Monday, Jan 23, 2023 • 42min
18. How to master audio journalism - with Marc Filippino
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In this episode, you will have the opportunity to join Virginia Stagni as she interviews Marc Filippino, the renowned host of the Financial Times' most listened to podcast, "FT News Briefing." Not only will you learn about the ins and outs of becoming an audio journalist and mastering podcasting, but you will also gain valuable insight into how to follow your passion and heart in shaping your career path. Furthermore, you will gain an in-depth understanding of the behind-the-scenes process of creating a morning news briefing from the perspective of the FT's audio team and newsroom. This is truly an episode not to be missed for anyone interested in the world of journalism and podcasting.
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Transcript
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Marc Filippino
00:01
It's not something that comes naturally, as I said when I first started this job I wasn't as confident as I was and I needed some help, really kind of finding my voice.
Share
Virginia Stagni
00:13
This is the Talent Show, a new podcast series from FT Talent, a hub of innovation from the
Financial Times
. It's hosted by the under thirties for the under thirties around the world.Share
00:24
This second series is about all the aspects the FT organization is covering today: from editorial to development, from data to talent. I am Virginia Stagni and this is a guide we designed to inspire you to be the one driving innovation and change. Welcome to the show.
Share
00:47
Okay, thank you so much for tuning in another episode of the FT Talent Show. Thank you so much to all our listeners. It's a great pleasure to have today with us "the" voice of the
Financial Times.
And every morning cup of coffee is digested with our FT News Briefing with Marc Filippino. How are you, Marc?Share
Marc Filippino
01:08
I'm doing great, thanks for having me on.
Share
Virginia Stagni
01:10
No, thank you so much for coming and here we are really trying to get into the journey of FT people, giving a bit of career tips, and you have been a host for how long now?
Share
Marc Filippino
01:25
Three and a half years.
Share
Virginia Stagni
01:26
Okay, so you have been literally in our headphones for quite a long time. The FT News Briefing that we have been promoting on this podcast quite a lot as well. To give you of course an overview each morning, what has happened in the world and what is relevant, and Marc is the voice and is the host of - I think is the most listened podcast of
Financial Times
.Share
Marc Filippino
01:48
Of the
Financial Times
podcast, yes it's the most listened to.Share
Virginia Stagni
01:51
Yes, exactly.
Share
01:52
So today Marc, we are a bit reversing right and it's, I feel a lot of pressure, I have to say. Because with Marc we are doing a bit of like as well, audio courses and a bit of teaching about audio and how to improve, how to do this job. And today we would love to share a bit of your wisdom with our listeners and viewers.
Share
Marc Filippino
02:16
Yeah, that sounds great. And to be completely honest, like full disclosure when we talked about this before, but... I'm also nervous because I'm usually the interviewer. So this is a very new role for me. So we're going to learn about this together, we're gonna do this together.
Share
Virginia Stagni
02:29
So Marc: beautiful voice. But how everything started for you in the world of journalism?
Share
Marc Filippino
02:36
It's a great question. So in a word: slowly. I graduated college in 2011 from
Boston
University
and I was so interested in pursuing a degree in sports journalism that I kind of just boxed out everything else.Share
02:51
And then I graduated and I realized that there was just so much more that I wanted to do: government politics, general assignment, news... And I took a few freelance positions and then eventually started working for some local papers around
New England
, Maine,
Massachusetts
, the Boston
areas in the States.
Share
03:09
And from that point on, I was, I was interested in reporting, but I was more interested in doing audio work. I really want to work for public radio.
Share
03:19
So I went back to school, I went to grad school in
Chicago
, I spent a few months interning for a public radio station out there. And then I went back to Boston
and I got my first job in public radio at a station called WGBH
. And then I needed a job in New York
because my now wife was living there.Share
Virginia Stagni
03:38
Ok, love brought you to
New York
.Share
Marc Filippino
03:39
Love brought me to
New York
.
