that they need social media platforms to succeed. The largest publishers will likely continue to work with platforms and find new ways to embed content directly into the platforms. Smaller publishers will likely have little choice but to follow suit.

3. “Trump bump” for Paid Subscriptions and Donations

@realDonaldTrump @nytimes fact: surge in new subscriptions, print & digital, with trends, stops & starts, 4 X better than normal.

— NYTCo Communications (@NYTimesComm) November 13, 2016

In the wake of Donald Trump’s threats to curb freedoms of the press in the U.S., news outlets saw a rise in paid subscriptions and donations.

Last month Donald Trump tweeted that the New York Times was losing subscribers because of its poor coverage of his campaign. The Times countered his claim and said it had actually added four times the average number of new subscriptions immediately following the election.

Other news outlets, including The Atlantic, Mother Jones, and ProPublica also saw a rise in paid subscriptions or donations in the days following the election.

Prediction: This may be overly optimistic, but it’s possible that the “Trump Bump” could continue well into 2017 and beyond because with his election came a renewed focus on supporting good journalism. This may largely depend on his performance as president, however.

4. Gawker Folds After Hogan Trial, Sale to Univision

Gawker went bankrupt after it lost a $140 million lawsuit brought by Hulk Hogan for publishing portions of a sex tape involving the former pro wrestler. The suit, and many similar ones, were bankrolled by Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel in a chilling example of using the courts to exact revenge.

After Univision bought Gawker Media in a bankruptcy auction, the Spanish-language media outlet chose to cease publication of Gawker.com and consolidate the rest of Gawker’s verticals – Deadspin, Jezebel, Lifehacker, Gizmodo, Jalopnik and Kotaku – into its Fusion Media Group.

Prediction: Gawker’s network of sites have dedicated followings and the expectation is that the sites will survive, and thrive under new ownership. What remains to be seen is whether other billionaires will decide to follow the example of Peter Thiel and try to kill independent journalism through the courts.

5. Massive Push Into Video by Mashable, BuzzFeed, FB Live, Many Others

Mashable made headlines in March when Turner announced it would work with the website to distribute video content. A week later, Mashable laid off several of its editors.

BuzzFeed announced in August that it would split into two divisions – news and entertainment – with renewed emphasis on producing video content.

“In this new structure, video won’t be the job of just one department,” BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti wrote in a memo. “Having a single ‘video department’ in 2016 makes about as much sense as having a ‘mobile department.’”

Along with the push into online video came a renewed interest in live video and Facebook Live emerged as the most powerful livestreaming platform. Facebook actually changed its algorithm to give preference to live videos.

“Facebook Live could be a good conduit for generating a wider variety of compelling story topics, maybe even more diverse ones, and important leads for news media to follow,” according to Northwestern University professor John Wihbey.

Prediction: There’s no doubt that the growth of video, particularly live video, will continue. The potential for live-streaming to be both positive and negative seems endless. (Already there have been documented cases of individuals shot while live-streaming.) It does seem likely that, perhaps sooner than later, there will need to be guidelines about how to monitor what is streamed live in the name of minimizing harm to the public.

6. NBC Universal (BuzzFeed, Vox), Discovery (Group Nine), Univision (Fusion, Gizmodo) Make Big Bets on Digital

Across the board, traditional media outlets made huge investments into digital sites, especially those that target millennials.

NBCUniversal invested another $200 million into BuzzFeed and is partnering with Vox to sell digital advertising; Discovery invested $100 million in Group Nine Media; ABC sold its stake in Fusion to back to Univision. Fusion also purchased Gawker in a bankruptcy auction.

Univision’s news and digital chief Isaac Lee said the company seeks to reach younger audiences who are “young, digital and diverse.”

“No one can own all millennials, but we need to own iconic brands that matter to them,” he told the Washington Post.

Prediction: Anticipate the continued investment into young brands. Larger, older and more traditional media brands will continue to pursue younger audiences and new revenue streams.

7. Podcasting Continues its Renaissance, More Publishers Jump In

Photo by kevinshine on Flickr and used with Creative Commons license.

Serial debuted in 2014; two years later, podcasts continue to grow in their reach.

More mainstream publishers tried their hand at the medium as well: the Washington Post created its 44-episode “Presidential” podcast leading up to the election and in April MTV announced it would launch five new podcasts of its own.

An estimated 98 million Americans have ever listened to a podcast; an estimated 57 million have listened to one within the last month.

