This week has seen the launch of podcasting on the Leeds Met News & Media pages. A couple of points need to be made - purists will probably complain about the use of 'podcast' when it's not episodic content and when the term is applied to any streaming/download audio.
Listen to a sample podcast in which Chris Welburn, Head of Women's Football talks about his side's preparation for Varsity 2009:
But the term seems to have become ubiquitous and generic, like Teflon or Tannoy, so podcasting will remain our term of use. Secondly, we have linked to sound files on the Leeds Met website previously, but it wasn't done in a particularly structured or user-friendly way. Working with Web & Multimedia (another successful collaboration between our two teams) we're now offering flash .mp3 files which can be embedded in news stories. We've already established ourselves as a leading provider of video in the higher educations sector via our Leeds Met YouTube channel, but we ummed and ahhed about audio for a while. This is part was due to the undoubted appeal of video when compared with audio. For example, if offered the chance between watching, say, a football match on TV or listening to a commentary on the radio, I'd choose the former every time. Assuming I'm a fan of football. Which I'm not. But, as we quickly discovered after adding embedded videos on our site, there is a downside. Video is labour intensive, requiring specialist skill and quality equipment. If you skimp on production values, you pay the price in quality. Our videos look great, and are professionally produced - and this takes time. We needed a stop-gap, something that would provide an interesting and worthwhile addition to text and video, which is why we decided to give audio a go. In a previous life I worked as a broadcast journalist, and knew that although you need some training to wield a Marantz and a mike, it's not particularly difficult to record and edit your own sound clips. Added to which, there are great free apps out there for editing audio - we use Audacity because it's err, free and pretty well-featured. We carried out a few experimental recordings and edits before concluding that it was entirely possible and worthwhile to add audio to our pages. I'd forgotten how atmospheric a piece of audio can be, and it's a great way of adding an extra dimension to a story. CN.