And I was desperate for a job and it just so happened that the person who was leading the US audio team at the time was looking for a freelancer, and then I was freelancing with her for a few months, and then their host left, just out of the blue.Share
03:59
And I they called me up and they said, "Can you be in
New York
as soon as possible?" I said, give me two weeks to get all my stuff, moved down. And I started this job on April 1st, 2019.Share
Virginia Stagni
04:11
All right. I think it's quite interesting what you're saying, but of course it's a bit of luck and circumstances, but also I think it's quite relevant the when a host leaves the show. What we know about the audience and the attractions to podcast is the relationship, the intimate relationship you make with the voice and the listeners, and how did you approach this? Like invading in a certain sense a show, and you needed to present yourself as the new host and build a new habit?
Share
Marc Filippino
04:47
So, first of all, I was very nervous. I had done some on-air stuff before, but I had never hosted. I think one of the things that was really beneficial to me was the show was really young when I took over.
Share
04:59
So when I came on the show had only existed for six months. First of all, there was a smaller audience than there was now, so there wasn't as much of a rapport to build up. And the host was only there for a short amount of time. So essentially I got to start from scratch. And I got to make a bunch of mistakes with fewer listeners tuning in.
Share
05:23
So I felt in some ways very lucky to have a lower stakes, lower pressure opportunity to make those mistakes and really find my footing because I wasn't anywhere as good as I am now. I really struggled with it.
Share
05:41
And I think having that safety net, knowing that it was only like a few 1,000 people at the time, that really helped me build my confidence.
Share
Virginia Stagni
05:51
I think this is quite key like being proactive and testing yourself out of your comfort zone is something that we are pushing all our listeners to do here. But just doing a bit of a step back, what does it mean to be an audio journalist? How is it different to work in a newsroom in such a different format and space? We talked about the intimacy where you build with your listeners, what's your view on that?
Share
Marc Filippino
06:24
I think the thing that is the most important is meeting and respecting your listeners halfway. Right? I think when you when you write there's an expectation that the readers will come to you with a certain understanding and a style that is very much of the publication. So like there's there's an FT voice in the paper, which is great, right? But you kind of know that you need to have a certain expectation coming into the FT, this is the way that the articles are formatted and they're more or less going to be the same every single time.
Share
07:01
I think with audio, you need to know that you need to appeal to as broad of an audience as possible and try and make it as accessible to everyone as you can. So for example, not everyone's going to read the market section of the
FT
. So the FT markets team knows that they can really go hard being as in-depth as they need to be to appeal to the folks who are really interested in markets.Share
07:32
Not everyone is coming to our show because they're interested in markets. They may be interested in markets but they may also be interested in geopolitics or they may be interested in tech, and our job as audio journalists is to make every single one of those subjects as accessible as possible, as if people are coming to these subjects for the first time.
Share
Virginia Stagni
07:51
And I think this is so interesting from an acquisition perspective when we're looking at the next wave of readers. And I think audio products are really an interesting way in journalism and journalism that is being a bit niche/elitist.
Share
08:10
And sometimes were seen as the
Financial Times
and I think your job is really this democratizing act to really make the content a bit more accessible, and thanks to the show notes, you get to then enter into FT world and the articles, and really go and delve deep into the topic. So I think it's quite an interesting strategy for traditional media like ourselves to really push for podcasts and productions in that sense.Share
Marc Filippino
08:40
And that and that is actually our purpose, right? If you think about the purpose of the FT news briefing and our podcasts in general is that we are in more or less, in so many words, a brand awareness tool.
Share
08:55
People who don't know what the
FT
is can be introduced to it in a really a less intimidating way. A lot of Americans don't know what the FT
is, so for a lot of them were coming at them for the first timem and then hopefully we can build a brand loyalty from the ground up.Share
Virginia Stagni
09:15
Yeah. And what are the kind of hard and soft skills and older journalist needs to have?
Share
Marc Filippino
09:24
There are like four or five fundamentals that you should really hone in on if you want to be good at podcasting. And I didn't come up with these; these are tried and true throughout the industries.
Share
09:35
But the tenants are: be able to come up with a good structure for your story, whether that's scripted or a conversation like this, like I'm looking at you and you have notes and like you have your questions are in a very particular order, and like that's great because otherwise conversations can go off the rails. So the first one is structure.
Share
09:57
The second one is field reporting, being able to go out and capture sound and set scenes and just have a good ear for what brings people to a different place.
