James Cridland

James Cridland is the editor of Podnews and co-host of Podland News. Follow him on Twitter here. Follow Podnews on Twitter here. Follow Podland News on Twitter here.

How was Podnews different when you started it?
I started Podnews after a chat with a friend in a bar in Los Angeles. I was there for a radio conference, and he was asking me about the world of podcasting and where I got my news about podcasting - when I got home, I thought back about that conversation and realised there might be a bit of an opportunity (I've written newsletters before, and have been involved in podcasting for a long time).

The first edition, on May 30 2017, is still on the site - there were far fewer stories in those days, and I appear to have had a very staccato way of writing!

Podcasting has certainly grown up as an industry since 2017 - and has certainly changed since 2005, when I wrote my first RSS feed. There is, of course, a lot more money in the industry now, and we have a lot more data and information. It is, also, significantly more popular as a medium: which gives us all opportunities.

Any memorable pitches you care to share with us?
My address is on the website, and occasionally people send me things, which is a good way to help me remember them. I got a strange package including a police badge from one podcast, and I seem to own far too many randomly-branded t-shirts. The downside is that Australia, where I live, is a long way away: and so it normally takes six weeks for things to get to me, by which time the podcast has launched and people think I’m rude for not covering it...!

I've written a full article on the kind of pitches I like. The most important thing is to send a picture. You'd be surprised how few people do that. Tip: Podnews has a big picture every day, normally promoting the top story. If you want to be the top story, send a picture.

What is your day like? How do you produce so much content?
My process and the tools I use are listed on the website; and there are plenty of other "How I Make" articles from other people there, too (please send me yours!). A lot is reading, but also taking part in Facebook groups and other things.

Podnews is published at 7am New York time in the summer - but thanks to the magic of timezones, that's 9pm my time, so I've plenty of time during the day to write the newsletter. I normally walk the dog in the morning and do the grocery shop, before sitting down in the afternoon to start writing that day's newsletter. I normally tinker with the code on the website, too - building new features or playing with new ideas for stories.

I used to write radio commercials in the past (where speed is rewarded), so I'm quite fast at writing, which is a benefit. But I also have a lot of tools that make life quicker and simpler for me: I have a mantra that everyone should free up time for them to be creative, not push the same buttons every day. So a lot of Podnews is produced using shortcuts, cobbled-together scripts, and some automation.

How is podcasting in Australia different than it is in the US?
I think there's a feeling in the US that the country is incredibly far ahead on everything and the rest of the world doesn't matter: certainly that's the case in radio, and I get the feeling that for podcasting, there's a similar thought. I think that's a bit of a mistake.

The podcast industry in Europe is growing incredibly fast. France has been experimenting with podcast subscriptions, especially around audio fiction, for rather longer than the US - and has learnt a lot doing it. Places like Sweden and the Netherlands have incredibly high listening numbers: partially because almost everyone there speaks English, so they have a great choice of content both locally and from other countries.

In Asia, places like Singapore and South Korea are still dominated by reheated radio shows, and I think the presence of those in the charts is a good indication that the market in those countries has a fair way to grow. I'm helping organise Radiodays Asia in early September in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and look forward to learning more about local markets there.

And Australia? I'm also helping organise the Sydney part of Podcast Day 24, so I'm quite into the Australian podcast market at the moment. We've a strong public service broadcaster here, but also strong commercial broadcasters and indie producers too, and I find the quality of the podcasts being made here are very strong. Podcasting here is more popular, by some counts, than the US, too.

What newsletters do you subscribe to?
I hope I subscribe to all of them, but whisk through most very fast (I send them to my RSS reader rather than email).

Different newsletters do different things. Some newsletters, like the EarBuds Podcast Collective, are a curated list of episodes of shows that are specifically chosen to focus on particular themes - and there's no requirement for them to be "new". I like that in a podcast newsletter.

At Podnews, I focus on new shows, or those that are newsworthy in some way. I suspect that Podnews will reach more adbuyers and podcast executives, and an appearance in Podnews would be a good way to get industry people to listen and notice.

What advice would you give an independent podcaster launching a show?
Please don't call your podcast Real Talk. There are 1,719 shows called that. More seriously, think carefully about giving your show a non-obvious name. If it's about naked supermarket shopping, then call it "Naked Supermarket Shopping" - you'll do so much better than someone else's show called "The Dangly Grocery Dash". Sorry if you're eating.

What’s a podcast you love that not enough people know about?
There's this amazing podcast about this guy who's in prison for killing a girl, except he might not have killed the girl, except he might have done, and it's amazing, you should take a listen, it's called Serial. Have you heard of it? It's amazing. Why is nobody talking about this podcast?

Other than that - I loved a podcast about my home town of Brisbane, called "Brisbane is Weird". I keep trying to get them to make more episodes, and while it's now fallen off Apple Podcasts for some reason, it's still available on some other podcast apps and worth a listen.

And finally, the surreal comic sketch show The John Dredge Nothing To Do With Anything Show, which if you're a fan of Monty Python (the funny bits of Monty Python, not the unfunny bits) then you'll love.

Thanks, James!