A reader e-mailed to ask whether episodes of The Decibel news podcast should be labelled as Opinion on The Globe and Mail website. Particularly when the podcast’s guest was an Opinion columnist, the reader said, shouldn’t that be indicated somehow, just as when that columnist’s written words are published on the website or in print? And did the conversational format of the podcast give space for reporters to loosen their usual constraints of objectivity and balance?
The reader’s query sparked internal discussions about best practices and highlighted broader questions about the purpose of news podcasts and what news audiences should expect from them.
News podcasts aren’t exactly new – The New York Times’ Daily podcast was launched in February, 2017, the CBC’s Front Burner in October, 2018, and The Decibel in May, 2021 – but their numbers are growing and they mark a departure from conventional news presentation. The Reuters Institute’s “Journalism, media, and technology trends and predictions 2024″ survey found that most news organizations are “planning to produce more video, more podcasts (and more newsletters) in 2024 and broadly the same number of text articles.”
More choice is usually a good thing. But it’s important for audiences to recognize that not all news podcasts are produced to the same standard. Technically speaking, anyone with two microphones can produce a podcast, said Adrian Cheung, senior producer of The Decibel. But to produce a news podcast to The Globe’s editorial standards “requires copious amounts of work.”
When The Decibel’s host, Menaka Raman-Wilms, interviews a Globe reporter on a story they’ve filed, or a subject matter expert on a timely topic, it sounds spontaneous. But behind the scenes, Adrian explained, “for every episode we basically create a dossier prep document full of research, potential headlines, focus of the episode, the pre-interview questions with the guest either internally or externally, background on that guest. We spend hours compiling information to prepare for that 30-minute conversation.”
After each episode is recorded, Decibel producers – all of whom are journalists – fact-check and edit it, just as a written article is edited with an eye for accuracy, accountability and understandability. If it includes legally sensitive details, the episode will be “lawyered,” just as a written article would be. Finally, either Adrian or Matt Frehner, The Globe’s managing editor, products and platforms, gives the episode a final listen. “There have been times where we’ve said, okay, that one phrase could be taken out of context, so let’s dial that back,” or add more context, Matt explained.
Conversational cues that are expected and normal in a social setting might be misconstrued in the context of a news podcast, noted Trish Audette-Longo, an assistant professor at Carleton University who teaches digital journalism and reporting. Sounds such as “umm-hmm” or “mmm” that indicate a person is listening “can be read or heard as they agree with the person speaking.”
Similarly, when a reporter summarizes information conversationally, a listener might infer they are expressing an opinion, Ms. Audette-Longo said.
For news consumers who are accustomed to the traditional article format – written in third-person, with information specifically attributed to a range of sources – a podcast may be an adjustment. In a podcast, she said, “The reporter is doing all of that – they’re just doing it in a different structure. They’re doing it as a conversation.”
The sense of conversational intimacy is also a draw for podcast audiences. “It’s in your ear, you’re walking around with it, you’re on a bus with it. You’re with this person, or these people, or the story, in a way that feels really personal … I think that is a really key part of this medium.”
The Decibel gives audiences the opportunity to understand the work of Globe journalists, showing that “these are real people and this is their approach to their reporting,” Matt said. “We know this from a lot of media research: Trust in brands is not necessarily the highest. Trust in people still can be strong. And the greatest resource of The Globe is the talent of the journalists.”
Young people, in particular, tend to trust news podcasts more than they do published articles, said Jeremy Gilbert, a professor of digital media strategy at Medill–Northwestern University. Mr. Gilbert oversees the university’s Knight Lab, which conducted interviews with 45 young news consumers. He observed that trust seemed to increase with a sense of personal connection, something that could be a result of hearing a podcaster’s voice.
Podcasts are “also a bit of a chance to peek behind the curtain,” Matt pointed out. Reporters on The Decibel sometimes talk about their journalistic process and share details that didn’t make it into their published articles.
As for the question that spurred all of this: The Decibel does disclose the roles of its guests. When an Opinion columnist is on, they are described as such in the episode description, as well as in the audio. If an error is spoken, a correction note is added to the episode description (here’s an example).