Share
10:08
Third one is writing for the ear, which is very different than writing for print. If you've listened to my podcast, then you know that the scripting is supposed to be as conversational as possible, our segments are as conversation as possible. That's a skill, that's not, that's not just some... because a lot of people come in, you know, they learn how to write a certain way, newspaper writing doesn't translate over, it takes a certain mindset.
Share
10:33
So that was three, where are we now?
Share
10:35
Four is actually editing the audio, so after you and I - this is getting a little meta - after you and I talk, someone's gonna have to cut this down, so I'm trying to keep this as concise as possible, and make their lives easier.
Share
10:45
And five is actually voicing, so like I've gotten help from voice coaches and you went to a voice coach, others in this class went to a voice coach and it's not something that comes naturally. As I said when I first started this job, I wasn't as confident as I was and I needed some help, really kind of finding my voice.
Share
Virginia Stagni
11:07
I think this is so interesting in terms of like how you can talk in front of a microphone, how different it would be... we were in the cafeteria upstairs. Of course, I know I'm really paying a lot of attention to my accent, making sure my Italian, making sure my voice is on the right tone compared to yours, so it's making a nice sound. But I have a background in music, so it's a bit more like for me to listen and trying to tune in with you.
Share
11:39
How did you find your voice? What has been maybe the biggest challenge? What were the issues you find yourself having after re-listening to you?
Share
Marc Filippino
11:48
So you never know it from listening to the briefing or in a workplace environment, but I'm from
New York
and I have a very... When I'm feeling either comfortable or I'm emotional, my Long Island
accent comes out. I have a very strong Long Island
accent when it's unattended. And I found that a lot of people that I listened to and broadcast didn't have that kind of accent.Share
12:19
So it was something that I had to kind of weed out of me, which I don't actually know is a good thing because maybe listeners will feel like they're not actually getting to know the real me, I realize, but I want my voice to be as appealing as possible to as many people. So I don't want to deter anyone with my
Long Island
accent, which some people don't like that, they don't like that kind of accent.Share
12:44
As far as how did I find my voice. So, I just talked about what I do want to sound like. The way I found that out was just by listening to everything and everything, anything and everything, really. I mean I listened to
NPR,
I listened to top podcasts, I listen to people who do this kind of audio journalism, so business and finance podcasts.Share
13:13
A big, big inspiration of mine was a guy named
Kai Ryssdal
, he does a show called Marketplace in America. So, he was a great, he was a great inspiration for how to be relaxed behind the mic, and fun. That was a, that was a big, really big draw for me is how to make this fun.Share
13:34
And I think just taking bits and pieces of every person that you listened to, and implementing that into your voice was how I kind of came into my own.
Share
13:46
And also just listening to yourself, right? So, if you and I were having this conversation in the cafeteria, I would think about how I sound like in that moment. And I started to do this, I started to track myself in everyday conversation, and I would think about turn of phrases that I really liked.
Share
14:05
And I started to use those in my interviews or a style or a tone that I would I really liked, and I would try to implement those into my conversations on air. And just being very conscious of what I sound like at all times.
Share
Virginia Stagni
14:21
Yeah. I think it's like we need to go maybe in visit space and visit for me to be lighthearted, I think sometimes, because if I put to myself too many boundaries, I would be like, I am not a Brit, I'm not American. I can make and I make a lot of grammar mistakes because I am thinking and focusing a bit more on the meaning, rather than the structure of what I'm saying.
Share
14:49
So I think it's like just going with like, people will know and are listening to this and maybe we'll be open as well to you know the natural side of this. I think it's like making it feel very organic sometimes, this is quite an advantage.
Share
15:05
And you can definitely improve, and I think the more you do - and this is something that we say in any context, when we are looking at career tips for our listeners and early career professionals listening to this podcast - is that, as you said, do your market analysis, look at competitors, check them out, and try to copy and paste and make your own things that you have seen from other innovators, or people that you believe that are doing a great job.
Share
15:37
I was listening, and actually checking an article on
The Guardian,
and I just have here. Psychologists found that there is a real psychological reason on why we hate listening to our own voice.Share
Marc Filippino
15:52
Oh really? What is that?
