Localising audio slideshows

So far we’ve mentioned a fair bit about audio slideshows on a national scale – the BBC’s take on the medium, how other news organisations such as the Guardian and the Financial Times use them. But what hasn’t been touched upon is their scope in local news output.

Imagine my delight, therefore, when I stumbled upon the weekly vodcast created by the Melton Times – a local newspaper in Melton, Leicestershire with a weekly circulation and online share of approximately 60,000. The vodcasts are essentially a round up of the week’s news told additionally through relevant photographs. Much smaller, of course, in comparison to other national news giants who also offer a similar service (on a far larger budget I hasten to add).

© Melton Times

I decided to get in contact with the creator of the Melton Times’ vodcasts to see why exactly they were using audio slideshows for their local news output, what advantages it could offer and where the medium might be heading for in the future. The man behind the slides is Kevin Ross. He had some fascinating things to say on community integration, and the service that local newspapers have to offer their readership. The full interview is below, but I’d first just like to develop a few of his key points.

Kevin raised the interesting point of demographic: are younger generations reading local newspapers nowadays, or are they turning to the web for their news content? Perhaps one of the greatest draws of an audio slideshow for digital natives is that it is all there on your computer at your disposal for you to digest as you please. You can pause, skip, play back. It is all second nature to many, but perhaps a slightly more forward thinking approach to making news appealing to young adults.

The second key issue that was raised was the localising of news through vodcasting. Essentially, Kevin surmised, people buy local newspapers to see what is going on in their communities, whether somebody they know has made it into their local pages. Vodcasting in the way done by the Melton Times digitises this localism, and attaches further meaning by marrying the stories with locally sourced imagery.

A particularly pertinent point, and an area of expansion that should be monitored, is the fact that, with a community-based audio slideshow you have far more scope in the services that you can offer. Kevin mentioned, for example, a large Polish community within the paper’s patch. He hopes that, at some point, the Melton Times would be able to offer a Polish language vodcast to bring the news of the area to a wider audience. The scope here for this kind of development is huge and the thinking behind it reflects the progressive nature of audio and audio-visual media tools in online journalism; we have centuries worth of techniques behind us that we use to relay news to the populous. But we have entered a digital age now where opportunities to expand, explore and explain are abundant. My embracing new technologies, and perhaps adapting older ones to suit our current needs, we can offer a far broader, more manageable and appealing service to our audiences. News is becoming such a highly competitive industry that it is refreshing to see such forethought and care in even the most local of places.

You can listen to the full interview with Kevin Ross here:

Do you know of any other local news organisations that use audio slideshows? Let us know:

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