Monday afternoon, Nicco and I sat down to record our first Podcast. We fumbled with the jerry-rigged equipment and weren't really sure what to talk about, but nonetheless had a fairly interesting fourteen-minute conversation about the future of internet radio. Here it is.
After we recorded it, I listened to it and cringed. The audio quality is low. The mixing is uncertain. The conversation is unfocused and rambling. In short, it was a lot like every other podcast on the net today.
Nicco and I talked it over. If the medium is going to travel beyond its current audience, I argued, it's got to have serious production value and professionalism. It's got to lose its navel-gazing pseudoironic amateurism.
"BUT," Nicco argued, "We don't have all the answers, so let's not pretend we do -- let's start with what we've got and go from there. Let's figure this out one step at a time and ask the world to come along with us for the ride."
It pains me, but he's kind of right. If the medium really is an important step in "citizen journalism," then people who aren't career-journalists need to be welcome to participate, and that means, to some degree, letting go and (I shudder) sacrificing conventional standards of production quality.
OK: I've got no idea where any of this is going, but I do believe the keys to getting it there are experimentation and iterative development. In that spirit, I'm swallowing my fear of self-indulgence and posting this here for the world to check out. As of now, EchoRadio is here, and we have no idea what we're doing.