Share
Virginia Stagni
15:53
It's basically but it's the fact that we there is actually a study that there is saying that the vocal coordination that we feel inside, it's very different from how he actually comes outside and however people are listening.
Share
Marc Filippino
16:13
So you think you sound different than you actually sound, you sound different to you than you do when you hear the taping played back to you. Is that it? Yeah, OK.
Share
Virginia Stagni
16:20
Exactly because it's actually different because this is a resonance box, that is very different from what you're getting. Hence, it's kind of a schizophrenic moment for you, because you will get a second voice, you don't recognize yourself, and that's why it makes you cringe when you listen to yourself.
Share
Marc Filippino
16:41
And it's it's true. I mean I had a hard time listening back to myself when I first started. I'll tell you that a lot of my guests don't like listening back to their segments after they've recorded them. I mean, it's...
Share
16:53
And I think this is actually a very good point that you that you bring up, that I had to learn to get used to my own voice and listen to it. So for a long time I was the only producer on my own show, which means I had to go back and listen to my own voice, and cut my own tape and like I had to be in it. I had to listen to me a lot which is like, which is really intimidating at first because most people, as you point out, don't like their own voice.
Share
17:26
But it was really good for me. It made me keep track of all the things that were working and all the things that weren't working, it really forced me to kind of be in it and notice the things that made the show better.
Share
Virginia Stagni
17:44
And I totally agree. I think it's like you just need to step back a certain level and just think about this as a project that you're trying to build and you are part of this product and you want this product to be improved. And I hate listening to myself, for example, I really, really dislike it.
Share
Marc Filippino
18:03
It's hard! And I think the thing, it's both, you know, you started off by saying that it's such an intimate thing for others, right? And it is, it's really intimate because you're in someone's head, if they're listening to you in earbuds or like sometimes you'll be the only noise in the room.
Share
18:22
But as a producer, as a host, you have to kind of separate yourself out and realize that it's not personal, right? Like you you need to look at it as a product, as you said, and not be as intimate about it as maybe it is for the listeners.
Share
Virginia Stagni
18:41
Younger listeners on the talent show, what is your best tip you would like to give to someone that would love to enter in your job space? So, maybe some of our listeners would love to be an audio journalist to host a podcast, or they are already doing it. What is your tip for them?
Share
Marc Filippino
19:02
I would say get to know as much about the field and try as many facets of the field as possible. I think for a few reasons, one you don't know what you like and what you don't like until you try it.
Share
19:18
I think, I think a lot of people are like, you know, "I really want to be a host". And some people try being a host and they hate it. They don't like the pressure, they don't like being the outward-facing person who accepts all the criticism, and being the product basically.
Share
19:37
And it's not for them, but maybe they really like producing, or maybe they like the the editing part of it, or the booking part of it, or the feel the recording part of it, or... there's so many different facets of podcasting, I think a lot of people think it's just hosting and being behind the mic, but it's so much more than that.
Share
19:56
And if you don't get to know those things, you don't, you won't know what truly strikes you as your passion. Also doing everything makes you a better audio journalist.
Share
Virginia Stagni
20:10
In the way you have built your built FT News Briefing - and that's my next question for you - what was the journey to create something like that? And second question on this, if you want, how difficult it is to take over so many different things every single morning, with that recurrence, constance, and early starts to make sure that the product is in everyone's
iPhones
every morning?Share
Marc Filippino
20:39
Yeah, it's I think there's a little bit of overlap in between your two questions.
Share
20:44
So building it, the most important thing was consistency, right? So consistency in the sense that I, for the most part, have been the host for the last three years, 3.5 years out of the four years that the show has been around, and I'm going to do a little shout out, we just hit our 1,000 episode! So like really, really proud of that.
Share
Virginia Stagni
21:08
But wait, because you just said that, can you make the intro for us?
Share
Marc Filippino
21:14
What date do you want?
Share
Virginia Stagni
21:16
Today!
Share
Marc Filippino
21:16
Good morning from the
Financial Times
. Today is Wednesday, November 16th, and this is your FT News Briefing.Share
Virginia Stagni
21:22
My God, I'm dying. Thank you! Ahah. OK, got it, sorry.
