Podcasts vs. text blogs

This entry was posted in Writing and tagged podcasts writing on by

It probably won’t surprise you that I’m a fan of text blogs. It wouldn’t surprise me if many of you are too, since my target audience here is writers. There are some podcasts with excellent content, but I rarely have the patience for them. Music podcasts are an exception. If an essential part of the content is musical, words don’t do the job. A podcast that interviews interesting people has a justification, though transcripts mostly work fine. But if the podcaster is just going to talk about something, it’s rarely worth my time.

The top podcasts (at least according to this list, which mercifully starts with #1 instead of starting with #100 and making me scroll to the bottom) are a mix of news, interviews, and commentary. No doubt they include a lot of interesting material, but it’s so time-consuming!

Let’s look at a few of the reasons why text blogs are better than podcasts:

  1. Text makes better use of your time. The large majority of people can take in written text faster than spoken words.
  2. It’s easier to re-check text. If something sounds dubious, you can go back and re-read it to make sure you understood it. You can verify a fact and then come back. It’s possible to do this with the spoken word, but it’s harder.
  3. Written words are more broadly accessible. Text-to-speech software and translators help those with difficulty reading. Speech-to-text is harder and less reliable. Accents don’t get in the way with text.
  4. Text can include links to sources. Try to attach a hyperlink to a sentence in a podcast.
  5. Text posts are easier to skim and search. Let’s say you remember that a recent article in a blog mentioned something interesting, but you don’t remember which article. You can bring each recent post up and read the beginning or search it for key words. Podcasts aren’t searchable.
  6. It’s easier to read text objectively. Speakers and writers play on the listener’s emotions, slip past important points they don’t want noticed, and use loaded words without being noticed. It’s easier to notice these tricks in a text piece.
  7. Text pieces are easier to cite. If I link to a text article to support a point, interested people can look at it and find the relevant information quickly. If I link to a half-hour podcast, it’s unreasonable to expect anyone to listen through the whole thing to verify one point.
  8. You can use images very effectively with text. A strong image or two with an article drives the point home, and it remains in the reader’s sight. You can’t use images in an audio-only podcast, and a vlog (which I’m treating as a type of podcast for this article) can’t just keep one image up for long without losing the purpose of video.

Blogging is alive and well. Blogs are a great way to keep up with your areas of interest while making good use of your time. Use an RSS reader application to track your favorite blogs, and you have everything in one place. Oh, and bloggers — please stop hiding your RSS/Atom feed links! There’s no reason to be ashamed of them.

Fiction, opinion, and cats (but not dogs); here are a few of my favorite blogs:

That’s ten out of many. I have to stop somewhere.