Like most things go, now that I had experience making a podcast, I found it to be a much smoother process this time around. The flow of information from my brain to the mic was more refined and organized, and I felt exponentially more confident with my words. The result was a better-organized podcast with more appropriate research to back it up and supplementary media to make it slightly more textured to the ear.
The process leading up to the recording was a slightly different experience than our group’s last episode. Being producer, I contributed more to the research and outlining part of the process. Also having some experience under my belt, I decided that we didn’t need to meet up to script-write before the recording, since most of our meaningful discussion happened over google drive or at the recording itself. Once the podcast was recorded, editing evolved into a group process, allowing the finished product to represent of all of our ideas, rather than just the line producer. We took ideas from the “Soul Pancake” podcast in regard to their inclusion of a snippet of a video. I thought that was quite engaging while listening, so I scoured YouTube trying to find some great supplemental media for our own episode.
Our goal for the episode was to address and explain Vox’s place in new media as “explanatory journalism”, which we felt was a good addition to the repertoire of topics covered thus far in Media Nouveau. We hoped to analyze the ways in which the publication has changed its structure since its launch and how it differs from old media in terms of its interactivity and the way news is conveyed. It would’ve been very cool if we had the connections and resources to interview one of the founding members of Vox—Klein, Bell, or Yglesias—to see their perspectives about the changes that Vox has brought about, both within the company and in the new media landscape. Alas, we are broke and connectionless. While working towards these goals, we also aimed to stay within the bounds of episodes created so far, and attempted to include several theoretical terms from Jenkins, Creeber, and Murray. The “key terms to include” list was quite helpful with this endeavor.
Once again, collaboration and rhetorical composition were skills I used and sharpened throughout the creation of this episode. Without collaboration, the podcast would sound like a poorly recorded lecture, and without rhetorical composition, the podcast would have no meaning behind its spoken word. I consider these skills to be strong for me. However, with this episode I noticed our use of the critical thinking and reading resulting in writing skill to be more pronounced. I scoured sources more intently, noticing how the author’s bias and background influenced their argument. Writing as a process was also utilized in this episode as we all had a more significant role in editing.
