Back at the turn of the century, I was a small-bore “King” of media convergence. Or maybe I was only a Duke. (Go Blue Devils!)
Our big convergence deal in Tampa was building the News Center in 2000. It housed WFLA-TV, TBO.com and TheTampa Tribune newsroom.
Journalists migrated to our “Mecca” to observe how once-cutthroat competitors “made nice.” Reporters delivered news on the “first available platform,” no matter the medium that signed their paycheck. Radical idea then. Common practice today.
I retired as President and Publisher of the Tribune in 2006. A new convergence model was sprouting then. Its name: podcasting.
I entered the academic religious order for the next decade, never engaging and using this new media platform. I was unaware of the reach and power of podcasting. ( A podcast is an episodic series of spoken word and digital files that a user downloads to a personal device for later listening.)
Larry Gifford, co-founder of PD Avengers, introduced me to the podcast experience last month. PD Avengers is a global alliance of people with Parkinson’s standing together to demand change in how the condition is seen and treated. I am an Avenger in training. (See http://www.PDAvengers.com)
Larry is national director of Talk Radio for Corus Entertainment in Canada. He hosts the podcast “When Life Gives You Parkinson’s.”
After a Zoom meeting where I mentioned the topic, he invited me to discuss “When You Know It’s Time To Fire Your Neurologist.” I’ve done so twice.
It was a terrific experience. “I see now that they are very effective, new journalism form,” I wrote Larry about podcasts. “In essence you and Rebecca (his wife and co-host) created a warm and harmonious space where a number of voices were connected into a very well told story.”
In researching this post, I encountered Andrea Bernstein, an accomplished and versatile investigative reporter.
“I adore audio,” she said. “The pauses, the breaths, the catches, the little inflections that can say so much more than hundreds of words on a page. Finding a perfect piece of tape is like summiting a mountain, the whole world just opens up before you.”
“When You Know It’s Time To Fire Your Neurologist.”
You can listen and download from here: https://t.co/HDIHuT0u2m
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