Breaking News And You

There's an emergency. A huge one. News is breaking. That's... not for you, because you're a podcaster, right? You'll leave it to radio or social media to address it.

Why? Or, more precisely, why NOT?

If you have a non-fiction podcast, you might think that being TOO topical, TOO in-the-moment will hurt you. After all, you might think, people do listen to the archives. You don't want to sound dated. If you do an episode on, say, Hurricane Ian, as it happens, it's not going to age well.

But you can't worry so much about the "timelessness" of the archives. For one thing, the number of people who actually go back and listen to those shows is not all that huge unless you're "Serial," which you aren't. For another, if you do a good job, you can think of it as a historical artifact, like the airchecks of radio shows dealing live with 9/11. "Remember the hurricane?" Like that.

And, it's true, when news is breaking and changing fast, a podcast can't really keep up. But you can always issue more emergency episodes. And if you do Patreon or subscriptions, you can issue them as bonus episodes.

Look, if news update podcasts can be successful with news that'll be dated in a matter of hours, so can yours. Timelessness isn't everything.

Got a question about podcasting? Go ahead, send it to psimon@allaccess.com or tweet it at @pmsimon. That's what I'm here for.