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Summer 2008
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Stempra newsletter
EVENT REPORT: Podcasting and new media Speakers: Bob Egginton (Wellcome Trust), Nathalie McDermott (On Road Media) Dr Kat Arney (Cancer Research UK) and Andy McLaughlin (University of Bath) Eighty Stempra members gathered in February to hear from experts in online communications and new media. The tool kit of many press officers has expanded recently to include podcasting, online videos, blogs and facebook applications.The print press release still has a role, but these new ways to communicate offer the opportunity to provide context and descriptions of research straight from a scientist and can enrich content to offer visitors to your website a more personal insight into the nature of research and discovery than text on the screen alone. How these tools can be best adapted to suit your organisation's communications strategy, which to use and how to get started are challenging questions. The speakers shared their experience of podcasting and developing web content and inspired many Stempra members to track down a recorder and try it out. Bob Egginton developed the first BBC Online news website and now works for the Wellcome Trust. He began by revealing the results of the BBC's long-running audience analysis. Overall it shows that the younger a person is, the more likely they are to spend time online than watching TV or listening to the radio. He explained that this shift to consumption of news on the internet is set to grow alongside web 2.0 applications like YouTube and Facebook. Not content with information produced by a news agency, people are now generating their own content and the media has to keep pace. Production teams now invite viewers to email images and footage shot using mobile phones and hand held cameras; even the sound is broadcast in place of footage traditionally filmed by the broadcasters themselves. He reminded the audience to consider how they as press officers could make the most of this by providing information from within their own organisations and generating content specifically for the web. Nathalie McDermott is director of On Road Media, a social enterprise that delivers training in podcasting, video blogging and social networks to marginalised groups to help them have their say about issues affecting their communities. She played the audience examples of different styles of podcast to demonstrate their relative ability to draw the listener in and offer privileged information. The first was a slick production, it began with a bit of music, a nationless presenter's introduction and then the voice of a child who spoke about how playing football had helped unify her war-ravaged community and given her hope of a better future. This is what the audience really wanted to hear, but they had to get past the 'produced' corporate voice first. The second example had no music, just the voice of a prisoner introducing his cell-mate by number rather than name. He asked 'cell mate number 3' what he missed about the world outside, his answer was surprising and funny in a way that I felt privileged to hear it. I had been given access to a world I knew nothing about where the story being told belonged to those doing the telling. The point was, we are used to receiving information that has been packaged by a news team: it's second, sometimes third-hand. In a podcast you have the opportunity to report from within your own organisation using the voices of the people at the heart of it and in doing so open it to the public in a more personal way than has been possible before. Dr Kat Arney works in the science information team at Cancer Research UK. Every month she produces a half-hour long podcast that reports on the charity's activities. It is, she explained, modelled on Womens' Hour on Radio 4, because the programme fits the profile of the charity's typical donor and the magazine format creates a place for updates from the fundraising, science and information teams. Kat told the audience how she persuaded her sceptical boss that a podcast was a good idea and described the equipment she first used to put it together. Her success has meant the podcast has grown from a project she worked on in her own time and edited in her bedroom to a regular part of CRUK's communications to donors contributed to by a whole team. She explained how the regular timing and consistency of content has helped to build an audience – they know what to expect and when they'll get it. The final speaker, Andy McLaughlin works in the press office at Bath University. In December 2007, their podcasts of public lectures won a European Excellence Award for their success and international popularity. Andy reflected on how the press and web teams worked together to figure out how to actually put a podcast online (one of the first hurdles) and how the podcast series had grown since. By simply recording lectures and placing them on the Bath University website, Andy made a lecture series that was popular in Bath available to an international audience. From November 2006 to September 2007 the podcasts had a total of 188,000 downloads from all over the world. This served not only to raise the University's profile internationally but to help share the knowledge of its academics with a greater audience than a public lecture alone. Many Stempra members left encouraged to pick up a microphone and try recording an interview, or thinking about where podcasts might fit in their organisation's communications strategy. Links BBC News website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news On Road Media: http://www.onroadmedia.org.uk/ Cancer Research UK Podcasts: http://info.cancerresearchuk.org/news/podcast/?a=5441 University of Bath podcasts: http://www.bath.ac.uk/podcast/ Hazel Lambert
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