Audiences have grown so much that the Interactive Advertising Bureau issued a set of guidelines for podcast advertisements. Also this year, Panoply released Megaphone, ad-insertion software that guarantees the ads aired on its shows are current.

Finally, the staff behind This American Life recently released Shortcut, an app that allows listeners to easily share audio clips.

Prediction: It’s only logical that podcasts will become an even greater source of revenue for content creators. Only one-third of Americans have listened to a podcast, according to the Pew Research Center’s 2016 State of the News Media Report – so there’s a lot of room for growth as of yet. Here’s hoping that new tools, such as Megaphone and Shortcut, will continue to make creating and sharing podcasts just a bit easier.

8. More Publishers, Brands Jump into VR

Virtual Reality is no longer a thing of the future. The emphasis was on VR at the International Symposium on Online Journalism, the Tribeca Film Fest, at SXSW, and the NYC Media Lab Summit. We focused on it, too, during Collab/Space Chicago.

The medium is expected to revolutions just about every industry – including media.

This year the Associated Press produced more than 20 VR videos, on every subject from climate change to luxury travel. Meanwhile, the New York Times launched a daily 360-degree video series as well as a dedicated virtual reality app.

Prediction: Virtual reality is now more accessible than ever – there were countless Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals featuring VR gear this year. It’s still too early to really predict what the future of VR holds; however, it’s a medium that everyday consumers will begin to take much more seriously.

9. Tribune Rebrands as tronc, Holds off Gannett Bid

It was the rebranding heard ‘round the world.

“Tribune Publishing, now ‘tronc,’ issues worst press release in the history of journalism,” read a Washington Post headline from June. Mashable provided a list of the best Twitter jokes poking fun of Tribune’s new name. And in what was, in a way, a love letter to local newspaper journalism, comedian John Oliver joked that “tronc” sounds like “a stack of newspapers being thrown into a dumpster.”

Tronc’s new name came along with an announcement that the company would begin new initiatives, including the use of artificial intelligence and increasing the amount of video it produced.

In November, Gannett announced that it would drop its bid to purchase tronc, which it had been pursuing since April.

Prediction: Three days after the announcement that Gannett had ended its bid to purchase tronc, the chairman of the former Tribune Publishing Company said the two were still in talks. This is most likely a saga that will continue well into the new year.

10. Success of ICIJ, Non-Profit collaboration in Panama Papers

When 11.5 million confidential documents were leaked from a Panamanian law firm and given to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the Washington, D.C. non-profit chose to enlist the help of more than 100 news outlets from around the world to mine the files. (Nearly 400 reports from 80 countries joined forces.)

The subsequent news reports showed the “widespread system of secret deals and global tax evasion in which world leaders, business executives, professional athletes and celebrities shield their assets using offshore bank accounts.”

Mashable called the Panama Papers “among the broadest and most technologically challenging journalistic endeavors ever.”

It’s the largest and perhaps most successful example of journalistic collaboration to date.

Prediction: “Collaboration” was a pretty big buzzword within media circles this year. For many, it’s seen as one of the keys to survival. But the Panama Papers project serves as true inspiration for how powerful collaboration can be – and we hope to see more positive examples like this in 2017.

Bianca Fortis is the associate editor at MediaShift, an independent journalist and social media consultant. She is a founding member of the Transborder Media storytelling collective. Follow her on Twitter @biancafortis.

The post Top 10 Media Stories of 2016: Fake News, ‘Trump Bump’ for Publishers, Big Video Push appeared first on MediaShift.

But the radio show “This American Life” has created a new web app that it hopes will help. Shortcut, available both on desktop and smartphone, lets you snip your favorite podcast clips into animated and transcribed videos that can then be shared on Facebook or Twitter. The developers were careful to build the app in a way that makes audio visual and shareable and that is also helping the program better understand what’s resonating with its audience.

It’s something Stephanie Foo, producer at “This American Life” and project lead of Shortcut, has wanted for a long time.

“When I started thinking about this — how do I make things easy to share — and I started thinking about GIFS,” Foo said. “If you search for ‘This American Life’ on Giphy though you just get a video of Ira dancing. It’s not representative of our show.”

