Newspapers & Podcasting

A dozen U.S. newspapers and magazines have begun to embrace podcasting - Interestingly named, Podcasts are Internet audio programs that you can listen to on your personal computer or portable music player. Listeners can use special software to automate the downloads, so new dispatches are waiting for them on their computers. Newspapers and magazines such as the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Philadelphia Daily News, Washington Post and Forbes have started podcasts in recent weeks. Their programming varies widely. Some simply summarize the day's news, while others aim for more of a radio-show feel with interviews of reporters and newsmakers. A few provide clips from professionally recorded radio programs, but most of the podcasts are low-budget, low-tech affairs hosted by print journalists who often have scant broadcast experience.
Podcasters record music, talk shows and other programming and make the audio files available in an MP3 audio format on the Internet. Newspapers have been offering audio and video reports on their Web sites for years. But podcasts are different; the files are meant to be downloaded and played later, not streamed over the Internet. The sound quality on many newspaper podcasts can be a far cry from a professional recording. Some publications want to be ahead of the curve on podcasts because they felt they were behind in embracing Web logs, or blogs. But, just as with blogs, it is unclear whether podcasts will become a commercial success or help newspapers gain readers. Such is the power of technology that traditional media which has suffered hard due to the rise of the digital medium - frocing them to embrace new mechanisms ahead of these gaining critical mass and becoming mainstream..