Want to podcast? Create a gripping open.

(Adapted from my “Four Keys to Creating a Great Audio Interview” for the Orbit Media Studios blog.)

No one gets to the end—or even the middle—of your podcast without listening to the beginning. And a long, wordy, boring open is one of the best ways to ensure people don’t stick around for long.

One key to engaging listeners—especially people new to your podcast (and who doesn’t want a steady flow of them, huh?)—is to open your show with some of the most interesting words from what’s to come.

Here’s a great way to craft a compelling intro for a typical podcast interview:

1. A one- or two-sentence preview, beginning with the most compelling words you can muster, leading into …

2. A short (20-30-second) excerpt from your guest or guests—the most exciting, emotionally powerful cut in the whole show.

3. An ID for the guest(s), yourself, your show and your underwriter or sponsor—mixed, if you must, with theme music (which, based on Rivet360’s groundbreaking data, often will prove a tuneout; keep it short if you use it at all).

Here’s a sample (click to hear audio):

Here are more examples:

■ Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me! host Peter Sagal tells his not-favorite things

■ Barack Obama’s 1st biographer, David Mendell: Michelle didn't care for the book

■ Music journalist Jim DeRogatis: ‘Every system in this city failed … to protect these young black girls’

Tip: You can save yourself and your team production work by crafting your “live” intro (the one you read while you’re sitting with your subject), to include a brief pause where you can later insert a cut. The key is to write an intro that alludes to a question you’re sure you’ll be asking. If a stronger cut emerges, you can recut your first few opening words to match that clip and let the rest of your original recording flow from there.

Example: An interview with two veterans of the Second City comedy organization, Tom Yorton and Kelly Leonard. (Photo credit: Charlie Meyerson.)

Tip: Spare your listeners the waste of time that is “Thank you for joining us” or “Thanks for being here” at the opening. That just brings things to a halt. (Because we all know what comes next: “Great to be here.” Or “Thanks for having me.” And then a brief, awkward pause.) Thank your guests as profusely as you like—before and after your recorded segment. If you must thank guests—it is hard to resist—don’t wait for an answer; just move directly to your first question. Keep it moving, start to finish. 

How best to open a podcast

I haven’t posted much here lately about my work with the talented team I helped assemble a decade ago at Rivet (now formally known as Rivet360)—mostly in secret at the beginning.

That’s partly because, as I’ve shifted focus since 2017 to my award-winning Chicago Public Square email news briefing (subscribe free!), I’ve eased into a role as Rivet’s Vice President of Editorial and Development—or, as I call myself, Nagger-in-Chief.

And it’s partly because the company’s shifted its focus from journalism to become an innovative podcast consultancy—producing audio for others as well as shows of its own.

One of those shows, PodWell—a guide to becoming better podcasters—is hosted by my friend and colleague Terri Lydon, who was kind enough to share the mic with me in her June 6 edition (recorded May 3, 2023, when I was just getting over a cold or something else that really wasn’t COVID-19).

That gave me nine minutes or so to nag on one of my favorite topics: How best to open a podcast.

If you like this, check out more of my podcast guidance on Rivet’s website and elsewhere on this blog.

And hear more of my conversations with thought-leaders through the years on this website, in Apple Music, on Pandora or Spotify, via your favorite podcast player and at Chicago Public Square.

(Meyerson headshot: Steve Ewert.)

How to get your story on the air in Chicago

Do you have a story, an issue, a company or a person you’d like to bring to the attention of Chicago radio and TV newsrooms? Stand by for news you can use.

Ava Martin, Stephanie Tichenor,
Justin Kaufmann, Stacey Baca,
Charlie Meyerson
(Photo: Maggie O'Keefe.)

The Publicity Club of Chicago, once again taking advantage of my offer to moderate for food, invited me to preside over a panel of Chicago broadcasters gathered to explain just how to get on their radar—and why you’d care about aging media like AM, FM and broadcast TV.

Here’s how it sounded* May 8, 2019, at Maggiano’s Little Italy in Skokie, as I grilled ABC7 anchor and reporter Stacey Baca, WGN Radio Extension 720 host Justin Kaufmann, WLS Radio program director Stephanie Tichenor and WTTW Chicago Tonight assignment manager Ava Martin—exploring “Radio & TV Best Practices: Getting on Air in Chicago.”

