In many ways, The New York Times fired the starting gun on the newspaper industry’s race into podcasting. Many followed behind its launching of The Daily in 2017. But while The Daily now has a billion downloads and tops the charts, The Times itself has taken things a step further. In May 2023, it launched an entirely new audio app platform of its own - only for subscribers - called NYT Audio. With tens of hours of new audio a day, the aim is to create an ‘Audio Front Page’ and with it a much more expansive creative and journalistic experience -- analogous in some ways to apps run in Europe by public broadcasters such as the BBC or ARTE.
In this session, hear Mukul Devichand, who was hired from the BBC in London to head audio programming for NYT Audio, in conversation with Renee Kaplan, a noted leader in digital news in Europe, first at the Financial Times and now as head of news at ARTE. They’ll talk about platforms vs. publishers in audio, the very different scenes in Europe and the US, whether there will be more ‘Audio Front Pages’ and where digital audio is headed.
