How do Canadian newspapers treat the asset of a podcast?
Vol. 53 - Vass Bednar talks newspapers' podcasts, Kattie's dispatch from Podcast Movement DC, and lots of updates from the ecosystem!
Hihi!! Happy Pod the North Tuesday!
In this issue:
A quick dispatch from
AMERICA…Podcast Movement!Vass Bednar says podcasts are part of a well-balanced Canadian News diet.
Canadian Indie: Playing House
True North Podcast Feature: The Red Gaze
Plenty of exciting new podcast launches and announcements!
BTW:
There are currently 31 long-term drinking water advisories in effect in 29 First Nations communities across Canada. The last lifted advisory was June 2024. The most recent added advisory was July 2024.
A quick dispatch from AMERICA… Podcast Movement!
Podcast Movement in DC was a wild ride amongst a busy month.
I was super lucky to join my team at Bumper for it - meeting all except one in person for the first time. I also FINALLY got in-person hugs and hangs from fellow podcast newsletter nerds, community mavens, and all-around lovely humans, Keelin Peterson ( Mentally? A Magpie ), Lauren Passell ( ), Shreya Sharma ( ) , and Arielle Nissenblatt ( EarBuds Podcast Collective )
But Canadians were EVERYWHERE.
We dominated panels about audience growth. We were all over the exhibition floor with innovative podcast products. We were chaotically finding each other and commiserating.
I finally met Captivate.fm's Danny Brown ( ) in person! If I wasnt actually running into her and Matt Cundill ( Sound Off Media ), I swear I saw Sarah Burke ( Women in Media Network ) whiz by in the corner of my eye a hundred times. I found the always inviting face of Fede Vargas ( My Most Authentic Life ) and got to congratulate him on the recent Sonar Soundlabs collab. Lower Street's Head of Podcast Strategy & Development, Annalise Nielsen, was the first person I actually got to talk wedding planning with and convince that's it's only natural to cry during Love is Blind UK. I also finally met Canadian Spotify staffer and wildly creative human Corey Kareem, all thanks to seeing the wonderful Shereen Simon (Perspective Studio Productions), who I first connected with at The Soundwave Summit. A full circle moment!
My first podcast conference outside of Canada was certainly a whirlwind, and it was so exciting to see the representation of Canadians in the podcast wild. Global domination here we come!
(Okay, that's a bit of a bold claim)
Buy exclusive ad space on Pod the North!
Tell the Pod the North community of over 1300 Canadian podcasters (!!) about your stuff, and book the exclusive ad spot at the top of the newsletter.
Thoughts from the ecosystem:
Vass Bednar says podcasts are part of a well-balanced Canadian News diet.
If you’ve ever wondered about Canadian media regulations, or why Canada generally seems to be run by three corporations in a trench coat, why you’ve probably heard of Vass Bednar.
Vass is the executive director of McMaster University’s Master of Public Policy (MPP) in Digital Society, a freelance public policy columnist, and she writes the incredible newsletter, , which explores “how the right rules make everything so much better.” I HIGHLY recommend subscribing!
Her latest gig — outside of toddler-mom — is as the host of the new podcast from The Globe and Mail, Lately, a show about navigating life in the new economy.
Vass emailed me a little while ago, excited to share what she and the Lately team have been working on, and to discuss her insights on how newspapers are experimenting with podcasts. A few issues ago, I talked to Scott Clarke about how local podcast networks might be taking the noble place of local TV news and radio — but what about Canadian newspapers?
Over the last couple of years alone, there has been a flurry of closures by local Canadian newsrooms that’s lead to a ton of discourse around whether or not Canadian journalism is dying. But according to journalist, Marc Edge, it isn’t. It’s evolving, and now Canadian media creators get to decide what that looks like.
I talked to Vass about how she’s looking at the role of Lately at the Globe and Mail, and the role of other shows coming from news outlets that she doesn’t necessarily consider “Capital N News”.
This interview has been edited and condensed for brevity and clarity. Paid subscribers of Pod the North can listen to the whole conversation next week!