Related:
■ Newspaper editorial boards: Cracking the code.
■ Publicists: Don’t do this.
■ PR’s ‘Dark Side’ not always a myth.

And check out more of my interviews with thought-leaders through the years on this website, in Apple Music, on Spotify, via Alexa-powered speakers, through your favorite podcast player, and at Chicago Public Square.

* Technical note: In an experiment, this panel was recorded using just two iPhones—an iPhone 4s and an iPhone SE—simply set on the table we shared. What do you think of the audio quality? Email Sound@MeyersonStrategy.com.

Tips for podcasters

Snappy answers to frequently asked questions:

What makes a great podcast?

Your answer’s as good as mine. Probably better. Depends on the interview’s goal. If you’re a funny TV host, and your goal is at least partly to entertain, it’s great interplay between the guest and the host, with lots of laughs or emotion along the way. But most of us aren’t Stephen Colbert; our goal is to connect our audience seamlessly with our guest and his or her insight. To that end, the less of us and the more of the guest and the guest’s wisdom the better. Some of the best interviews I’ve done have been those in which I just ask a little question and let the guests run with it. I get the first words (the words that explain why the guest is interesting or important) and the last words (to say whatever I want); I don’t feel compelled to be anything more than just a low-profile instigator along the way.


What’s the best way to structure an interview?

Depends on your intent: Do you want a full interview segment, or just soundbites? (I recommend going for the full interview, so you have that option even if you just wind up using soundbites.) Ideally, you script a strong intro and a strong close and insert well-scripted questions in between. Here’s a piece I wrote with four tips for creating a great audio interview. Here’s slightly more basic advice, created mainly for students.


How important is it that I not interrupt someone?
Very important. Makes editing harder. If you’re interviewing someone in person or on Skype, you can prep them in advance to watch for your hand gestures, like the raised finger to indicate you’d like to interrupt; or the “wind it up” motion to indicate you have all you need and it’s almost time to close or move on to the next subject. If you have a sense of how much you need from your guest, or how longwinded she or he is, you can coach them beforehand with guidance like “Hey, we have a lot to cover in a little time. Do me a favor and think in terms of (2-, 3-, 4-, whatever)-sentence answers, OK? If I need more on a subject, I’ll ask a followup question.”


What kind of questions should I avoid?

Yes-or-no questions. And plain statements that aren’t questions. (See my interview tips above.)

I can only interview someone by phone. How do I get great sound?

Each of you can record your voices using a smartphone as you talk over a landline. (Clap a few times at a recording’s start to create marks for syncing.) Then your guest can email or otherwise share with you the audio he or she has recorded at that end for melding with your voice. Key to doing this right: Make sure the phone is about 5-6 inches from the speaker’s mouth, preferably pointed at the corner of the mouth so as to avoid popping Ps and blowing Bs. Note: Some phones (early iPhones, among others; newer ones are more flexible) aren’t able to send long recordings. If you’re not sure, you’ll want to test or record in short increments (8-10 minutes) and so each segment’s not too big. Or give each user software that has no limits. (I use Twisted Wave.) Failing this—for instance, if timeliness is more essential than quality—you can use Google Voice, which records both ends of the conversation at phone-quality.

I’m interviewing someone by Skype. What should I do?

Use the best microphone available, ideally a nice USB mic attached to the computer. These don’t have to be expensive; the Blue Snowball, for instance, can be had for under $50 and it works fine. Failing that, an iPhone or other smartphone headset can be better than a computer’s onboard mic. But the onboard mic on most desktop and laptop computers can work reasonably well, too. The key is figuring out where the mic is located on a computer and getting yourself and your guest to sit as close to your computers’ mics as possible. It’s not always intuitive; the mic on some computers is in back of the screen, for instance. On some MacBooks, it’s along the edge—a couple of pinholes next to the headphone jack.

How do I get the best sound when I’m not recording in a studio?

Regardless of the tech you use to record, minimizing echoes is the biggest key to a professional sound. (Clap and listen carefully and you’ll get a sense of how much echo a space has. It’s often a lot more than we realize in everyday life.) For someone using a smartphone to record, simply draping a coat over one’s head can (look stupid, yes; but also) improve the professional sound of the recording tremendously, eliminating the sound of one’s voice bouncing off a nearby wall, mirror or computer screen. Another option: Unmake the bed and get under some pillows or a blanket. Or make a fort out of couch cushions.

