Award-winning investigative journalist Robert Riggs talks to Podnews

Award-winning investigative journalist Robert Riggs talks to Podnews

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The most vocal opponents of programmatic advertising in podcasting are the ones that have the most to lose. But for publishers looking for more control and freedom, it’s a breath of fresh air. — the latest edition of Sounds Profitable, our podcasting ad-tech newsletter. Subscribe now


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  • “No matter the topic, if you pursue podcasting it should be about a subject you love. You need to get up in the morning excited about what you are going to share.” We asked award-winning investigative reporter Robert Riggs how he makes his new podcast, True Crime Reporter. His answers include the best way of taking notes, his experiences in the Gulf War, and his favourite podcasts. True Crime Reporter is sponsoring our Tips & Tricks section this week.

  • US listeners are listening to 8% more spoken word than last year. That’s the highlight from the upcoming Spoken Word Audio Report from NPR and Edison Research, which will be unveiled on October 13.

  • The most popular day for downloading podcasts in the US is a Thursday, according to Triton Digital’s weekly snapshot data.


    Aug 28 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.
  • John Barth, the Chief Content Officer at PRX, is to retire at the end of this year. Kerry Donahue, Director of Training has already left the company, according to her LinkedIn. PRX management have been criticised for a lack of diversity and gender equity. Meanwhile, MPR/APM employees have launched a website to change their company culture.


    This link is no longer available, as at Aug 28 2023
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  • Not everyone is comfortable with new technology. Dial-a-Podcast gives your podcast a phone number to call so that anyone can listen to your podcast. (Bullhorn also offers a similar experience).

  • We have added the web version of Podfriend to our list of podcast apps on our podcast pages. The service uses Podcast Index.

  • Volley is an (iOS-only) app that allows you to do podcast interviews using audio messages.

  • Giorgio Parlato wonders if it’s a good thing to listen to fewer podcasts.


    Aug 28 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.

Thank you to our latest gold supporter, Focusrite, the makers of the Scarlett USB audio interface. We’re grateful to all our kind supporters, who allow us to focus more time in improving Podnews for everyone.

The Tech Stuff - with RSS․com

  • Reclaim The Net, a pressure group about cancel culture and censorship, writes about The Podcast Index, saying “it’s time for an open podcast directory”.
  • A review of metadata fields associated with podcast RSS feeds is a specific look at the itunes:type, itunes:season and itunes:category data fields in podcasts. Written by a Spotify employee, and using data also from Spotify user behaviour, it concludes that the itunes:type field is often misleading or confusing, and is not of much use for recommendations.

  • Aug 28 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.
  • The Podcast Index now has the code in place to support WebSub - over 262,000 podcasts support it, they say. They’re working on subscribing to those shows via WebSub shortly. They’ve also added MIT licenses to their Github repositories.
  • Podfriend has added an embedded player widget for your website. You can see ours on our embedded player guide.
  • Want a decent set of similar-looking app badges for your website? Podpage has just published a matching set.

Tips and tricks - with True Crime Reporter from PAR

Podcast News - with cabana

Companies mentioned above:
Edison Research logoEdison ResearchNPR logoNPRPodcast Index logoPodcast IndexPodfriend logoPodfriendPRX logoPRXSpotify logoSpotify

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