Hello friends! Jay here, filling in for Michal who is ears deep in producing It’s Political with Althia Raj for the Toronto Star right now. Like everything Michal touches, it’s a wonderful show and I highly recommend you lend them your attention.

The Vocal Fry team tried to make me write a big rant this week about transcription software being buggy, but I refuse to become the rant guy. Instead I’m going to attempt something thoughtful here.

I’ve been listening to a kind of podcast I would never normally bother with: two men talking to each other.

I’m usually a fan of well-written storytelling like 99% Invisible or Radiolab. I can’t stand that kind of opinion-having, but I’m also British and over in the UK recently there’s been a lot of… politics.
 

Like many podcasts that are about men having opinions, The Rest Is Politics does very well in the charts. It’s usually number 1 in all categories in the UK. Unlike many of the podcasts about men having opinions, it deserves that spot.

Why?

Because the two hosts are the right hosts for this topic. They’re political unicorns: two senior politicians from both sides of parliament who were unceremoniously expelled from their parties. Alastair Campbell of Labour and Rory Stewart of the Conservatives are high level political insiders who personally know the people they’re talking about. But they don’t have political careers to consider. They’re free to say what they like, so listeners get insight into the characters of the most powerful people in the UK.

That got me thinking about what makes someone the right person to tell a story. If this were just me and my buddy Toby trying to keep up with BBC News and sharing our opinions, then we’re not adding anything. The listener just hears the same conversation they could hear in any pub in the UK.

In my freelance life I send a lot of pitches, and the ones that get commissioned tend to be the ones where the venn diagram of “story I’d love to hear” and “topic I have a connection to” overlap, because that means I can bring a level of knowledge others can’t, even if that knowledge is just knowing who to call to help me understand the story better.

(Katie made me draw the diagram out. There’s a reason I work in audio.)

I have a notebook full of ideas that went nowhere because they’re shows I’d love to listen to, rather than stories I should tell.

I don’t buy the old media approach of being too close to the story if it’s about a community you’re part of. That’s a standard that’s usually overapplied to racialized and LGBTQ+ journalists anyway.

So if you know more than anyone about something, unleash your inner nerd and pitch that story. If you have a niche interest, embrace it and launch your geeky as hell podcast. You might end up outperforming the BBC and the Guardian. 

Also: Salary transparency

New York City is home to a lot of podcast jobs. Starting this week, employers are now legally required to post a “good faith” salary range in any job advertisement, but Laura Hazard Owen over at Nieman Labs has found that some media companies are really stretching the definition of “good faith.”
 

Laura did a round up of media job adverts in New York to see who is adhering to the law and found that many still aren’t posting a salary range. Of those that do, there are some obvious attempts to hide the real range. The New York Post, for example, has two reporter roles advertised at “$15/hour – $125,000.”

Other things that caught our interest this week…

Clare Wiley of the newsletter “The Audio Storyteller” did an excellent piece on the art of the pre-interview. Pre-interviews rarely make it to air, and I think that makes it one of the hardest skills in podcast production. Knowing how to skate around topics with a potential guest and figure out if they’re a good talker and what they’re best at talking about is difficult, especially when you often have 20 minutes to do that and a tech set up.

NPR just launched paid podcasts in 34 locations. To join NPR+, listeners have to make a donation to their local NPR station.

To read:

Radio’s Seven Warnings for the Podcast Industry (Part One) from Sounds Profitable. 

A new pay transparency law means New York-based music and podcasting companies have to disclose their salaries. Ashley Carman reported on it and rounded up a list for Bloomberg. 

Do you have the knowledge and skills to cover Atlantic Canada for a national paper? The Globe and Mail is looking for a reporter, Atlantic Canada. The salary is listed as “Group C - Reporter” which, if I’m reading the collective agreement correctly, means you would earn between $56k and $96k, depending on your level of experience.

Side note: if you’re posting a union role, just put the actual numbers from the most recent collective agreement in the advert. Nobody likes digging around impenetrable PDFs.

This is Uncomfortable are hiring an intern, remotely-based, anywhere in the U.S. for $18 USD/hour.

The ad still hasn’t closed for the podcast growth strategist position at Bumper. The job can be based anywhere in Canada, comes with four weeks paid vacation, and an annual salary of $120k to $140k. You have until November 11 to apply!

The Beat 92.5 in Montreal is hiring a part time commercial audio producer, if you’re bilingual enough to write snappy copy in French and English.

Weekend overnights are exhausting and depressing, so nobody wants to do them. With that in mind, vampires might want to apply for this position at CBC reading the news overnight at weekends on The World This Hour.


 

Or if you’re more of a daywalker, then CBC Kelowna is hiring a weekday morning newscaster. 

Technical production is how I got into radio, so if you’re someone who knows their way around a soundboard, Global News Calgary Radio are looking for a casual technical producer. Apply by November 17. 

Also at Corus Entertainment… Global News Radio 980 CFPL are hiring a part time news reporter in London, Ontario.

And the Centre for Humane Technology is hiring an executive producer for Your Undivided Attention. Remote, with quarterly meetings in the San Francisco Bay Area. It pays $120k to 140k/year USD.

Out There is calling for pitches on their next season theme, “Secrets of the Earth.” They’re looking for stories from under-represented voices. Pay is $500 to $1,000 USD per story, which is a little on the low side for an original audio story in the U.S., but as they say, “We strongly believe storytellers deserve to be compensated fairly, and we REALLY wish we could pay more. But we are an independent show on a shoestring budget… and we are working hard to grow the show so that we can offer higher rates in the future.”

Soundpath is the learning platform of The Association of Independents in Radio aka AIR Media. They’ve just opened registration for their 2023 classes. They’re generally between $300 and $700 USD. 

Next week, AIR is hosting two webinars on how independent podcasters can get paid. Crowdfunding for audio dramas with Tal Minear on Wednesday, and a podcaster’s guide to Patreon with Amanda McLoughlin on Thursday. Registration is $25 USD, but free for AIR members. 

And my favourite piece of totally bug-free software Descript are holding a free seminar on narrative podcasting.

Again, Descript? That’s the third time this week.

We’re working hard on some launches later in the month, but in the meantime here’s some weird art Katie saw at Value Village:

We want to hear from you! What are you looking for in your podcast news?

Thanks to Emily Latimer for editing this newsletter, and to Katie Jensen for designing it.

We’ll see you again on November 11. Until then, here are two fine fellows I met at a Halloween party, Switters and Cashew, dressed as the Cowardly Lion and the Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz. 

Having seen Switters' reaction to a man dressed as a banana, I can safely say that he is indeed a cowardly lion.

Yours in friends and fries,
Jay