The podcast industry keeps reinventing itself

This is Hot Pod, The Verge’s newsletter about podcasting and the audio industry.

Today is my last day at The Verge, and this will be my final issue of Hot Pod. I’ll have one more story coming out in the next week or two. But until then, I wanted to offer some parting thoughts on the industry I have covered so closely for the past two years.

I have this thing in my career where I always get to the party too late. I joined my college newspaper just as it was becoming clear that printing a daily no longer mathed out. I had a good year at the Melissa Harris-Perry show on MSNBC shortly before the beloved executive producer left and the program imploded. I missed the heady old days at Forbes when magazine writers would drink champagne on a boat on the company’s dime. Maybe I am a bad luck charm, or maybe I am just too stuck in old ways of thinking about media. 

In some ways, I think the same holds true for my time at Hot Pod. When I started two years ago, there was a lot of excitement. But despite the talent deals and M&A still happening, the anxiety was already there. And you know what happened next.

That said, the party isn’t over for podcasting. This medium is still in its infancy and is becoming an increasingly integral part of the public’s media diet. But I did come in at the end of a particular era. There was a point, now past, that it seemed podcasts might be the new magazines: a place where writers and producers could take their time to focus on in-depth reporting and storytelling. A lot of top journalistic talent flocked to the medium for that reason. And those types of shows are still being made (10 years later, Serial is still at the top of the charts), but as companies withhold their spending on limited series and time- and money-heavy projects, it’s clear that it won’t be at scale.  

Podcasting is affected by the same macro forces that have resulted in layoffs and closures across media. The investments have dried up, and every single project needs to be profitable in order to survive. In this way, podcasting is unexceptional. But even if the lofty promises of podcasting’s early days do not come to fruition, there are those shows that are adapting to the new landscape and making it work. I think of Normal Gossip, which manages to combine storytelling and shit-talking in brilliant form and publish often enough to avoid the drop-offs experienced by other seasonal podcasts. Or Unholy: Two Jews on the News, which has used its weekly chat format to feature genuinely challenging conversations at a time when they are really, really necessary. Or Decoder Ring, which has transitioned from seasonal to biweekly, much to my personal benefit. Even if the producers, hosts, and editors deserved better from their corporate overlords than what transpired over the past few years (and they did!), I am hopeful that creators in this industry will continue to innovate.  

Another thing that has changed during my time here is how you even define what a podcast is. Nick and I talked about this in 1.5x Speed a few weeks ago, but as so many other types of media cross-pollinate with podcasts — YouTube videos, audiobooks, videos on X — “podcast” seems to be more of an aesthetic than a format. That raises the potential for scale (and scale means money and jobs), but I hope (and am genuinely hopeful, not just because Jake is making me have a good attitude) that podcasting won’t lose its distinction.

As I move on from Hot Pod, I know I will miss this community. I have gotten the chance to meet so many of you at Hot Pod Summit and have emailed with even more readers. Not many media reporters get the opportunity to have a real conversation with their audience, and that has been a privilege.

And now, I have a whole bunch of acknowledgments to make: Jake Kastrenakes for putting up with my nonsense and letting me keep some sass in the newsletter; Esther Cohen and Kara Verlaney for their work making Hot Pod Summit such a success and also keeping my head on my body; Amrita Khalid, who did such an awesome job while I was on maternity leave and still slacking with me constantly about podcasting and whatnot; Mia Sato, for being a great pal and the best tech features writer in the game; Nilay Patel, for hiring me and figuring out how to make AI fun for a podcasting conference; Nick Quah, for having the foresight to make a newsletter about podcasting and continuing to answer my silly little questions; Scott Newman, Jenny Mills, and Jeff Weiner from work x work for letting me clown onstage and also putting together such an incredible industry event (TWICE a year? Forget about it); and, of course, all of you readers! This would be no fun without your insight and gossip.