Share
Marc Filippino
21:31
But that's the thing is that I can do that from scratch. Like, it's not hard to remember, it's like three, it's like 12 words, but I've done it every day, that I can snap into it immediately, because there's all that consistency there, and that's how you make a good product, right?
Share
21:46
You show up every day, you let listeners know that it's gonna be a good product, and then you do the same thing tomorrow, right? Every single day you do it and you make sure that you do it for the listener, right?
Share
21:59
I think a lot of people get into podcasting because they want to be famous or like they it's like podcasting is like the hot new thing, but if you're doing it for those reasons, you're doing it for the wrong reasons: you do it for your listeners. And that drives us editorially, too. So, every day we get, I mean, dozens of stories thrown at us.
Share
22:20
I mean, we have the whole FT.com, FT website at our disposal and we have to choose three stories a day, four stories a day. And what we go for is, first of all, what's relevant, and what will help our listeners understand the world around them better. And that's what drives us, right?
Share
22:42
So, who's going to be the person that's gonna be able to explain those things the best, and now that these listeners possess this knowledge that they heard from this podcast or analysis - I guess is a better way of saying it - you know, what will they do with it, right? That will help them in their job, will help them in their studies.
Share
23:04
We've gotten a lot of feedback from students who say it really helps them in their studies, and that's what we hope for when we pick our stories. Is that it's genuinely gonna help people.
Share
Virginia Stagni
23:14
Yeah, and I think it's really true because it gives us an understanding and an overview of what's happening and then as I said before, you can pick and choose what you want to select. And I think it's something that we shouldn't be doing as the
Financial Times
in terms of maybe the app, or anything that we're offering on the content side, because we are not an aggregator and we are not a distributor of news.Share
23:38
But I think it's quite interesting that you can create these new products on new formats. It can be of course the audio side, it can be on the social media, it can be on the video side. And I think it's just a new way in for new audiences and diverse audiences.
Share
23:56
And I have a question for you. How to when you're doing your interviews right, you really have such an interesting overview and literally spectrum of topics that you're covering with your questions.
Share
24:15
And to be a perfect interviewer, how do you prepare yourself? Because every single day you go for markets, to geopolitics to cybersecurity. I understand having a bit of context about the news itself, like you read it and fine. But how do you build for yourself your own confidence in such a diverse range of topics?
Share
Marc Filippino
24:41
Admit not knowing what you don't know, right? So like seriously, I mean if you don't... This is the best part of my job is that I get access to experts who do this for a living and are some of the smartest people on the planet.
Share
24:55
And understanding the content enough to get me by until I get to the interview and be like, I don't understand this, Katie Martin, I don't... I don't understand this
Martin Wolf
. Can you explain this to me? Because 9 times out of 10, if I have that question, our listeners are gonna have that question, too.Share
25:12
And that's what I'm trying to do, and that's what my team is trying to do. Is try and think on behalf of the listener because what we're trying to do is make all this accessible to our listeners because sometimes it can be a little wonky, and there's a lot of jargon that goes into these things. What we want to do is think about what people might not know about the subject, and how to explain it the in the clearest way.
Share
25:39
And I do want to say that the only reason, one of the biggest reasons, I'm as good at my job as I am is because I just have a killer team, right? I have a producer. I'm going to do a shout out here. So you do not edit this out, please. Ahaha.
Share
Virginia Stagni
25:53
No, I won't. I really, my question was that was my next question actually, it's you're the front man, but he never band there's always an orchestra behind. So I would love to know who plays the drums, or the bass. So give me that.
Share
Marc Filippino
26:14
I've never thought about my team as a band. That's awesome!
Share
Virginia Stagni
26:17
I'll give you the band, I told your music background. Band for 11 years.
Share
Marc Filippino
26:23
So our host - I'm the host - but our guest host this week is Sonja Hutson. She's our producer. She just joined the team back in May. She's awesome.
Share
Virginia Stagni
26:35
Hi Sonja.
Share
Marc Filippino
26:35
Hi Sonja. She came over from public radio in Utah, and before that was doing some reporting in San Francisco.