How can I make the interview more conversational and casual to get good information?

If you're aiming for a talk-show vibe, you can achieve a lot by constructing and ordering your questions thoughtfully. As I explain here, it’s not an easy thing to write a script (or questions) so that, when read, they don’t sound like they were written and they don’t sound like they’re being read. Note: This isn't so important when you're in the hunt mainly for soundbites or quotes; in that case, your goal is to get your listeners useful, actionable information as frictionlessly as possible. They’re not listening for small talk. Either way, reduce the noise: The “uh-huhs” and the statements that repeat or foreshadow exactly the things your guests have said or will say.

Bonus tips:

• Avoid the urge to make statements, like, “So, that works pretty well for you, then.”
  
• Avoid the old reporter’s trick of seeming to agree with your interviewee to get him or her to keep talking. This is fine if you’re just taking notes, but it makes lame (momentum-killing) listening and difficult editing if you punctuate interviewees’ answers with things like “Huh” or “That’s great” or “Yeah.”
  
• Bite your tongue. Your job is to be a question-asking machine. Ask questions and then get out of the way. The easiest way to do that is to write out your questions in advance. You can always ad-lib, but do so knowingly. If you have nothing substantial to say or add, just move on efficiently to the next question.

More questions? Need hands-on help?
Drop me an email.

[Adapted from advice to a Meyerson Strategy client; originally published January 15, 2017, and updated in 2019.]

Newspaper editorial boards: Cracking the code

How do you get the attention of newspaper editorial boards? How do you get them to see things your way? Are editorials as valuable as they used to be?

Every once in a while, the Publicity Club of Chicago takes me up on my motto, “Will Moderate for Food,” and invites me to lead a panel discussion to address important questions like those.

And so it was Sept. 12, 2018, as I joined three of the Chicago area’s most influential journalists—Chicago Tribune editorial board member Michael Lev, Sun-Times editorial page editor Tom McNamee and Daily Herald editor John Lampinen—for a session media critic Robert Feder called “thoughtful and enlightening.”

Hear the panel’s answers to those questions above—and much more—here …



… or on iTunes or via your favorite podcast player.

And while you’re at it, check out my other interviews with thought-leaders through the years here and here. (L-r: Meyerson, Lev, Lampinen, McNamee. Photo: Matt Smith.)

Anna Quindlen, talking out loud in 1993

Approaching Mother’s Day 1993, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Anna Quindlen—who shaped a generation’s approach to parenthood—stopped by the WNUA-FM studios in Chicago to promote her then-new book, Thinking Out Loud.

Check out this audio—recorded May 5, 1993—to learn why she objected to the name of a Chicago Tribune newspaper section.

Listen to my interview with Anna Quindlen—on the web, iTunes or your favorite podcast player.



(Book jacket cover photo: Joyce Ravid,)

If your school kills your student newspaper—or you’re laid off—you can keep going. Cheap.

[Headline revised July 15, 2020, to include “or you’re laid off.” Because, well, you know.]

If you were asked to lecture 600 high school journalists and their teachers on the state of journalism, what would you tell them? When the Northern Illinois Scholastic Press Association (NISPA) invited me to deliver the keynote address at its annual conference, we agreed to title the talk “Journalism on a (Really Cheap) Shoestring.”

But the underlying message was more subversive: If your school kills your student newspaper, you can continue the mission on your own. Cheap.

You can see the presentation as a YouTube video here. Or hear it as a podcast at the bottom of this page.

Or you can read this essay based on those remarks, delivered at the College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn, Ill., April 21, 2017:

---

If you love journalism—learning stuff and sharing it with other people—odds are good that one of these days you’ll find yourself in a position where you’re not getting a regular paycheck for that work and you don’t have much to do. Maybe you’re on break from classes; maybe you’re a graduate looking for your first job; or maybe you’ll find yourself laid off or otherwise underutilized.

And if you’re one of those people who love journalism so much you just can’t quit, those are times you’ll want to know how to do it on a shoestring.

I’ve found myself in one or another of those categories a number of times since I graduated from college about 40 years ago. Including just a few months ago.

Yes, I’m vice president of a news startup, Rivet Radio. But here’s how being a vice president of a startup sometimes can feel: While you’re waiting to find out if a company’s going to become profitable and become an ongoing concern, the pay’s not always so great—and you can wind up with a lot of free time.

