The New York Times and Boston Globe online are all about video these days. But at Slate, the energy is on audio. Consider this meditation at Medium.com on Slate’s podcast prowess. Apparently everyone at the news/blog was spending so much time pondering the Serial series out loud that the staff just decided, what the hell, let’s make a podcast about the podcast! Thus it was done, and Slate’s Serial Spoiler Podcast generated a huge ‘long tail’ (so to speak) audience—to the tune of hundreds of thousands of downloads.
Some of those downloaders can doubtless relate to this amusing YouTube parody of the phenomenon:
Nota bene: it’s not that Slate doesn’t do video, Medium notes, it’s just that the organization’s podcasts “are much more substantial, having developed fervent, almost fanatical followings from listeners, many of whom are willing to line up around the block just to attend a live recording.”
Meanwhile Fast Company has its list of Most Innovative Companies for 2015 out. Two are noted for their podcasts: Public Radio Exchange, now the distributor for This American Life, and Gimlet Media, which has become “the podcast revolution’s spokesman,” as far as FC is concerned; see offerings such as the Internet focused podcast “Reply All,” which “will continue setting the bar for the kind of quality, highly produced narrative podcasts that are coming to define the medium.”