Kattie Laur: So what would you call yourself? Are you an official journalist? Are you a columnist? Because to me you are a general smart person!
Vass Bednar: Kattie, I'm going to update my LinkedIn, you're so sweet to say that.
I don't see myself as a journalist. I think I've always cared a lot about where good ideas come from and where they go and how you build support for them.
I think people Academia will call it ‘knowledge translation’, but that's not what we're doing at Lately. It's audio storytelling. We're not doing original reporting, but we're still conducting research that underpins and undergirds a show.
KL: I ask you that because I've been having this conversation over the last year about journalists and their relationship to podcasts – I think it is a very special relationship. Maybe you're not a journalist, but as a General Smart Person, what has been your relationship to podcasts?
VB: So I like to read transcripts of podcasts. Reading is my comfort zone. But bridging from public policy, I want to brief myself up very quickly.
I bring a magpie approach to my work. I'll pluck trends or stories from different places or different universes and start to stitch it together to point to a gap or an opportunity. But the casual learning and wanting to explore, I see audio that way.
I would say podcasts play a huge role in my marriage, because my husband's this huge podcast guy. I tried to tell him, if we're at a dinner party you can't just make conversation by saying, ‘I was listening to something in a podcast’. And then he's like, ‘Yes, I can’. And I get to learn from him. He's somebody who always listens to Lately, and he gives me his super honest feedback.
KL: With him listening to your podcast as a general podcast lover, what do you think he loves about your podcast?
VB: I think it's incredibly ironic. He's just very charmed that he's the podcast guy, but I'm the one who's hosting and building something.
He's not a public policy guy by any means. He doesn't reach for the Report on Business section when we get the paper at the breakfast table and we're trading off with our toddler so we can flip through. So he's a really important gauge for me of what was compelling, what seemed important, and what stuck.
KL: It's kinda cool that you have a power listener in your house!
VB: I'm going to tell him that. That sounds really hot.
KL: So Lately is a production of the Globe and Mail, and you’re here to discuss Canadian newspapers investing in podcasts. What can you tell me about how newspapers are thinking about podcasts these days?
VB: I think there's an interesting question for the future of media, which is ‘how do you treat the asset of a podcast?’
Is it a top of funnel play? Or is it an ad revenue play? Or is there a way to be both? And I think in a unicorn world, you get to do a little bit of both. You get to sell some of that real estate, but you also get to privilege your subscribers; give them a show early, give them a longer version, give them bonus content, give them an ad free version.
[Lately isn’t] doing what our sister show, The Decibel, does — which reports on news. [Lately] makes a different type of invitation: it says, ‘hey, we're doing this extra stuff. We are a thinky institution. We're smart, we're savvy, we're playful, and we've got our eyes on the horizon.’ And if you're not a subscriber, I think it says, ‘we actually could be part of your life more so than we already are’.
KL: What's interesting to me is that for Canadian newspapers, podcasting isn't necessarily new for them at this point. How do you think about newspapers existing in the world? Comparing that to the podcast industry, how do you see them playing out together?
Well, I notice with my undergrad students, a lot of the time, they're very confident and casual referencing information that they got from places like TikTok. They are using socials as a place to find information.
So I think, newspapers, business magazines, I think of the economist shows, I think of all the great shows Bloomberg has, are trying to make sure that they are where their potential readers are, or are going to come from.
I'm thinking about the fact that people have been saying [newspapers are] dying for years. They are. But they're sort of evolving. It took two graduate level economics classes for me to touch the “report on business” section. Maybe that was me at that point in my life, but I didn't see myself there. I didn't see how it related to my life or why it was important.
And to look back and be like, ‘I get to be a freelancer for that section,’ is fascinating and very special to me because I think what the Globe and Mail is saying through the show is these issues matter for everyone. That's what we're trying to say at Lately.
KL: Something that's been really interesting to me is that more journalists seem to be starting their own podcasts and even independently doing so.