In January, as a new U.S. president took office, I was getting, let’s say, restless.

And so were some of my friends. One of them, a working mother I’d known since she—like you—was in high school, sent me a message on Facebook:

“Every time I looked at Facebook or Twitter today, terrible things were happening in our government. Is there any news source that is keeping track of things that are happening day by day? Just in a bullet-point form? … I need to stay informed, but I need to work, too. If there is a resource you have found or you are doing one, please let me know.”

Well, that’s basically a newscast, right?

I’ve always been something of a newscaster. For instance, here’s something I created at the age of 7.

It was delivered from my living room to another part of my living room by Beany Copter.

I went on to work for my high school newspaper, the Carl Sandburg High School Aquila.

For the first 20 years or so of my adult career after graduating from the University of Illinois, I was a radio newscaster—at an AM/FM combination in Aurora, not far from here; at legendary rock station WXRT in Chicago and later at WNUA, a now-defunct “smooth jazz” station in Chicago.

And in 1998, I made the leap from radio to the internet, with the then-new thing called “chicagotribune.com,” where I launched and produced a daily email newsletter called Daywatch—revolutionary in its time because (1) it was conversational (it read like a radio newscast, surprise, surprise) and (2) it dared to link to websites that weren’t part of the Tribune family.

For the last more-than-a-decade, across several jobs, I’ve continued that tradition of learning things and then linking to them on Facebook and Twitter.

So when my friend—one of several friends with the same concern, in fact—asked after a “news source that is keeping track of things,” I had two thoughts:

1. Hey, I know how to do that.
2. What have I been telling job-seekers and others with too much time on their hands to do?

And the answer to that question for more than a decade almost always takes this form: Don’t wait for someone to pay you to do what you love doing. Start a blog and Just Do It.

So, I just did it. I’m going to take you step-by-step through what I did, and how I did it. And as you’ll see, there’s nothing here you can’t do, too. We’ll keep a running tally of what it cost.

1. I created a blog with a working title of Chicago Public Square on Blogger.com and on Wordpress.com; I wanted to compare the two, both of which are free. (The hard part is picking and tweaking a design—a process that offers near-infinite possibilities and can be hard to quit.) I picked Blogger because I liked the interface better and was able to tweak the design at almost no cost. (I bought a private design, but I could have used one of Blogger’s free designs, too.) Cost of that design: $10. (But it could have been $0.)
   
   
2. I registered the name. ChicagoPublicSquare.com cost $12 a year from Google Domains.
   
   
3. I plugged my Blogger blog into that domain. Cost: $0.
   
   
4. I signed up for a MailChimp service that lets you send up to 12,000 emails a month to 2,000 or fewer subscribers for free. (You can manually create your email in MailChimp, or you can have MailChimp “scrape” your website each day at the same time and automatically send whatever it finds.) Cost: $0.
   
   
5. 
   I made sure a MailChimp “subscribe” box pops up when people visit ChicagoPublicSquare.com. Cost: $0.
   
   
6. I printed up 1,000 business cards—because why not? Cost: $28.65.
   
   
7. I began publicizing it. Basically, this meant telling friends and asking them to tell friends. In my case, some of my friends happen to be in the media biz: Justin Kaufmann on WGN Radio (to my right in the photo), media blogger Robert Feder and Larz, the mystery man who runs the Chicagoland Radio and Media website. But the principle is the same: Your friends can be—and can grow—your audience. Cost: $0.
   
   
8. Actually, I left out a Step 0: Get a lot of friends. If you’re not now building a huge list of connections on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest or wherever your friends are hanging these days, get to work on it.
   
   There’s a reason I’ve given my journalism students extra credit for every 20 Twitter followers they gain. Those connections are golden when you apply for a job or launch a new project. Employers look at your followings and see dollar signs: “10,000 people this person could bring us? Cool.” And in my case, my thousands of Facebook and Twitter friends provided the core audience for my startup. Cost: $0.

OK, so where are we? Total expenditures to launch Square: $50.65. That’s lawnmowing or babysitting money. And, as you’ll remember, even those expenses were optional.

And that’s it. Oh, one more thing: Sending to that many people every weekday has pushed me into MailChimp’s tier for paid customers. So that’s $15 a month. Total costs so far, as of April: $65.65 (plus another $15 a month to come). Still: Allowance money.