She recently discussed the inspiration and development process of the app to a packed room at the Brown Institute for Media Innovation at Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism (full disclosure: I’m a student at the J-School). Foo was joined by the rest of the Shortcut team: Jason Sigal, developer; Jane Friedhoff, UX designer; and Dalit Shalom, UI designer. The tool was initially conceived at TAL’s Audio Hackathon in 2015, and the group developed the prototype over the last the year with support from the Knight Prototype Fund, an initiative of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism

Right now, Shortcut just lets you cut audio from the “This American Life” podcast; the prototype is based around the archives of the show. But the codebase for Shortcut is open-sourced, which means any podcast creator, whether you produce in the closet of your apartment or in a spacious studio, can set it up for their own archives.

Tapping into the archives

For “This American Life,” all episodes have been transcribed and time-coded, which makes the whole process easier. So far, the average clip length is between 18 and 20 seconds, according to Foo. She also noticed that most listeners pull audio from the first 20 minutes of a TAL episode.

“You can see what stories people are most interested in by how much people are sharing part of it,” she said.

Listeners weren’t just clipping audio from recent episodes, but ones from the beginning, close to 20 years ago. Shortcut, Foo said, has the power to make audio content evergreen. It’s helped her share some really great moments from the TAL archives, like the episode in which Foo’s interview subject called her “China lady.”

“After that happened, I really wanted to show it to all my friends,” she said. At the time, in 2014, she posted the entire episode, “Tarred and Feathered,” to Facebook. Friends may (or may not) have navigated to the page and fast-forwarded to the correct timestamp. Now Foo just needs to do a quick search for “china lady” on the Shortcut episode page, and voilà, she can share just the one scene she wants. The Shortcut video clip also links back to the full episode if her friend wants to hear more.

Creating a Visual and Structural Experience

The two designers, Friedhoff and Shalom, carefully considered the user experience both visually and structurally when creating the tool. Shalom drew inspiration from visualizations of sounds she’s come across over the years, including sing-along tapes and karaoke.

“I was so grateful for them,” she said. “They were a confirmation that I knew the words.”

The classic Disney Sing-Along Songs, for instance, featured the best musical moments from Disney movies, television shows and theme parks, like “Heigh-Ho” or “Colors of the Wind;” the lyrics were displayed on the screen, and a bouncing Mickey Mouse ball would indicate where you were in the song. Shalom used a similar concept with the Shortcut tool. Instead of a bouncing ball, she used a highlighter functionality to show the listener where they were in the audio clip. She compared it to an enhanced karaoke screen where color travels through the words.

Friedhoff swapped Disney Sing-Alongs for video games as she explored the UX side of the Shortcut design. A classically-trained game designer, she understood how play and discovery would enhance the user experience of Shortcut. Audio content isn’t inherently shareable, so there were definitely design challenges, according to Friedhoff. They wanted to support multiple kinds of listening and sharing experiences, as well as making sure it would work for a variety of podcasts.

Meg Dalton (@megdalts) is a freelance reporter and student specializing in audio at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. At Columbia, she’s recorded and edited stories on topics like the problems homeless voters face on Election Day and what it’s like being an undocumented youth in America. Before starting school, she was a business reporter for the Greenwich Time, Stamford Advocate and the Connecticut Post. She was previously the associate editor of Mediashift.org (formerly with PBS) where she covered podcasts, crowdfunding, virtual reality and all things digital media and technology.

The post How the Shortcut App Can Help Make Audio Go Viral appeared first on MediaShift.

But Jason Cox, chief technology officer for Panoply Media, says the company’s new product, Megaphone, has a fix: renewable advertisements.

“Traditionally, ad spots were recorded by the host and hard-baked into the audio file, and they would live there forever,” Cox said. “Megaphone is built on top of a real-time ad insertion engine, so you can get a current ad that’s relevant.”

Panoply purchased the ad-insertion technology last summer and launched Megaphone in January, giving the company a full-service content management system to go along with its impressive portfolio of marquee podcasts, including Revisionist History and Slate’s Political Gabfest. 

Panoply screenshot

Megaphone’s launch has been great news for Panoply, which is on pace to nearly triple its 2015 revenue total by the end of the year. The bigger question is whether Megaphone can be a game-changer for the podcasting business as a whole, and whether it can coax advertisers into embracing a medium that so far they’ve approached with caution.  

Podcasting’s Advertising Problem

Last month, the 2016 State of the News Media report was full of good news for podcasting: Familiarity with podcasting had risen from 22 percent in 2006 to 49 percent in 2015; listenership had risen from 11 percent to 36 percent; and outlets ranging from the New York Times to the Des Moines Register had launched podcast teams within the last year, contributing to an overall explosion in new content.