One of the biggest examples that I'm always impressed by is the Harbinger Media Network. They have over 70 shows on their network, a bunch from a variety of Canadian journalists that have their own podcasts from across the country. They might be freelancers, they might be columnists. They might work for certain institutions, but it seems that they have just decided to report on the stuff that they want to report on without the overarching eye of a newsroom editor.
VB: I think what I'm hearing you say is more latitude, more freedom.
I've worked at a couple of think tanks in my day and I think there's this very academic, traditional way about thinking about the 80 page paper, then you write an 800 word op ed, and you try to shop that around. I've seen the reverse work way more effectively, which is maybe the eight tweet thread turns into an 800 word piece. You get a lot of bites, you do a few interviews, it starts to coalesce, people reach out, suddenly boom, you have this sick research paper idea that meets the moment and is so much more clarified. So there's thinking about audio as this way to culminate a story. But there's also audio as a way to develop concepts.
You might have noticed, when it's being appropriate [Lately] actually gets added to a news story — Globe and Mail editorials that linked back to Lately.
It gives the show a little bit of legs, but it says to you as a reader, ‘if you're interested in these ideas, here's how to spend more time with the Globe and Mail’. A lot of it is related to time and attention and how we're getting pulled in a lot of places. You want to create options.
I think there's this idea that in order to talk about serious and important things, you actually have to be boring. That's something that I've never ascribed to. You can do serious, important things and speak about them in a way that has some energy and some humanness.
KL: On that note, I want to throw some stats at you. So, last year comedy and true crime podcasts kept growing as the top genres of podcasts. News podcasts actually declined in popularity over the last year.
What are you sensing from Canadian audiences about how they want to consume news?
VB: Look, I mean the news also sucks, right? One of the through lines of Lately is a lot of things suck, and that's not intentional.
So why are people turning away from the ‘Capital N News’? My speculation would be that some of the time it feels it's not something you want to allocate your leisure time to because of what it tends to be. Even in Canada, the productivity crisis, this inflationary period, all the ways we're kind of tricked and trapped and scammed when we're trying to shop. Buying groceries for our family, buying a gift, doing something online. It doesn't feel good. It just pisses you off so much you're like, God damn, I don't want to read about this at all.
But that's where I see a lot of Lately's value because we're always chatting about trends – who gets to decide what a trend is. I'm increasingly seeing Reddit used as a source, and I'm actually very interested in that. I think [the podcast] allows us to occupy a very unique space that I think is super complimentary.
I think as learners, increasingly people are seeking audio that's complimentary to more traditional texts, and learners respond really well to that. When I was teaching in the pandemic, my students loved that because I'd be like, ‘just go outside on a walk, listen to this show, do this formal reading, look at this blog, this academic article, and that's what's going to get you through our next lecture’.
I'm also trying to present to my students to expose yourself to all sorts of places. If you want to be able to think, audio needs to be part of that balanced diet.
What Vass is loving:
Check out this Canadian Indie: Playing House
Keeping your relationship sexy and secure.
Married hosts Kolter Bouchard and Dominique Bouchard blend comedy and relationship wisdom to ensure your love life brings the best life. Prepare for a journey brimming with laughter, love, and invaluable insights into the world of relationships.
True North Podcast Feature: The Red Gaze
Movies and TV shows dissected through an Indigenous lens.
Native classics like Thunderheart and Little Big Man, plus media that deserves a starquilt for being Rez movie classics, such as Urban Cowboy.
Feel like supporting Pod the North?
Share your commentary and Canadian podcasting news! Leave a comment on Substack or reply directly to the newsletter email!
If you’re feeling generous, support Pod the North financially! Become an on-going paid subscriber on Substack, buy me a coffee, or buy an ad!
Listen to Pod the North’s flagship podcast, Canardian, and rate it five stars!
What’s going on in Canada’s podcast ecosystem:
New Releases:
Aug 16, 2024 — The Breach Show has returned with a brand new season! The show analysizes politics and social movements in Canada. The premiere episode featured an interview with Migrant Workers Alliance for Change about immigrant bashing, the bipartisan project to exploit migrant labour, and the federal governments backtracking on giving status to undocumented people.
