Panoply suddenly closes its podcast content division

Panoply has announced that it is letting go of its entire editorial staff, and is no longer developing new podcasts or handling direct sales. It is focusing on Megaphone, its podcast hosting platform, which powers 8% of the US top 400 podcasts, and which the company calls “the clear leader in podcasting technology and advertising services”.

Jacob Weisberg, Chair and Editor-in-Chief of Panoply’s owner, Slate Group, is also leaving the company. He’s announced he’s launching a new audio company with Malcolm Gladwell.

Flattr, a company which has been handling micro-payments for bloggers for eight years, is now handling podcast contributions. It is “mobile-first and works regardless of what app or podcast service you use”; Linus Olsson told Podnews that they will be supporting the rel="payment" emerging standard.

Yesterday, we repeated The Guardian's claim that they were about to launch “their first daily news podcast”. Jon Dennis tweeted that he presented a daily news podcast from The Guardian for five years - between 2005 and 2010.

In an open letter to all podcast apps, in early August, Jerod Santo notes that Overcast gives the total subscriber count every time it checks your RSS feed: and asks for other podcast apps to do the same. Many apps have already started to do this. (We’re seeing Feedbin, Breaker, Overcast and Newsblur in our logs). Seems like a nice idea.

It’s the first birthday of Podcast One in Australia. Grant Tothill, the unit’s boss, is interviewed in B&T. Meanwhile, Tyler Moody from Turner Podcasts is interviewed in AdExchanger.

Music Radio Creative currently has a competition with over $10,000 of prizes for some lucky podcaster.

Molly Beck, who runs Messy·fm, a podcast host, is profiled by Northeastern University

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