More journalists are turning to podcasting to help audiences digest and discuss what’s going on in the news. Audiences have devoured newer podcasts like The New York Times’s The Daily, which gained more than 20 million listens since its launch in January, and Pod Save the People, hosted by Black Lives Matter activist DeRay Mckesson, which topped the iTunes charts at No. 2 (behind Serial’s and This American Life’s S-Town) shortly after debuting its teaser episode.
Although these are bigger examples, any journalist can start a podcast and start building an audience. While there is not much data available on specific podcasts, total downloads grew from about eight billion in 2015 to more than 10 billion in 2016. Pew estimates more than 35 million people (about 21 percent of the…