Editor’s note: Hot Pod is a weekly newsletter on the podcasting industry written by Nick Quah; we happily share it with Nieman Lab readers each Tuesday.
Welcome to Hot Pod, a newsletter about podcasts. This is issue 144, published December 12, 2017.
Twenty Seventeen. What a year, folks. We’ve seen more hits, more new companies, more listening, more technical experiments, more platforms, mo’ money (mo’ problems), more interest, more stakes, more anxiety, more anticipation. It’s been a lot, but the question I keep finding myself returning to is this: if the world ended, would I know?
I don’t mean it in any apocalyptic sense, of course. The query is meant in the spirit of transitions: to what extent will we know if everything we once knew about this scene no longer was? Writing this newsletter week in and week out has the tendency to facilitate a kind of myopia, and yet, despite the squinting, I am struck by a distinct sense that we’re smack dab in the middle of a…