Maker Mark | Here Media

Such great fun talking about podcast editing, a skillset that I only recently had the confidence to say I possessed, after 3+ years of being self-taught.

@stephfuccio is a wonderful host, and @epodcaster and @AgentPalmer I learned a lot from. Enjoy!

"This is our second LIVE podcast editing chat this month and I’m delighted to be joined by Mark in Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa (New Zealand), Jason in Pennsylvania, U.S. and Jennifer in Texas, U.S. And, as you know I’m in Split, Croatia. We chatted live about our podcast editing challenges, lessons learned and how challenging content editing is."

Student Voice Network is a platform for helping young people find their peers and collaborators in taking positive social action. They asked Mark some questions about podcasting as a form of climate engagement. In order to answer those questions, here's a lightly edited record of Mark discussing and dissecting the power of podcasting for climate-engagement. 

Podcasts are usually about the hosts. Not always, but most of the time a podcaster will intersperse their questions with anecdotes, their personal opinion, and jokes (some better than others). That's not Robert McLean's approach with Climate Conversations.

This is an interview for Write Hear, Right Now - the working title of a newsletter and podcast about the intersection of podcasting and climate change. We're running a series of interviews with climate-engaged podcasters. Some of the podcasters highlighted will have overtly and obviously climate-engaged shows, others may surprise you in the ways they are engaging with climate.

This is an interview with Robert McLean, a newspaperman turned podcaster, from Shepparton, a town in northern Victoria that straddles the banks of the Murray-Darling River, the lifeblood of eastern Australia. That river played a major role in Robert's story of how he became aware, concerned, and engaged with climate change. You can read an article that Robert wrote for the local paper linked here (LINK) or in the shownotes.

This interview will be edited for length and clarity for the newsletter, and also be made available on the Write Hear, Right Now podcast feed, along with excerpts from Robert's podcast.

Now, let's get started.

Subscribe to the newsletter (Substack).

View the blog. 

Read this as a blog here.

Updates from Lockdown.

With a focus on place-based stories, getting to reveal and engage with facets of community life, the extraordinary parts of normal life - Here Media is having a slumber of over Tāmaki Makaurau’s COVID outbreak. Instead of doing locally-engaged stories, Here’s one current member, me, is instead digging into production of three other projects.

One is a second season of an interview show, distributed on a major podcast publisher in Australia. It’s the ‘full stack’, with series development, guest booking, script development, on-call production (being present during recording, making edit notes, making recommendations to the hosts), and then edit/publishing.

Another is an audio adaptation of a weekly newsletter, This Week in Climate. This is a collaboration with the content team at a large job board for climate-engaged businesses. This involves a speedy turnaround of the pre-release newsletter, recording the script, editing the episode, and publishing within a couple hours of receiving the script.

And finally, the third project is a Supervising Producer-type role, giving cover and quality control to a podcaster developing their skills. This involves feedback, mixing and mastering of episodes, publishing, and promotion assistance of the show.

This year I also finished a project that I was involved in from inception, through development, recording and producing, and release. I was involved as Supervising Producer on that project. And that’s a role that isn’t to be found on podcasttaxonomy.com a great initiative by the podcast community to standardise the roles of podcast production (and help it develop, through greater clarity on roles, and pay).

Speaking of pay, I was paid as the Supervising Producer, basically a consultant, on the completed series.

I am being paid as the Supervising Producer on the current project. I am doing the audio newsletter adaptation pro bono, as I’m getting personal development value from it, and it’s value to the site is currently speculative. And, as the full-stack producer on the second season of the podcast with the major network, I am doing the first few episodes pro bono, for personal development, but then negotiating a rate for the balance of the series, based on resources, time and effort.

And there’s an update from Here Media, and Maker Mark.

I’m incredibly fortunate to have a stable and reliable income from my main employment, which is symbiotic with these projects. To be able to work from, and record from home. My thoughts are with the parents doing homeschooling, and those counting pennies with closed workplaces and disrupted lives. My list of privileges is long. So if I can help answer your questions, or help in any way, please don’t hesitate to reach out!

Thanks for tuning into Maker Mark, from Here Media. Stay safe, check in on your neighbours, and be kind to yourself.

Kia kaha!

Finished Projects

Facilitate This!

A Positive Climate

This Week in Climate

The Podcast Taxonomy

Music used in this episode

Cach PKL by Blue Dot Sessions