Daily News Junkets

My mornings have settled into a listening routine; once the first cup of coffee is had, the sleepiness slowly and reluctantly persuaded to leave as the caffeine seeps into my bloodstream and consciousness of the day’s duties nudges its way into my brain. First up: The Indian Express’ 3 Things. And then, BBC’s Global News Podcast. Somewhere in there, vegetables get chopped, the pressure cooker is ‘chadao-ed’ and the mat gets laid out for yoga, as I get my morning news fix.

In the pre-internet, pre-television era, I remember being woken up by the plaintive notes of Akashvani, or All India Radio, opening the day not with news, but with music. My father insisted on turning up the volume right around 6:10 a.m. so that the shehnai or nadaswaram could startle us “late Lateefs” out of slumber almost straight into our navy or khaki school uniforms. AIR News came on the hour but the real news of the day (more correctly, the previous day) had to wait for the newspaper—and usually, for my father to call out any headlines of relevance as he browsed through it.

Daily news podcasts have changed all that, for me at least. Armed with some sense of the nation and the globe by 7 a.m., I then queue up a selection of others, ranging from The Guardian’s Today in Focus, Newslaundry’s Daily Dose, the New York Times’ The Daily, Vox’s Today Explained and The Washington Post’s Post Reports, or the weekly shows, such as The Hindu’s In Focus or The Suno India Show. If you’re wondering where all those hours of listening come from, here’s the answer: I have a long commute (2 hours plus), I spend quite a bit of time in the kitchen (3 hours approximately) and I take longish walks (1 hour at least).

While the BBC’s long history of international broadcasting made it a natural for the news podcasting space, other media organizations seem to have woken up to the potential of on-demand audio streaming only in the past five years or so. Some credit the boom to the success of NYT’s The Daily, which began in January 2017, prompted by what they saw as a “moment that demanded an explanation”, aka the Trump victory. The Guardian, in a 2018 article, called it “the genre’s breakout hit”, it’s popularity owing in part to its redefining of the news podcast format. Rather than simply offering a round-up of the day’s news with a smattering of commentary (which is what the BBC offers in the Global News Podcast), Michael Barbaro of The Daily talks to the Times’ journalist to get at the whys, hows and so-whats of the stories they have written. The Indian Express’ 3 Things in some ways follows this format, although the nature of the exchange on The Daily is qualitatively different, pushing the reporters to reflect more deeply on the coverage and their own interactions with the field and their sources.

But how different, really, is the news podcast, regardless of periodicity, from good old news radio? Is it just an old form served up in a new digital package that is easier to move around, untethered to space and time? Is it even that different from Internet Radio, that transposition of an old form onto a new platform—except of course, it’s packaged and delivered differently?

Writing in New York magazine, Adam Sternbegh thinks through the podcast as a cultural and commercial phenomenon, argues that “podcasts are learning to do things no medium has done before”, noting that audio on demand “might be the future of media and not just a quaint variation on its past”.

This is perhaps something for media scholars to explore, along with other questions about form, function, and the place of news media in our lives. What is it that makes us more likely to hook up our phones to the car audio and listen to a news podcast rather than simply turn the dial on the FM radio? What does the news podcast do for us that prime time news or even the morning paper doesn’t? What are the complementary movements in the news business and in the culture of reporting that serve this format—for producers, and for other participants in the production process? One young scholar I know is looking at whether podcasting could disrupt long held journalistic conventions in interesting and possibly productive ways. Journalism teachers are using podcasts like The Daily or ABC’s Start Here as teaching materials, as they offer a view into the reporter’s process and the problems of newsgathering.

While some news podcasts mimic the rush of the daily news, in that they aim to substitute to some extent the conventional bulletin, most are in fact doing something a bit different—and maybe that is the appeal. They let us sit with the news, and think about it from different angles, and, because of the natural linearity of the medium, they force us to take in one word at a time, maybe even play it over and slow it down, as we digest its many possible meanings. Of course, podcasting—now that it is mainstream—is subject to the same political and ideological polarisations that we see in other media, but simply because of the relative simplicity of production, there are still many independent voices that one can find. And of course, it is important to note that news podcasts that truly draw on reportage, rather than only commentary, are in the minority. It’s the large media houses and a few intrepid independents that offer these. Most deliver commentary and explainers, akin to the editorial pages of a newspaper, often coloured by their alignments.

Indian news podcasts have yet to acquire the sheen of The Daily or Post Reports, possibly because Indian media houses are yet to invest significant resources into audio. Even as the BBC, New York Times or The Guardian have devoted money and talent to producing original content for their news podcasts, the programming is still (as The Daily puts it) largely “fueled” by their huge reporting machinery. As a promo for The Daily explains, The Times has hundreds of reporters on the ground, across the world, and they are able to fly out a podcast producer (for instance) to the Ukraine-Polish border to harvest special audio stories—thanks to the massive corporate resources. Independent organizations do not have the capability to do much original on-ground reporting for news programming, but it’s to their credit that platforms like Suno India or Newsreel Asia are instead focusing on stories that remain in the shadows, rather than competing with news-as-usual.

Postscript:

So, the BBC turns 100 this year. It’s hard to deny their huge influence on broadcasting and the culture of news. Here’s a piece that considers the future of the behemoth, about which Sam Knight in the New Yorker writes: “For a large, tax-funded body, heavy on ideals, its output has often been oddly agile and human.” Anyone who has followed the BBC’s coverage of Afghanistan last year, or now, Ukraine, would agree. I remember tuning into BBC on our big shortwave radio, holding the antenna wire just so, to ground the signal, and I for one am happy to have a selection of podcasts now that I can simply click on.

As for Akashvani? I have the app, and they’ve graduated to online transmission, but I’m still waiting on the podcasts.