The Yukon Star Podcast
Returning to an old form
A couple months ago I wrote about what it takes to start a podcast. I guess I took my own advice, because here I am with a new show: the Yukon Star Podcast, a weekly local news series that I host and produce for one of Canada’s newest newspapers.
The Yukon Star emerged from the ashes of the Whitehorse Star, a 124 year-old paper that folded back in May despite community efforts to raise money and buy it. Nobody has been able to explain to me how closing the old paper was more beneficial to its owners—let alone its staff and readers—than selling it to passionate locals for whatever amount. Nonetheless, when the owners refused to budge, the group of would-be investors went with Plan B: bring over the editorial staff from the old Star to a new one, and start from scratch.
After the last issue of the Whitehorse Star came out on May 17, editor Jim Butler and his staff had a single long weekend before writing and publishing their first articles with the new Yukon Star. The first weekly print edition came out at the end of that month, and there have been several other significant improvements. The paper itself is gorgeous and well-considered. The online edition is free of the toxic landscape of keyboard warriors, who were allowed to comment on all pieces in the old Star (it was more a problem of design, as the comments seemed to have as much if not more command of the page than the articles themselves). The writing for the new paper is brisk, covering news (particularly municipal politics and local development) that nobody else is touching. And there is a spirit of initiative and freshness that is distinct from the old paper, whose storied history became, ultimately, more of a burden than a cause for celebration.
Of course, starting a new paper is hard. In Episode 1 of the podcast, Jim talks about how much work it is to build a paper’s story and photo archives from zero. A media institution is not just its reputation and its people—its a warehouse of physical and digital material, a network of sources, and a tested process for checking facts that make properly and accurately reporting the news possible.
Not only that, but starting a paper is risky. Most local news sources are shutting down, not starting up, in a seemingly inexorable unfolding of history. How can they possibly compete with social media and large national papers like the Globe and Mail or the New York Times? One answer, of course, is local buy-in—people who do read the news need to forego the latest Trump scandal or Toronto celebrity sighting in favour of a local story. Competing for that sliver of people’s precious attention is increasingly difficult.
The Podcast
That’s why in April I suggested to Max Fraser, co-owner and publisher of the Yukon Star, that a good local paper needs its own podcast. We do want local stories. But we often don’t have time to sit down and read them—we do have time during our commute or workout, however, to listen to something. Half an hour per week is just a fraction of that dedicated time.
And, in our saturated media and social media ecosystem where the problem is not too little information but far too much, we want a guide to what’s going on and what’s important. I like to say that, if a particular news story won’t be relevant to you in 30 days, it almost certainly isn’t relevant to you now. But how do you know? I think a local newspaper editor could give some pretty good advice on that.
Finally, podcasts work so well at delivering the news because they use the same form by which most people feel informed: conversation. A good conversational podcast features a flow and ease of discussion that a listener wants to be a part of, but doesn’t need to.
These are just some of the things we’re trying to achieve with the Yukon Star Podcast. The template is simple: every week I sit down with some of the writing staff to discuss that Friday’s print edition. We talk about what we think is the big story: getting in-depth, understanding a deep background that a single short article can’t do, and pontificating in ways that a strict written report won’t offer. We give an overview of what’s going on in the community, not just listing the stories but trying to find the common themes and threads that link it all together. We talk freely, openly, and inquisitively. And hopefully we leave the listener wanting to learn more—or at least better equipped to understand what’s going on out there.
We released Episode 2 this morning. I’d love to hear what you think.
Writing
Word counting my novel. This week seems like nothing happened, but these thousand words contain some very strong, specific progress.
Notes and Research: 8,274 7,365 (+1,089 words)
Draft: 12,170 (no change)
Discarded: 11,778 (no change)
Reading and Listening
Listening to The Fellowship of the Ring, narrated by Andy Serkis.
Reading The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber and David Wengrow.
Want a political nerd’s fix on the upcoming US election? Ezra Klein has a fascinating podcast conversation with statistician and writer Nate Silver.
Read a sobering, thought-provoking and resonant piece by Stephen Marche in the Literary Review of Canada: “Canada Daze”.
Quote of the Week
“This is what really happened, reported by a free press to a free people. It is the raw material of history; it is the story of our own times.”
― Henry Steel Commager
You will be GREAT at this. onward!!