Let’s work together to create the future of local news
How might we find new opportunities in audio
I used to say “no” a lot. It was essential for doing my job. I was news director at a small public radio station. We had a news staff of two, including me, to cover a large swath of central California.
So that often meant saying, “No, we can’t cover that story.” “No, we can’t make it to that meeting.” “No, I can’t interview you about your new book.”
Learning to resist the pull of every piece of news in your community is a necessity for those who manage small newsrooms. It’s also something more local newsrooms are becoming familiar with as they see their staffs shrink due to a decline in revenue. Now they are left with the conflicting reality of not being able to completely cover their communities while needing to grow their audiences to earn the revenue to hire more journalists to cover the community.
This is what I’m thinking about as I start my year as a John S. Knight Senior Journalism Fellow at Stanford. I want to explore ways small local news organizations can grow their audiences and amplify the reach of their work using audio, and in turn, explore the variety of ways audio can reach new audiences.
To begin, I’m looking for partner news organizations in California that want to learn how to take the stories they are currently writing and turn them into audio stories. I want to help with training: audio recording, editing and how to adjust your speaking voice for audio storytelling. I also want to explore what local news means to people living in the news organizations’ coverage area and how and if they engage with audio. I’m looking to find the overlap between the local news stories the audience wants and the stories that best lend themselves to the audio format.
With content in the works, the next phase of my project will focus on distribution. We’ll experiment with different ways of reaching our audience with audio.
Audio as a format for news has exploded with podcasts, but success has been largely limited to national news organizations and larger media markets. What can be done in a smaller organization with limited resources? I want to explore making microcasts that deliver local news in brief. Let’s push that content to smart speakers. Can we collaborate with existing podcasts or podcast media players as another way to get this local news content to local listeners?
Then let’s explore areas of audio that are being overlooked. Could voicemail be a way of reaching new audiences or underserved communities? What about voice memos by text or WhatsApp? What are the ways of engaging with audio that we haven’t explored yet?
Finally, even as audiences have tuned out public radio during this pandemic, it’s another way of distribution that cannot be overlooked. Radio has a far lower barrier to entry than most of these other methods I’ve mentioned. Plus, when it comes to public radio, the stations have a broad reach. 98.5% of the country falls within the coverage area of an NPR member station, and now more than ever, they need local content to stay relevant.
I see a real opportunity to experiment with audio. If you do too, let’s connect.
If you are a reporter who wants to learn about reporting with audio, a news organization interested in developing audio content or someone who gets most of their news from audio, I would love to talk. Please comment below or reach out directly. I’m at kalmanza@stanford.edu.
