I’ve Created the Weekly News Podcast I Couldn’t Find (Updated)

June 2020 Update:

After 22 weeks of producing my podcast, I decided to stop.  It was taking me on average of 8 hours each week to produce.  Auto scraping & producing the podcast was very challenging.  I also gained more responsibility at work.  With only one year left in the Army (I’m about to start the process of retiring) and with a possible move to another state the following year, I just didn’t have the bandwidth to properly produce it. 

Listenership was increasing at a very slow rate.  I was up to about 25-30 repeat listeners.  In order to start attracting advertisers, I would’ve needed 1000+.  Perhaps my timing was off.  Neither the pandemic, nor the civil right issues were in sight when I started.  These mega news events consumed 90% of the news.  The intent of my podcast was drowned out by this.

Regardless, here’s a bit of what I learned about the news outlets producing the podcast:

NYT
  • Has Better Pics and Graphics
  • Doesn’t update disasters after initial reporting
  • Most use of adjectives in titles
  • Leans Left
  • Some articles have more opinion that other sources
  • Too many articles
Reuters
  • Has too many repeat story Headlines pointing to same story
  • Mostly fact based
  • Covers Syria & Afghan much more
Axios 
  • Has great summaries
  • Connects the dots across multiple articles
  • Has less articles / easier to consume

NPR

  • Short on specifics
  • More anecdotes and stories
  • Politically correct
  • Too many articles

WSJ

  • Obviously business & economy focused
  • Decent graphics
  • Has the most clear titles and single sentence summaries above the article.

Original Jan 2020 Post:

For the past 3 years or so, I keep looking for a weekly podcast that summarizes all the news.  I hate Late Breaking & XYZ News Update.  The facts aren’t usually settled & it’s just click bait to keep your eyeballs on their site.  Who needs that, just give me the executive summary please!  Since I couldn’t find this mythcial podcast, I decided to create it myself.  So, here it is, please subscribe, share this podcast with your friends, & review us on iTunes & Google.

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