Comments on: Naked Podcasting: Good idea?

By: Leslie Poston

Leslie Poston — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 06:53:53 +0000

Very much unedited here. Partially this is because my podcast Topics on Fire is set up as a panel with conversational elements to it, and partially due to time constraints.

By: Bryan Person, LiveWorld

Bryan Person, LiveWorld — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 03:00:43 +0000

Good post, Doug. I’ll point out some of what I wrote in a comment to Shel’s post that you reference — and I very much agree with you: Podcast editing respects the listener and is a good practice to follow.
Now, “editing” can take several formats:
* Removing some/most/all of the “uhms” and “ahhs,” as Paul Dunay used to do.
* Bringing up the lows and bringing down the highs — normalizing, Levelating, etc.
* Cutting out whole portions of the original recording for a tighter sound, to cut out repetition, etc. (as many professional radio programs would do for non-live programs)
* Trying to remove or minimize distracting background sounds, room noise, etc.
* Adding music/voiceovers at the beginning/end and/or intermixing stingers and jingles?
My own preferences for the podcasts I edit?
* Normalizing/Levelating is an absolute must when there are segments with widely varying volumes.
* Beyond that, it’s usually a question of how much time I have. I like to remove particularly egregious “uhms”/false starts in interviews, especially for my guests. It makes them sound better, and what’s wrong with that?
The idea that editing is somehow less “authentic” is nonsense to me. That’s like saying you shouldn’t reread your blog post or run a spell check and make obvious corrections (mixing up “their” and “there,” correcting a bad spelling, deleting a sentence or phrase you accidentally repeated because you were typing too fast) before you hit the publish button because it would take away from its authenticity.
Overediting can be a problem, surely, but that’s a whole other discussion. That’s just bad editing.
I understand that editing takes time — often much more time than I have, or have the patience to spend (that’s part of the reason I’m not podcasting regularly anymore). But for me, at least, putting out a completely unedited podcast is not the answer, because I don’t think that respects the listeners.
Guys like C.C. and Mitch can generally get away with recording good podcasts in a single take, and I envy them for that. But most of us really should spend some time polishing our recordings before sending them out to the world.

By: Adam Zand

Adam Zand — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 22:09:43 +0000

The best Naked Podcasting is done in private, but that’s a probably a better topic for http://www.boobik.com.
Doug covers all the angles here. We all balance a need for immediacy (“I’m here and I want you to know about it now”) vs. deeper reporting “Here’s the best way possible for me to communicate these ideas.”
I see merit in both approaches, but tend to lean on the side of editing and all that the term “quality” means.
For example, I’ll bounce from a bad CEO video on Vator.tv and will look around for the best “sounding” old Clash videos on YouTube. Whatever the content – Sound quality can bring you in or it can repel.
PRobecast was a blast to work on when I was at Topaz Partners with Doug, Tim Allik, Rob Capra, Todd Van Hoosear and others – we’d get topics, grab a room (and beers) and record for around 30 minutes. The show flow might have been lame (joking), but the production values were excellent and listenable because Doug took the time to mix and make minor edits (well, we did edit out that talk about the Pope’s policies, right?).
The social media and communication tools we use are great for instantaneous life/client/event streaming, but don’t forget about the audience that wants to listen.