The team of Washington D’ici joins Podcast Day Online Raphaël Grand, Journalist, US correspondent, RTS, Switzerland, Gregory Philipps, Bureau Chief, Radio France, United States, Sonia Dridi, Washington Correspondent, RTBF & FRANCE 24, United States, Anne Corpet, US Correspondent, RFE, France & Raphael Bouvier-Auclair, Journalist, Radio-Canada, US
The team told the audience that a year ago all of the public broadcasters they each work for wanted to have a podcast to follow the American election campaign.
When thinking about a podcast they considered recycling content and how this podcast should actually include, what could they add. They thought about creating a new team including correspondents based in Washington and this Raphael said was the start of Washington D’ici.
Gregory spoke about selling this concept to Radio France and once agreed the difficulties of bringing all theses companies together in quite a short period of time. And, even though they speak the same language, French, they don’t speak in the same way in terms of processes for example technical processes. However, the five broadcasters built this podcast together, with five people giving their views and analysis. It is however hard as they are all so busy right now.
At the start they worried about having five people on the podcast according to Anne. But soon the wealth of expertise, content and sharing what the broadcasters have really adds to the podcast. “I think our best asset is our team spirit, there is a real collegiality, the fact that the Editor in Chief is changing at ever episode, there is no real boss among us everyone brings his own personality”. It’s fun.
Raphael also said that one of the problems was deciding when to publish due to the teams heavy work schedule, twice a month has been the standard so far but with the coming election they have decided to go out more often, every week. He gave an example of the difficulties of producing a podcast in this election. The flexibility of the podcast helps and being flexible in terms of the production team have helped them adjust and adapt.
Sonia said that social media has been useful and has created a link with the listeners. It’s useful to see the pictures and videos to direct listeners to see more content, the feedback is positive on this. Social also acts as a reminder for the podcast. Social also shows the relationship between the correspondents which couldn’t be seen any where else.
Thank you from Washington D’ici, a sign off from the Presidential elections!