Monday 10th June: Why there's still room for daily news podcasts

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The Press Gazette Future of Media Awards celebrate the best websites, podcasts, newsletters and commercial innovation in news media. They are FREE to enter and the deadline for submissions is 14 June.

Let’s put a pin in the subhead’s assertion that current UK news podcasts lean left, and instead look at the gems here in terms of how The Telegraph approaches its podcasts. Whatever you think about their political stance, their podcasts are superb - they’ve consistently been top of the pack for every year of our Publisher Podcast Awards.

Look at how they handled getting Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on. “The public consumes information in audio, in written word, in video… when we have Rishi Sunak, it’s not just an audio product, it’s an all-Telegraph product,” host Kamal Ahmed said.

The other point which comes through time and time again is the intimacy of audio. It’s what sold Sunak’s team on coming on the podcast in the first place, and is seen as increasing value to the Telegraph’s subscribers. This all takes time to build, however, and Ahmed cautions against trying to “chuck everything at the wall on day one.”

A comprehensive breakdown of how some leading publishers are using AI for search and solutions. “It is clear that an asset many media companies possess is a deep reservoir of quality content and it is good for business to extract the most value from the investment in its creation,” Jessica Patterson writes. This is almost enough to combat my scepticism about the use of training LLMs on internal content.

This is an interesting move from The Guardian, which is rolling out a product review offering - like Wirecutter - that will focus on sustainable goods and services. On the one hand, the publisher has a history of leading in sustainability coverage and this is a good fit. But on the other, doing reviews properly is costly, and is one of the major areas being threatened by AI.

We don’t usually include straight press releases in here but we’re huge fans of Positive News and have been watching eagerly to see what they’d do in the podcast space ever since they asked for some advice in our community a few months back. The first series looks at how communities are dealing with mental health issues in parts of the world where circumstances are often the most challenging.

Got your own podcast or thinking about starting one? Come along to the Publisher Podcast Summit THIS Wed 12th June to learn from the best.

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