Share
26:42
We also have our editor Jess Smith who is fantastic. She came over from public radio as well. She worked for
NPR
for a number of years and was, I believe based in Asia for a while, and she's got a good a great knack for crafting stories in a way that can sometimes if not tended to go off the rails.Share
27:07
And then we have Fiona Symon who is, the only person on the audio team that is longer tenure than I am, and, and she's by a long shot, she's been here for 20 years. So she brings a lot of institutional knowledge to the table.
Share
Virginia Stagni
27:25
What do you mean by that?
Share
Marc Filippino
27:25
Well, I mean, she just knows everyone, right? She just, she knows everyone. She knows the topics inside out and backward. She's a pleasure to work with. And not only does she work on our show, but she also works on Rachman Review, on one of our other podcasts. So she's splitting our time and still doing a fantastic job.
Share
27:42
And, for a long time I worked on this podcast alone, or with the help of one other person who was also splitting her time with other things: it was hard! It was so hard doing it by yourself and the show wasn't as good because I was doing it by myself, because it was a two-persons feedback loop. Now that we have a bigger team, it's a much better product. It's way better.
Share
Virginia Stagni
28:09
I love it behind the scenes. And can we just go into the value chain of producing a podcast, really briefly. So you said, you have this team. So you wake up in the morning, what does it happen?
Share
Marc Filippino
28:26
Okay, so you wake up in the morning and first thing you do - because I'm based in the east coast, on the east coast of the
US
- is I go through just a ton of emails both from my colleagues and also breaking news alerts and stories that have already been written, and it's my email, it's Slack and then it's open up the app and go to FT.com, and look at the front page and see if anything is broken overnight while I was sleeping.Share
28:57
And then it's seeing if any of those stories are worth us covering in the next day show. And there are a few things that go into that. Is it big enough for us to talk about? Is it big enough that it'll still be important the next day, because there's basically a 24 hour lag, we publish at midnight
New York
5 AM London
.Share
29:20
And if it is big enough that we need to have it in the next day show? What are we going to bring to the table that other podcasts aren't? Because we're not going to put something on the show just for the sake of putting it in the show. So those are the things that kind of run through our heads.
Share
29:34
Fiona sometimes because she's based in
London
take the initiative to pursue Asia
stories, stories out of Asia
before we wake up, and record with some of those correspondence because of the time difference between us. And then we'll wake up and she'll be like I recorded with Sun Yu, who's our China
economics correspondent or Hudson Locket who's in Hong Kong. And then we'll wake up and we'll have this tape and we'll be like, "All right, cool. So this needs to go on the show".Share
30:02
And then we'll monitor stuff that is happening throughout the course of the day. So sometimes there's a meeting with the Federal Reserve, or other stuff will break, developments in the war in
Ukraine
, and we'll have to find the correspondent who's covering that to come onto the show and talk to us.Share
30:23
And then we'll see if there's anything developing overnight. And what I mean by that is there's a lot of planning that goes on in the editing desk where they know in advance what stories going to go up at 5:00 AM in
London
. And what we want to do is we want to replicate basically be the audio version of the of of the front page of the FT.Share
30:46
So we try and match what they have and also, you know, see if there are any scoops that they've scheduled and get in touch with those correspondents to see if they'll talk to us. So I wake up eight o'clock in the morning and do those things and between eight and like 5:00 or 6:00
New York
time is when we put the show together.Share
31:08
And as some of it, you know, we do in advance, so like, we'll record something a day in advance and then hold that for another day show. But two thirds of the show at the very least, is done on the fly, in that day.
Share
Virginia Stagni
31:20
Fantastic. And the correspondents do come on the show, like recording from their homes, or they come in the studio.
Share
Marc Filippino
31:28
Everywhere.
Share
Virginia Stagni
31:29
Everywhere.
Share
Marc Filippino
31:29
Everywhere. So, I would say that maybe a third come into the
London
studio, or if they're in London
and they've gone home for the night, they'll record from home. We have a lot of people about a third come from the States
and a third from the rest of the world.Share
31:48
And we've had to figure this out using limited resources. So what does that mean? That means not everyone's gonna have a professional microphone in their house, so we have them record a voice memo back-up on their
iPhones
and they send it to us and it's it sounds good enough that it can go on the show.Share
32:06
And I think there's a little bit of understanding on our listeners parts that it's not going to sound as good as a studio-quality every single time out. But also there's you know, we're not we're not asking them to listen to, not professional tape for 20 minutes or 30 minutes, we're asking them to listen to it five minutes at a clip.
