NPR is trying

http://www.niemanlab.org/2015/11/hot-pod-what-happens-when-npr-tries-to-sound-casual-and-podcast-y/

Hot Pod: What happens when NPR tries to sound casual and podcast-y

by Nicholas Quah

So I was excited to hear that NPR was launching a politics podcast that would accompany the current election cycle. An extension of the NPR Politics page, the podcast serves as part of a larger multi-platform reporting effort that will also include, to quote the press release, a Facebook group, a fact-checking network, new partnerships, additional beats (along fascinating lines like “data and technology” and “demographics”), and greater collaborative coverage across the country.

I love this stuff, but I gotta say, the podcast teaser that dropped on November 9 got me pretty worried. It was kind of a hot mess, suggesting a show that would be some sort of chaotic cross between the Slate Political Gabfest and the New Yorker Radio Hour. The teaser also made the show sound like it’s further burdened by an editorial command to be “casual, loose, and funny” — some sort of attempt to be, dare I say, appealing to millennials snake people. (Casual, by the way, is code for “cool,” and given that the definition of cool is simply not giving a damn, any instruction of the kind would be an inherently self-defeating proposition.)