But for all the growth metrics, the report also delivered less enthusiastic news for the podcasting business. In 2015, advertisers spent only an estimated $34 million in the podcast sector, a “small drop in the bucket” compared to the $59.6 billion spent on digital advertising as a whole.

What’s befuddling about the poor revenue figures is that, by all accounts, podcast advertising works really well. As Farhad Manjoo wrote in the New York Times: “Large and small advertisers report a significant upside to the campaigns they run on podcasts, and ad rates on top-tier podcasts approach $100 per thousand listeners, which is many times what it costs advertisers to reach audiences in most other digital formats.”

Podcast advertising has been a particular hit with “performance-based advertisers” — companies like Squarespace and Audible.com that are trying to boost sales or sign-ups for a specific web-based product. By including a URL or promo code in their ads, these companies can track the conversion rate and precisely measure their return on investment. And Matt Turck, chief revenue officer at Panoply, says these advertisers generally like the results. “They keep coming back over and over again,” he explained. “It’s effective for them.”

A screenshot from Pew Research Center’s 2016 State of the News Media report.

So why aren’t more advertisers rushing into the podcasting space? For one, the audience for podcasts is still relatively small, with only 21 percent of Americans listening to podcasts on a monthly basis in 2016.

However, given podcasting’s rapid growth rate, a bigger factor might be the issues with existing audience data and metrics. Most notably, advertisers have balked at the squishiness of download statistics, which don’t capture whether the user actually listened to an episode — or for how long. Advertisers have also requested richer audience data than what publishers currently receive from iTunes (a point of considerable contention among podcasters).

Industry experts say that addressing these problems could lead to a boom in ad revenue. “Advertisers are waiting at podcasters’ doors,” Pierre Bouvard wrote in his preview of the 2015 State of American Podcasting webinar. “Data is what will get them to come in.”

Turck says that’s consistent with what he experiences at Panoply. “More and more brands are moving into this space,” he said. “But if we get any resistance, it’s about the data and metrics.”

Can Panoply and Megaphone Find the Fix?

Aside from its ad-insertion feature, Megaphone’s most promising innovation is an embeddable podcast player that will capture richer audience and listenership data. The challenge is getting podcasters to adopt it, and audiences to embrace it: Right now, most podcasts are downloaded as audio files through iTunes, Stitcher, or other apps. But Panoply needs audiences to stream episodes directly from the podcaster’s website, where the Megaphone player can collect information on exactly who’s listening and for how long. 

“That’s something we’re working on promoting,” Cox said. “It really depends on our partners in terms of how much they push that embeddable player.”

An industry-wide development that could help Panoply’s cause is the development of a universal standard for collecting and reporting audience data. Cox says the International Advertising Bureau is close to releasing guidelines that would standardize how podcasters define and measure listenership, allowing advertisers to have more confidence in the metrics.

“We’ve been working very closely with the IAB,” Cox said. “Once that [standard] is published, we’ll be in a great position to adopt it.”

A third way Panoply is working to woo advertisers is by commissioning studies that measure “brand lift.” The goal is to prove to brands something that many insiders consider intuitive — that podcast advertisements are substantially more effective than distracting banner advertisements and other digital ads of that ilk.

“We like to think of podcast ads as the original ‘native advertising,’ and that’s what advertisers want,” Turck said. “They don’t want disruptive advertising. They want in-stream advertising. By having the host do the read, it feels very natural. It feels like part of the show.”

Meanwhile, there seems to be no shortage of companies and news outlets that are bullish on podcasting’s revenue prospects. Podcasts have taken off at established media outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, Rolling Stone, and Slate, and brands are even starting to create their own custom podcasts, such as The Message by GE Podcast Theater. 

As a result, if Megaphone’s technology helps open the floodgates for new advertising revenue, Panoply might be the biggest winner — but everyone in the podcasting space will have reason to celebrate. 

Ben DeJarnette is the associate editor at MediaShift. He is also a freelance contributor for Pacific Standard, InvestigateWest, Men’s Journal, Runner’s World, Oregon Quarterly and others. He’s on Twitter @BenDJduck.

The post Will ‘Megaphone’ Open the Floodgates for Podcast Advertising? appeared first on MediaShift.

