"Podcasting's stratospheric ascent has inspired a new breed of audio journalism. Ever since the success of Serial, podcasting has become an important part of digital media and the evolving business and journalistic strategies of mainstream media organizations. Podcasting signals a promising and lucrative turn in a once beleaguered news industry. With its longform storytelling, binge-listening audience, and influx of sponsors, the medium has buoyed journalism from the wreckage of digital disruption seen in diminished attention spans, shallow online news templates, vanishing advertising revenue, and decimated newsroom staffs. In Podcast Journalism, Dowling examines how new journalistic standards of nonfiction narrative reportage have emerged and how the medium is affecting the business models of media organizations. As a circumventing technology that remains among the least censored of the world's media, podcasting bypasses the limitations of traditional categories and has been able to serve previously underserved communities. At the same time, as podcasting has grown, new concerns have arisen regarding the blurring of sponsorship and journalism as well as the rise of right-wing podcasting"--
Podcasting’s stratospheric rise has inspired a new breed of audio reporting. Offering immersive storytelling for a binge-listening audience as well as reaching previously underserved communities, podcasts have become journalism’s most rapidly growing digital genre, buoying a beleaguered news industry. Yet many concerns have been raised about this new medium, such as the potential for disinformation, the influence of sponsors on content, the dominance of a few publishers and platforms, and at-times questionable adherence to journalistic principles.
David O. Dowling critically examines how podcasting and its evolving conventions are transforming reporting—and even reshaping journalism’s core functions and identity. He considers podcast reporting’s most influential achievements as well as its most consequential ethical and journalistic shortcomings, emphasizing the reciprocal influences between podcasting and traditional and digital journalism. Podcasting, both as a medium and a business, has benefited from the blurring of boundaries separating news from entertainment, editorial from advertising, and neutrality from subjectivity. The same qualities and forces that have allowed podcasting to bypass the limitations of traditional categories, expand the space of social and political discourse, and provide openings for marginalized voices have also permitted corporations to extend their reach and far-right firebrands to increase their influence. Equally attentive to the medium’s strengths and flaws, this is a vital book for all readers interested in how podcasting has changed journalism.
David O. Dowling critically examines how podcasting and its evolving conventions are transforming reporting—and even reshaping journalism’s core functions and identity.
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