If that's true, then it's a real shame. I strongly prefer written text to podcasts.

Maybe that's just my own taste, but to be honest, I believe, that it's just a much, much better medium for conveying ideas. With text I can process the content non-linearly. I can skim to get an overview. I can go back to previous passages and find them again easily even days later. I can take more time to reflect on difficult parts and less time for stuff I know already. I can quote sentences easily to share insights with friends...

I've tried to get into podcasts more times than I can count. I just can't get there. Besides the advantages you describe, I can "consume" the content SO much more quickly on a page than a podcast, even if I speed it up, which seriously degrades the medium anyway.

I feel like many if not all podcasters are my “friends” who I chat with, only I don’t need to speak. I don’t see why they should convey their ideas any faster. I enjoy whatever time we spend together and it’s usually enough to fill the time on my commute or washing the dishes.

I do listen to my podcasts at about 1.4x, with an additional feature to shorten silences (like pauses, and even between words and sentences) that bumps it up to about 1.5x-1.6x. To me, that makes them feel peppier without feeling rushed. (Compared to the standard pacing associated with radio broadcasts, which is what many podcasters aim for.)

As you note, this is used to provide distraction during time that my hands are busy but my ears aren't: commuting, running, etc. I suspect that at least some of the others in this thread are listening to music under similar circumstances. Or maybe they're just better than me about getting lost in their own thoughts.

For me, the experience with friends is similar. If I want to mostly hear their voice and feel close to them, voice messages are great, but if I want or need some information then please, just send me a text.

This ignores the fact that journalism is a professional discipline with established ethical practices that is practiced by groups of journalists and editors together.

Now there's definitely an argument to be made that it routinely fails to live up to those standards and that it has certain structural weaknesses and biases that need to be addressed.

But it is, overall, a system of professionals who consider their work to be constrained in certain ways that are ethically important to them and the world. Individual podcasters might adhere to some of these standards but as a field it has no aspirations to that. Same with journalists leaving established papers to publish on substack with no editorial oversight. They are not practicing journalism as journalists see the field.

These things might replace journalism but they aren't it.

I worry that hardly anyone believes this anymore. Most of my acquaintance seem to think more highly of their favorite youtube "news" purveyor than any journalistic source. In their minds, journalism stopped being a practice some time ago, and now there are just media megacorps that produce check-the-box ideological hit pieces based on which billionaire owns the company at the moment.

I think that actual journalism is still alive in the hearts of many of the employees of those companies, but it's really hard to convince anyone else of that when there's no differentiation in placement or promotion between serious work and shoddy clickbait.

Text had no special claims in truth, I'm afraid. And many of the best podcasters are in fact journalists. Greg Warner, Sarah Koenig, even Alex Blumberg...

That's not what I'm claiming at all. It's not about the medium it's about the structures, constraints, and goals of the work.

I'm also not claiming that podcasting can't be journalism, just that the structures necessary for it to be aren't widespread or generally highly valued by podcasters as a group. Plenty of journalists do use it as their medium but that doesn't make podcasting and journalism the same thing.

And I never claimed that all podcasting is journalism...

Journalism is a subset of (text/audio), and some (writers/podcasters) care a lot more about journalistic standards than others.

I would argue that podcasting institutions - npr and affiliates, gimlet, radiotopia - actually do have a lot of understanding and respect for journalistic standards, and also represent a very large share of the most popular podcasts. I don't think the two media are as different in this regard as you seem to believe.

I don't think you're wrong (I don't know enough), but it's quite the caricature of entrepreneur culture to say that podcasts are doing journalism better than the journalists.

NYT is one paper, from one city. The scope of print journalism is vast and probably defeats podcasts 100 to 1.

Many of the people doing the best work in podcasting are journalists, make no mistake! Many who either are currently or formerly were at NPR, rotating long time contributors to This American Life, etc.

For the most part, podcast reporting is closer to magazine reporting than newspapers. ('Democracy Now' is maybe the exception that proves the rule?) But given the survival rate of magazines at this point in history, it's obvious that podcasts are where you're going to see more innovation.