Getting on YouTube will be faster

Some podcasters are, of course, already publishing on YouTube. For example, some shows (such as Podcaster’s Roundtable) record first as live Google Hangouts On-Air and later release the resulting audio podcast, and other podcasters currently go through the extra work of manually turning their audio podcasts into YouTube videos. Fiction writer and podcasting pioneer Scott Sigler releases his book chapters as both audio podcasts and as YouTube videos with a short video introduction followed by rotating static images while the audio plays, for example.

The new feature will save time for podcasters already using YouTube. “I do plan to use the YouTube posting feature,” Heather Ordover of the CraftLit classic literature podcast wrote via email. Ordover polled her Patreon supporters, found that 30 percent were interested in receiving her content on YouTube, and has been posting on YouTube ever since.

This new method changes the cost-benefit analysis

The “YouTube On Publish” feature will also be compelling for Libsyn podcasters who have been interested in distributing on YouTube but who felt the cost-benefit analysis didn’t make sense. At Quick and Dirty Tips, we’ve experimented with posting podcasts to YouTube over the years, but we found the old process too cumbersome to do it regularly. We now plan to post all our weekly shows using the new Libsyn process.

“We received many requests from producers about getting their audio files up on YouTube,” said Walch; and anecdotally, podcasters are eager to give it a try. “This is my next project! I stopped releasing on YouTube because the numbers just weren’t worth the effort. Our podcasts are normally 60 minutes. It would take me hours to render it with video!” Melinda Pontruff, owner of Loudly Spoken Entertainment, a fandom podcast network, wrote in a private message. 

YouTube is huge and powerful

The most obvious reason podcasters want to be on YouTube is its massive size. “There are a billion reasons to put your audio on YouTube. That is the number of monthly users of YouTube,” Walch said.

“YouTube has a few features that make it a great discovery platform: good search, easy social sharing and good recommendation. Those alone make it, in many ways, superior to a lot of the default podcast listening platforms (though we’re working to address all three with Stitcher), so it makes sense for podcasters to try and take advantage of its capabilities,” Erik Diehn, VP of Business Development at Midroll Media, a podcast ad broker that also controls the Stitcher podcasting platform and the Earwolf podcast network, wrote via email.

YouTube is mobile-friendly

Sigler also points to the rise in mobile traffic as a reason he uses YouTube.

“We’ve revamped our website to cater to mobile, and trying to figure out how people can get stuff on their phone is the biggest thing for us,” he said, noting that fans can watch embedded YouTube videos with one click on from platforms such as Tumblr, Pinterest, and Twitter. As Amazon knows, “one-click” is good. Sigler says he is likely to separately continue posting videos directly to Facebook, however, given Facebook’s tendency to suppress reach on posts from competing video sites.

On the flip side, Ordover believes most of her YouTube listeners are listening on their desktop. “My podcast started in 2006 as a way for busy people to listen to classic literature. (It’s hard to hold a book if you’re knitting or sewing or pottery-ing, etc.). Many listeners work at home and/or in a work- or craft-room location where they’re either alone or with someone else who likes to listen. They are the listeners who pull the podcast up on their browser because their work/design computer is already running and (usually) connected to speakers,” she said.

YouTube gives partners copyright protection

Diehn also notes that if podcasters are YouTube partners, YouTube adds your content to its database of copyrighted material and automatically notifies you if someone has illegally posted your content.“YouTube will scan for uploads of matching material and give you options for how to treat it: let it remain and monetize passively, take it down, etc.” Diehn said. He says that content from many large podcasts is already being put on YouTube by other parties who may be benefiting without the podcasters’ knowledge. “Why not take control of how your content is treated in that environment?” he said.

All these reasons create a compelling lure to put podcast audio on YouTube. If early adopters have a good experience, it’s a good bet that you’ll see a lot more podcasts on YouTube. As Ordover says, “I’ll go where my people need me to be, and Libsyn is definitely making it easier.”

Mignon Fogarty is the Donald W. Reynolds Chair in Media Entrepreneurship in the Reynolds School of Journalism at the University of Nevada, Reno. She is also the founder of Quick and Dirty Tips, one of the oldest and largest podcasting networks, and is best known online for her work as the New York Times bestselling author Grammar Girl. She loves basil and the word “kerfuffle.” Follow her on Twitter.

The post Get Ready For More Podcasts on YouTube… A Lot More, Thanks to Libsyn appeared first on MediaShift.