Share
32:27
So even if it's not the best tape, the content is there. So they're still getting the gist of it. And they only have to listen to what might be subpar tape for a short amount of time.
Share
Virginia Stagni
32:40
That's super interesting. Thank you so much for sharing this and I think there is a lot of collage, but then that goes on right at the end of it with the editor and to have a final product. I'm always amazed by the time commitment where you have every single morning and you need to create this.
Share
32:59
I mean, I see how long does it take to do such a job for an episode that then gets released a few weeks after, and I'm so surprised every morning to have seven minutes that are so sleek. And it's something that I just really wanted to share with our listeners of like the amount of work that you need to put into that the day before and maybe overnight, and that's why having different people on different time zones, and it's not the whole newsroom, but this one separate team managing this and I think that's really amazing.
Share
Marc Filippino
33:33
It's a lot more work than you would think goes into a 10 minute podcast. I remember I saw someone on Twitter who also did a 10 minute podcast, and someone would ask them, "So what do you do for the rest of the day?" And it's like, "No, no, no, it doesn't take 10 minutes to make, it is just the final product is 10 minutes. The whole day is spent making!"
Share
Virginia Stagni
33:58
Yeah, exactly. And you know like definitely the quantity doesn't make the quality or something. So, thank you so much for sharing all of these Marc.
Share
Marc Filippino
34:07
Yeah absolutely, thank you.
Share
Virginia Stagni
34:08
No, thank you. I really, really enjoyed this.
Share
34:11
I said a very special part of our challenge show is getting some of the former participants to the Italian challenge hackathon experience into the show, and asking directly to our experts, their questions. So today we have for Marc, Ines and Joseph, that are joining us.
Share
34:29
Where are you from Ines?
Share
Ines
34:31
I am Spanish but I am studying my master of management science at U. C. L.
Share
Virginia Stagni
34:37
Super. So thanks for coming here over in our
London
studio Broken House. What about you Joseph?Share
Joseph
34:42
I'm originally Australian, but I'm also doing a masters in International Development at U. L. C.
Share
Virginia Stagni
34:47
Fantastic. Where about in Australia?
Share
Joseph
34:49
Sydney.
Share
Virginia Stagni
34:50
Super, super, super. So Ines, would you like to ask your question for Marc?
Share
Ines
34:55
Yes. So why do you think people are shifting from traditional media sources such as newspapers to podcasts in order to get their news every day?
Share
Marc Filippino
35:05
I think a big part of it has to do with accessibility, which I talked a little bit about before. First of all, I think people are drawn to more conversational-type things than standard print. I also think that - at least what I understand from a lot of the listeners who have reached out to me and I've talked to through surveys - is that it allows them to do other things.
Share
35:26
So one of my favorite parts about the podcast being so short is that it's a lot of people use it as a measurement of time. Like, I can brew my cup of coffee or tea in the time that a briefing is done, or I know exactly where I'll be in my commute when the briefing is done.
Share
35:44
But when you're reading something in traditional media, that's it, right? You have to be in it and concentrate on it, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it doesn't allow you the time to do other stuff, too. So I think that the combination of being conversational and friendly sounding, in addition to freeing you up to do other things, makes it a good product for people to enjoy. Does that help?
Share
Ines
36:14
Yeah, definitely. Thank you so much.
Share
Marc Filippino
36:15
Joseph.
Share
Joseph
36:16
I was kind of wondering in a time when some people would say the media environment is becoming almost oversaturated, how do you think podcasts can continue to fit into people's news consumption?
Share
Marc Filippino
36:29
That's, I mean it's a... it's a question we grapple with all the time. There's so many podcasts right? There's just... there's so many! Why listen to ours versus another one? And I think that every podcast needs to ask themselves: what they're bringing to the table that's different? Say
The Wall Street Journal
or The
New York
Times
.Share
36:50
And I think the thing from our perspective is that we bring an international perspective to it with people on the ground all over the world. For other podcasts, there draw might be different, like for Marketplace or
NPR
their uniquely American, and they give an American perspective on things, and that's one of their strong suits is that they know who their audience is, their core audience.Share
37:10
So I think podcasts need to know what their strengths are and who they're talking to, and if they stick to those core values they'll separate themselves out from the crowd.
