Dial For News: When Crisis Strikes, The Simplest Technology Can Be The Best
What if accessing the latest news was as simple as dialing a phone number? No fiddling with apps, no Wi-Fi, no special hardware.
What if accessing the latest news was as simple as dialing a phone number? No fiddling with apps, no Wi-Fi, no special hardware.
As public radio barrels toward a future where digital listening is the default, we'll have to do a lot more than create new content for those platforms.
Microcasts are little audio shows that brief a listener on a single, usually tightly thematic topic in under 5 (or at most 10) minutes. They also typically require less production.
At WBUR, we often tease a feature story or ongoing series the night before it airs. It's a mental bookmark for our hardcore, round-the-clock audience. But what about more casual listeners?
How we used AI and geotargeting to turn WBUR's growing coronavirus database into short, localized audio content.
From car dashboards to smart speakers, radio is edging toward an existential crisis. Project CITRUS wants to help prepare for these tectonic shifts.
Keeping up with technological shifts in public media and across journalism is hard. We hope this list makes it a little easier.
Our latest microcast grew out of the urgency of the coronavirus pandemic. And we've learned a great deal from making it, every Monday through Friday (and counting) since March.
What's a microcast? Well, it's a term that's still being defined. But at Project CITRUS we describe it as a shorter, newsier, timelier, more ephemeral podcast.