But here’s the good news: At least a few of my friends get it. They see the value in advertising in Chicago Public Square, because they know it reaches smart and involved people who care about Chicago and the world. And so I have a few advertisers and potential advertisers. They don’t pay much yet, but they’ve paid enough that I can say Square has turned a profit—if you discount the value of my work to $0.

And that work isn’t easy. I decided to make Square a five-days-a-week newsletter, beamed up and blasted out by MailChimp each morning at 10. I begin around 7:30 or 8 and work until MailChimp sucks up the website and sends it out. It’s an intense couple of hours because there’s so much news to share in this Era of Trump. But one advantage of having MailChimp sweep the site precisely at 10 is that I have to stop.

One of the downsides of working on the web is that it makes real one of Leonardo da Vinci’s most famous quotes: “Art is never finished, only abandoned.” If I didn’t have that deadline, I’d have a hard time moving on.

What is the work?

I’ve created some original content—like the first video tour of Frank Lloyd Wright’s newly renovated landmark Unity Temple in Oak Park (conducted with just an iPhone, a microphone and a friend to hold the camera), a piece on how to get hired in the media business, and broken news of a Chicago celebrity’s guest shot in the Dick Tracy comic strip.

But Square is primarily a newscast by email—need-to-know items from the nation and the world and the region, important or interesting for Chicago-area readers.

And how I find those items is something you can do for any subject—whether it’s a sports team, a local school, or your favorite element on the periodic table:

I follow smart and knowledgeable people on Twitter and Facebook. In my case, that includes many of the Chicago- and Washington-based journalists I know personally. But it also includes many I don’t know, but whose work I respect—like David Fahrenthold, who, as Harvard’s Neiman Journalism Lab put it, went from tweeting pictures of his notepad to winning a Pulitzer Prize.

For you, that could be experts in Ultimate Frisbee. Or reporters covering your local school board or your high school sports teams.

Whatever your specialty, follow the experts. Then let the app Nuzzel know who you follow on Twitter and Facebook, and it serves up the articles they’re sharing. And then you get to look smart by sharing them and commenting on them and eventually becoming more of an expert yourself in the process. And then, you have a blog that people who care about your subject matter will want to follow.

Side note: Nuzzel also lets you generate a free email newsletter, but you don’t have as much control over graphics and content as you do if you use Blogger or WordPress.

So, back to Chicago Public Square:

If the number of subscribers keeps growing steadily, the value of the ads I might sell—and the work I do to justify them—will grow.

So: What have I done that you can’t do yourself?

Nothing.

I’m guessing most of you are here because your schools value journalism; they have a student newspaper and teachers who advise you.

But I’m here to share a radical notion, students. The wonderful thing about this era of communication is this: If your schools cut those programs—and, sadly, that’s happening in a lot of places—or if you just find yourself not fitting in with the programs that exist, or just impatient to strike out on your own, you can keep going without them:

Start a blog, tie it to an email list, and keep reporting. (And you don’t have to do it daily; you can do it whenever the news dictates, or whenever you feel like it.)

You can do that … on a shoestring.

• • •

But before I sign off, a few words on how to do all of this well.

Writing counts. People know good writing from bad writing, even if they’re not writers themselves. Be a good writer—the most important skill of all.

Style counts. Even if most people don’t know AP style, they have an innate sense of what looks professional and what doesn’t. To anyone who’s ever read a book, newspaper or magazine, randomly capitalized words and commas and periods outside quotation marks just look weird. Develop your sense of style and stick to it. In doubt? Can’t afford an AP Stylebook? Go to AP’s website, search for a word or phrase and see how AP handles it.

Metrics count. (This is another whole speech.) Your subject line determines whether anyone opens your email; learn about your audience from those headlines that work best. And study what readers click on when they open your email; if the thing at the bottom gets the most clicks, your readers are suggesting maybe it should have been at the top, and in the subject line—or that the things higher up in the issue didn’t have the best hooks.

Remember: The sky’s the limit. Your blog and email services can link anywhere: To the competition, to your own work. To text, to video, to audio, to photo galleries you create. The hard part, as da Vinci might agree, is deciding what not to do.

Thanks for listening. Go out there, have fun and do good.

---

Hear this presentation as a podcast.