Some years ago, I attended a superb cultural event. It was innovative composer Matthew Herbert’s musical remix of one edition of the Guardian newspaper. It was 25 September 2010 and I could not fail to hear lots of the audience remark afterwards “so that’s what the Guardian sounds like”.
Now, as glorious as Herbert’s reimagining of one day of the Guardian was, I had to stop myself from pointing out that, actually, you can hear what the Guardian sounds like week in and week out, it’s not as heavily sampled or looped, but it is, for millions of loyal listeners, music to the ear.
We produce around eight hours of audio each week in the form of podcasts, standalone pieces of audio and audio slideshows. Podcasts are, however, the mainstay of our output and our podcasts are leaders in their genres, including Football Weekly, Science Weekly and our Books Podcast. The Guardian, in fact, is an important part of the story of the podcast, as it was under our banner on a blog in 2004 by Ben Hammersley that the term for a growing trend in audio blogs, “podcasting” was coined.
Our first podcast success was the first genuine global hit when, in November 2005, we hosted the first series of Ricky Gervais podcasts. Not only did this unleash the comic genius that is Karl Pilkington, but it also launched a new kind of audio content. It sounded like radio, but not like anything you’d heard before then.
Podcasting was off on its first great lurch into the great unknown and the Guardian was along for the ride. Since then, we have created a unique form of audio journalism that gives voice to the best of what we do in print. We have won awards (we still hold the now defunct Radio Academy 2012 Gold and Silver for our Science Weekly acoustic homage to the final journey of the space shuttle), we have helped to grow some very fine broadcasters, such as the BBC’s Allegra Stratton and ITN’s Alok Jha.
Podcasting, of course, is enjoying its second gold rush thanks in part to This American Life’s Sarah Koenig with Serial and Marc Maron’s recent interview with Barack Obama (probably the only time President Obama will agree to be interviewed in a garage). Both of these podcasters have been in the game from the start and so too has the Guardian.
Our voice is evolving and we have moved from egg boxes on the wall in a back room in Farringdon to purpose-built studios at our new-ish King’s Cross headquarters. We produce a much broader range of audio, from audio long reads to audio drama, and, most recently, we launched our Guardian Live podcast, capturing almost all our live events for Members.
Why have we stood so firmly with audio? Well, in our screen-fatigued world, we know that audio has a unique ability to inform and entertain. We also believe Guardian audiences appreciate hearing the voices behind those mute profile pictures of our journalists in the paper and online. A picture can tell a thousand words, but a voice can communicate a lifetime.
Download the latest Guardian podcasts.
