Most newsrooms think of podcasts as products. Those products could include a series about an important topic with 10-12 episodes, or perhaps weekly conversations about politics, health or sports.
These podcasts could be sponsored by a local or national business, or they could be presented to a podcast network for advertisers to bid on. These bidding businesses place their ads on podcasts whose audiences match theirs. The podcast-as-product can produce revenue on its own — an easier journey for bigger news brands than it is for smaller newsrooms.
Until recently, the suggestion of starting a newsroom podcast has been measured against the number of available, willing resources and an expectation for monetization. For many newsrooms, it still is.
• Who’s going to produce it?
• How’s it going to make money?
What if there were another way to think about podcasting — not as a product, but as the content pillar that lifts everything else your newsroom produces?
Podcasting as pillar content
A podcast is both a show and the foundation of a content ecosystem.
In this LMII Report from June, the host of LMA’s “Keep It Local” podcast, Ryan Welton, described the newer approach to podcasting as a way to maximize the value of a single conversation while reaching and growing audiences across multiple platforms.
It wasn’t long ago that podcasters started adding video to their audio production routines. It made sense that YouTube (and eventually Netflix) could be home to video podcasts, whether the audience watched and listened, or just listened while they were folding towels or cooking dinner.
But, now, many podcasts are discovered the same way other video content is discovered: through clips.
How to develop a podcast audience
Regardless of platform preference, podcasters still haven’t solved the problem of how to connect their audience to that content. What’s worked best is to promote podcasts the same way we promote other things online:
• Short-form clips
• Articles and sidebars about the podcast
• Social media posts
A quick tip: Create a 9:16 graphic with your newsroom logo and where you want the audience to go to listen to or watch the podcast, and add verbiage such as “For the full conversation, go (here).” Add that graphic for 3-4 seconds to the end of each short clip you create from a longer podcast.
What you’ll discover is that your short-form video content drives more engagement on your social channels. It leads to audience growth, and as that audience moves down the marketing funnel, they’re liable to do other things you’d like, such as:
• Visit your website
• Read your special report
• Donate!
• Advertise with you
Even if your podcast never attracts a sponsor, it can still become one of your newsroom’s most valuable content engines.
Let’s assume that for a 20-to-30-minute podcast, the host and guest(s) touch on multiple topics. Each of those could be clipped into long-form video segments with their own headlines, descriptions and SEO/AEO optimization.
But also:
• A written story for each segment could be produced
• Multiple social posts (non-Reels) could be created for this single episode
What you’ll discover is that this “extra” content you’re producing per podcast episode gains an audience of its own through search or social, adding to your social engagement and growing your audience across all platforms.
The full episode isn’t merely the product anymore. It’s also the raw material.
One 30-minute interview can become:
- A podcast
- A YouTube video
- Seven to 10 vertical videos
- Multiple written stories
- A newsletter feature
- Quote graphics
- Social posts
- Shorts
- Reels
- TikToks
- Evergreen search (and AI) content
This isn’t to say that your newsroom has enough resources to pull it off, nor is it to diminish revenue expectations.
However, the elements created from any podcast have value by themselves, and can produce positive outcomes for your overall brand and newsroom coverage. Also, they can buy the newsroom some time in three ways, allowing:
• The newsroom to get good at podcast production
• The marketing department to develop a marketing formula to promote the podcast
• The sales team to develop a podcast program the market is interested in
Podcasts as content marketing fuel
There is no rulebook that says you have to monetize your podcasts. It’s not the only measurement of success. What if podcasts and all the extra elements turned into your newsroom’s most powerful content marketing engine?
Here’s the scenario: Your newsroom went live with a special report about housing. The newsroom is excited about the important journalism that was created. How might you capture extra attention for this work?
The reporter(s) could be interviewed for a podcast episode. The long-form audio goes wherever it usually does (Spotify, Apple, etc.), and the long-form video could go to YouTube (under podcasts). That long-form video could be chopped into 7-10 smaller vertical videos that have one goal in mind: Make the audience aware of and interested in this important story that was just posted.
Something super helpful about going through this process is that social channels provide pretty quick feedback. For the record, there is no good reason not to post these elements everywhere — and it’s most important to have a place on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok. Publish the assets everywhere. Every platform reaches a different audience, and every platform has become its own search engine.
How to get started
Most newsrooms will plan a podcast before any work is done. There will be talk about topics, about podcast length, about branding, the podcast set, about audience expectations, about the sales process and about promotion.
Many of those same newsrooms will forever be in planning mode, waiting for the perfect moment to launch — and that can be a problem because it’s possible there isn’t anybody in that newsroom who yet knows how to host or produce a podcast. There might not be anybody on the sales team who’s ever sold a podcast either.
Ryan Welton, author of the aforementioned LMII Report, “The best practices of podcasting in 2026,” explained that it’s OK to practice while all the planning is being done.
“My recommendation is to identify journalists who are interested in and excited about podcasting, and let them start,” Welton said. “Lean into the enthusiasm.”
That could include informal reporter interviews or full-length interviews with sources, easy-to-create episodes that would allow the newsroom to get good with editing and posting and doing the short-clip videos.
Most people are likely going to be bad at it until they get good.
But the audience is mostly forgiving, and because of the way the attention economy works in 2026, even the less-than-perfect podcast episodes, video, short clips, etc., will capture some attention. In fact, the more content that gets posted, even before the podcast product and process is perfected, the more data that will be gathered — about topic interest, about audience growth, etc.
Maybe that’s the biggest shift of all. Instead of measuring your podcast by downloads alone, measure it by everything else it makes possible.
The report is available to LMII subscribers and can be purchased by others through the Local Media Association.
Ryan Welton is a digital content coordinator for Local Media Association, and the host of the “Keep It Local” podcast. Email him at ryan.welton@localmedia.org.