All the points you make are totally valid and on the money, but I think the one thing you miss out is the great advantage of podcasts made by news organisations; the expertise and opinion is already in house, and the users will already have a relationship with these experts.

I think what separates the good from the bad is – INSIGHT, you have to be saying something insightful and it works best with an opinion or angle. Simply reading out the news, is not going to get you a gaggle of readers.

I laughed about your assessment of the News Hour — so true! They don’t have any video most of the time, so why not podcast it?

I’ve noticed a marked lack of fun in most news sites podcast attempts, which is one of the main reasons I think they don’t do well.

If you read my Tidbits post more closely, you’ll see I focused on how to do headlines-style podcasts in a way that builds site traffic and encourages loyalty

- Amy gahran

I agree that these top stories podcasts are probably the easiest to make, but I wonder about the return on investment. Specifically, does anyone really listen to these podcasts and are advertisers interested in them?

I’m not sure if there is much to be gained by these podcasts. But I think most news organizations should consider podcasting.

You wrote: “Amy Gahran recently wrote that newspapers should keep podcasts short.”

Well, not quite. I said a specific type of news podcast — the “today’s top stories” variety, ideally should be offered in a short version, since that type of podcast attracts news “grazers” who want to review what’s on offer from several sites in a hurry.

That doesn’t preclude news orgs from doing other types of podcasts as well, at other lengths. I’m just saying that if your news org is going to start podcasting, this is the first, easiest, and most basic type of podcast a news org should offer. And then expand your offerings from there.

- Amy Gahran