To be “cool,” you need to have a podcast, not a blog. Or so a lot of podcasters think. There are certainly times when a podcast is more appropriate. When musical performances are the point — FilkCast, for instance — then a blog with links to audio files doesn’t work as well as an all-audio presentation.
But if the point is to present news and commentary, then give me a blog. Here are a handful of reasons why blogs are better:
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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:
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