Aug 17, 2024 — Fellow Brantford local and radio announcer, Lisa MacNeill, has independently launched her own true crime podcast, Unlawful Intentions: Murder, Motives and Justice. The show explores “the most shocking, harrowing and gruesome murders across North America”.
Aug 22, 2024 — The Sound Off Podcast Network has launched three new podcasts: The Shurman Report, The Master Communicator, and The Mental Approach! ‘Shurman’ joins talk radio veteran Peter Shurman for conversations about politics, technology, and world events, Master Communicator promotes itself as a weekly masterclass in leadership communication, and The Mental Approach explores the power of mindfulness in youth sports. [HT Broadcast Dialogue]
Aug 28, 2024 — The creators of the award-winning Parkdale Haunt have announced their new podcast, “Woodbine”, a supernatural mystery coming this fall. Keep your eyes peeled for this one!
Sep 2, 2024 — The fourth season of Matriarch Movement, “Imagining Indigenous Futurisms”, in both audio and video formats! The new season kicked off with Deanne Hupfield, a regalia maker and powwow dancer from Temagami First Nation.
Sep 4, 2024 — The new celebrity interview show from Canadaland and Double Double, The Worst Podcast, premieres tomorrow! Each episode join filmmaker and recovering curmudgeon, Alan Zweig, as he interviews celebrities that he had no idea I booked for him.
Sep 10, 2024 — Crime Beat Most Wanted, a 15-part limited run series from Tracy Tong comes out next week. The show tells the stories of Canada’s most elusive fugitives who are still at-large. [HT Broadcast Dialogue]
You should know…
Jeopardy champ, The Backbench host, and all-around cool human, Mattea Roach, has added a new title to their resume: host of Bookends, a new author interview show from CBC. Congratulations Mattea!
Canadaland’s longest-serving staffer, News Director, and co-host of Wag the Doug, Jonathan Goldsbie, is set to take a leave of absence as he enters the Massey College William Southam Journalism Fellowship. Congratulations Jono!
Story Studio Network is growing! They’re currently on the hunt for talented producers, marketing experts, writers, business folks and more based in Canada. More info here.
Vulture Podcast Critic, Nick Quah, has released his picks for “7 Podcasts We Can’t Wait To Listen to This Fall”, three of which come from Canada including: CBC’s Split Screen: Thrill Seekers, CBC’s Personal Best, and The Worst Podcast from Canadaland.
Acast Canada has been onboarding French-Canadian content! In a recent post on LinkedIn, Managing Director Heather Gordon named titles including CAPTIVES, La Poche Bleue, Couple Ouvert and more. I’ll be excitedly keeping an eye on this!
Did you catch it?? I spotted Maddy Foley, co-host of 30 Going on 13 in a recent ad for KD, where she “cohosts” the mac-and-cheese brand’s “podcast”. I’m obsessed!
Canadaland has released its annual Canadaland Transparency Report. Find out what the company has been up to, how it works and where supporter money goes!
Events:
Sep 17-18, 2024 — Don’t miss the incredible podcast programming at the upcoming T.O. Webfest! The festival includes a two day conference offering panels, networking, screenings, and an Awards Gala!
Sep 18, 2024 — Looking for a podcast studio around Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario? The grand opening of Tiny Horse Film Studios is September 18th, where you can tour the new space and explore their new podcast sets.
Sep 18, 2024 — Co-founder of Pacific Content, Steve Pratt, is kicking off Lower Streets’ first Office Hours Event, meant to answer your biggest questions about branded podcasts. Steve is set to share his insights on strategies for earning attention.
For your pod:
Just Joe (relaxing on our latest canoe trip)…
Thanks for supporting Pod the North, I’ll be back in your inbox in two weeks!
Kattie
@Podkatt (Twitter, Spotify, and Goodpods) | @PodtheNorth (Bluesky and Instagram)
