Things You Can Do With Audio That Aren’t Podcasts
Experimenting with audio products in local news
It’s time we start thinking about audio products for local news that go beyond the podcast.
We’ve seen non-podcast storytelling products taking shape with the long reads produced by Audm; those bring an audiobook type experience to news stories. Another audio innovation that caught my ear is Time to Walk by Apple. It’s available through the Fitness app on the Apple Watch. Time to Walk uses first person, narrative storytelling combined with music to get you up and moving. Both of these uses of audio present interesting opportunities for replicating in local news.
I’m experimenting with audio products that can extend the reach of local news as a John S. Knight Senior Journalism Fellow at Stanford University. The goal of my fellowship project is to create new ways of storytelling that help news organizations reach new audiences, often with their existing content.
I’m working separately with two local news publications on California’s Central Coast: The Californian in Salinas and The Monterey County Weekly in Seaside.
With each publication, we began by identifying a target audience. Then I conducted one-on-one audience interviews with people in the target audience searching for unmet needs. We followed those interviews with brainstorm sessions that looked for solutions that used audio and local news to meet the unmet needs. We came up with dozens of solutions. Now I’ve settled on five audio products to prototype between the two publications.
The Californian: Audio Products
The Californian selected two audiences to target for this project: first-generation English speakers and early career young adults, both under the age of 35. This is The Californian’s next generation of readers. Salinas is an agricultural town with a large Spanish speaking and farmworker population. Many of the audience members I interviewed were the children of farmworkers.
These interviews led to the three following audio products I’m going to prototype and test.
Product #1: Inspired
Inspired is a recorded reading of evergreen stories about inspirational people in the community. These are stories already written by reporters of The Californian, some of them a few years old, but with a long shelf life.
This product serves the unmet need of a 29-year-old interviewee named Ash. She turned her life around after being involved with gangs. A need that surfaced in her interview was to hear about other people in her community who have turned their lives around in inspiring ways. She also seeks acknowledgement that her community isn’t all bad because she feels that’s the current narrative.
Product #2: Catch Me Up Button
The Catch Me Up Button is a short audio recap of ongoing, long term stories. These are stories local reporters have been covering for years, if not decades, and can require background for readers to engage. So the Catch Me Up Button gives readers the context they’d otherwise have to dig up from the archives. It’s something that could appear at the top of search results or alongside the current articles addressing the ongoing issue.
This idea was inspired by 24-year-old interviewee Jazmine. She’s an environmental scientist who is often doing professional and personal research on local issues. She needs local news on demand. She engages with local stories when something sparks her curiosity rather than on the day the story was published.
Product #3: Biz Quiz
The Biz Quiz is an ongoing series of audio profiles on local businesses. The audio story will end with a quiz about the business that unlocks a deal, like a free cup of coffee at the profiled business.
This idea serves the unmet need of 26-year-old interviewee Daniel. He recently moved back to Salinas after the Silicon Valley startup where he works went full remote. He needs a way to discover new businesses in town because he likes to support anything local.
The Monterey County Weekly: Audio Products
The Monterey County Weekly selected a target audience of women, ages 30 to 40, who live in their coverage area. Specifically, they want to find a way to increase engagement with those who only casually read the paper or subscribe to their daily newsletter, but don’t read it. The Weekly’s coverage area is expansive. It includes Salinas, but also the far wealthier Monterey Peninsula and Big Sur.
The interviews inspired the two following products that I will prototype and test.
Product #4: Sounds Local
Sounds Local is a series of audio vignettes that take listeners around the Monterey Bay Area. It will give listeners the opportunity to guess where we are and then link to the evergreen story about the person, place or issue from The Weekly archives. Users will have the option of reading or listening to a recorded version of the story.
This idea was inspired by Catherine. She recently moved to Monterey from the Bay Area. She needs to know the history, context and background of local people, places and issues, so she can become as engaged with local news as she was in the Bay Area.
Product #5: Newscast
The Newscast is a daily recap of top stories, stories to watch and upcoming events. Unlike the other ideas, which developed out of the design thinking process, this is an idea in search of a need. For years, I’ve been thinking about how large media markets have local news available for their smart speakers, like Amazon Echo. But it’s something small media markets lack. I’m excited to create and test it and see how it fares next to other ones.
In the audience interviews, I did find people this concept could serve. One is Joanna. She’s a military spouse and working mother. She already listens to national news every morning on her Echo and says the only local content she can find is weather.
Next Steps
Once I create these prototypes, I will test each with a small group. I’ll be looking for traction; to see if the product resonates with the audience. Then I’m looking for their reaction and feedback to the product. I will only move forward with the ones that show promise.
The other unanswered question for each of these products is delivery method. How will the audience encounter them? That’s a question I’m looking to experiment with and answer in the final phase of my project. Follow me here on Medium or on Twitter @KristaAlmanzan to see what comes of these audio products, or ask me how it’s going along the way. You can reach me at kalmanza@stanford.edu.
