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**(Richard Davies) **In an increasingly crowded field of Monday-to-Friday podcasts, The Daily from The New York Times continues to be the most popular show, with about 1.75 million downloads per episode. According to one estimate, the number of daily podcasts has more than tripled in less than two years. The competition now includes news shows by NPR, Vox, Axios, ABC News, and The Washington Post.
_ The Daily_ continues to be my daily habit, and here’s why:
The host, Michael Barbaro.
He’s my pal. A buddy in my ear at the gym, in the car, or on morning walks with our dogs.
I’ve never met Michael Barbaro, but he sounds like a genuinely curious, charming, and friendly guy. Writing in The New Yorker, Rebecca Mead calls him the “winning, accessible interlocutor of his news-gathering colleagues.”
He has soul, and that’s surprising, perhaps, because over the years The Times has been called “the gray lady," and is widely considered to be a redoubtable pillar of the elite, mainstream media.
Unlike the newspaper, The Daily is informal, even intimate, with moments of spontaneity and humor, as Barbaro lifts the curtain on the bench strength of diligent, hard-working Times reporters who cover their beats with dedication, humility, and street smarts.
Unlike many radio or TV anchors, he never pretends to know what he doesn’t. The Daily host is also an ombudsman for listeners as he guides us through the latest perplexing twist of the Mueller investigation or the unfortunate saga that is Brexit.
Barbaro gives us this wonderful sense that he’s hearing each reporter’s insights for the first time.
Same thing with Serial host Sarah Koenig, who, despite all her research and carefully constructed scripts, manages to sound is if she’s uncovering the story with you right alongside her. At times we think she’s bemused or even a little surprised as she stumbles across another twist in a complex, tangled web of facts.
The journey is the thing. We know where Koenig’s coming from and that’s a huge reason why Serial continues to be wildly successful.
Podcast producers can put too much emphasis on building a show with interstitial music, sound effects, and a multi-layered story arc. But the best storytelling on earth can stumble at the final fence if the narrator or host doesn’t connect with listeners.
And so it is with daily news podcasts. Successful shows need heart and soul as well as a good elevator pitch or a sense of mission. Without them they will fail.
The same is true for small, independent productions who have limited budgets and a relatively small following.
“I cannot tell you how many podcasts I’ve listened to where the host rambles and rants on about their life, their misery, their week, or their kids and family,” laments John Dennis in his recent article in Podcast Business Journal. “You can’t expect to grow, or even retain, your audience if you’re wasting their precious time.”
You got to have soul.
In addition to adding value or benefit to listeners, podcast hosts must be willing to be vulnerable, revealing something of themselves as they answer the crucial question: “Why am I asking you to share some of your precious time with me."
Richard Davies is the co-host of the weekly solutions news podcast, “How Do We Fix It?” and a podcast consultant and media coach at DaviesContent.com.