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