Share
Joseph
37:20
That makes a lot of sense. Thank you.
Share
Virginia Stagni
37:21
Ines?
Share
Ines
37:22
Yes, I was interested in knowing what are your views on the listening trends to podcasts after the pandemic? Because I have seen some research that says that they actually went up. Then there is other research that suggests that actually decreased because people stopped commuting to their workplaces. So the trends dramatically changed. What's your view?
Share
Marc Filippino
37:45
So I can't speak for other podcasts and I don't want to pretend to, because I don't know enough about how other podcasts are doing. So I'll just speak from on behalf of my own podcast and say that we've done well during the pandemic, right? And I think the reason we did well is because we were a financial podcast in the middle of a global financial crisis, right?
Share
38:09
So things when things went poorly economically, people wanted to know why and what was going to happen next. And a lot of our audiences, a lot of our audience is there in the field of banking and investment and I think people look to us as a resource. So I think in that way because we provided value in that sense, in a time of uncertainty and change, we were able to maintain growth.
Share
38:38
And now we've kind of leveled off a little bit, we're still growing but not as much, but I think it's because we're entering a time of more stability, which is funny to say because things are still pretty unstable, but more stability than things were at the start of the pandemic. And I think people will always want to listen to things to understand things better.
Share
39:04
So when you're in those moments, whether it's a pandemic or not a pandemic in a time of severe change, you're going to see growth in the in any medium: reader, listener, video... I think people just want to want to understand what's going on and they'll come to you if you give them a better sense of what's happening.
Share
Ines
39:21
Thank you.
Share
Joseph
39:24
And then on a totally unrelated note, I was sort of wondering how does the process go for you when you get breaking news that you have to include close to deadline?
Share
Marc Filippino
39:33
Ahaha. Oh, joseph, you ripped the whole show up scratch. No, in all seriousness, there have been times where I've had some real late nights, like trying to figure out how to fit breaking news into the story, and where it's gonna go and who's gonna talk to me, and just like 1000 things running through my head.
Share
39:58
I mean the night - I guess it was morning in Europe, but my night - when
Russia
invaded Ukraine
, we were on total standby because it was, it was going to happen every any minute.Share
40:09
And I was talking to our
Russia
correspondent - I'm sorry, our Moscow
bureau chief now, Max Seddon, who I was pinging him back and forth and we had recorded an interview earlier in the day, and he's just like, "Heads up, this could happen tonigh. So everything that we recorded earlier today could mean nothing. So be prepared to record again."Share
40:33
And to his credit, he got back on the phone with me at - I think it was like two o'clock in the morning, his time - to re-record everything.
Share
40:43
But I think they're it would be very easy for us to say, we missed it, we'll get it the next day, but that's not why people come to us. They don't look for day to stuff. I mean they do, but they want to know what's happening in the moment, or shortly after it happens. And I think we need to prioritize those things and fit the rest of the show around that, and not the other way around.
Share
Joseph
41:12
Makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Get one of the virtues of being an international podcast is obviously you can take an international perspective, but then you've also got to deal with international time zones and all the rest.
Share
Marc Filippino
41:23
It's tough, especially when we're talking to our Asian correspondent in
Asia,
because they There are 13 hours ahead. There's a little bit of trickery that happens where I rerecord my questions, one of my producers, Fiona will actually conduct the interview and then I'll re-record my questions as though I've conducted it, which is maybe a little sleight of hand, but it's the only way that it works. So we make it happen.Share
Virginia Stagni
41:49
Thank you so much for your questions guys, and I cannot thank enough Marc for all his insights and what he has been sharing with us and The Talent Show today. Really, really grateful.
Share
42:02
You're normally based in
New York
, so it was fantastic to have you here in London.
Cannot wait, actually, to meet you during the Challenge that we're going to do in New York
city
in a few weeks. So thank you so much guys, I hope you enjoyed it. And thanks to all our listeners for tuning in today.Share
Marc Filippino
42:17
Thank you.
Share
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Marc Filippino
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Ines
Joseph