A review of NL Hafta by Srijith S Nair
“Maybe have more stories on science and technology on your podcast.”
Hi Abhinandan,
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ContributeI have been supporting Newslaundry since 2016. I have listened to most episodes of Hafta and enjoy the work that you folks are doing there. I will just put forward some suggestions on how Newslaundry can improve. These have been suggested before, but I would just like to make a stronger case for them.
For me, Hafta serves two purposes:
a) Catching up on the latest current affairs in India
b) Listening to a good discussion about these affairs.
I think a lot of the Hafta listeners only want A or B and I suspect that is why there are a lot of contradicting suggestions in your emails.
Creating a separate podcast for the main news stories of the week like “BBC’s world this week” will solve this conundrum. Maybe call it ‘Laundry this week’ ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Furthermore, if you make it easily available on iTunes, Podcast addict, Google Podcasts etc for free and use that to advertise your platform, you will reach a larger audience of potential subscribers. This will also give you the power to tell the news that you deem is important, instead of focusing on what the rest of the media decide to talk about. This also absolves you of having to give a gist about the story before starting the discussion and saves the listeners having to piece together the story when you forget to tell the gist.
Secondly, I feel like NL Charcha, Reporters without Orders and Hafta are pretty similar in what they end up covering. I suggest that making Reporters Without Orders a deep dive into a single subject. This will again increase the level of discourse that everyone is having and also differentiate it from the other two podcasts.
Thirdly, maybe have more stories on science and technology on your podcast. This could be a part of Laundry this week. There are a lot of new developments around Climate change, AI, genetics, etc that we all should be aware of. Newslaundry should be a leader in this aspect and take the level of discussion and awareness to the next level among its listeners.
You folks are doing a great job. Keep on rocking.
Cheers,
Srijith.
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