‘Hear all about it’ as the Telegraph launches podcast

18 November 2005

By Dominic Ponsford Eleven years ago The Daily Telegraph was the first British national newspaper to launch a website, and this week it became the first to offer readers a daily "podcast".

New-media director Annelies van den Belt admitted lifting the idea from BBC Radio 4's Today programme and told Press Gazette that Telegraph staff had the daily podcast up and running within 10 days of the idea being mooted.

It follows the launch last month of a text news service for BlackBerry-style email mobile phones.

The podcast consists of a 20-minute sound file that can be downloaded to a computer and either played on a desktop or downloaded to a digital music player.

Tuesday's podcast consisted of Martin Johnson's sport column and Celia Walden's Spy diary section read by actors; and Roy Greenslade reading out his media column.

The decision over what will go in the next day's podcast is made at the 4pm editorial conference. So far it has consisted of columnists themselves or actors reading out content from the day's paper, but van den Belt said the Telegraph may also start producing unique content for the podcast.

Van den Belt joined the Telegraph 12 weeks ago after resigning as digital director of Times Newspapers.

She said the project was part of her brief to "integrate new media into everything we do" and added that more projects were in the pipeline, aimed at exploiting Telegraph content and the Telegraph brand on different media platforms.

Van den Belt said there were no plans to charge for the podcast service, but added: "We want to build up a loyal community of people who listen to us every day; if that's large and loyal there will be other ways of generating revenue which we can exploit."

Editor Martin Newland said: "I believe in The Daily Telegraph as a printed, broadsheet quality newspaper.

But I believe also there are many other avenues in which content produced by Telegraph journalists — the best in the country — can reach the consumer.

"With our podcast, those wanting access to some of the best writing and opinion in the country now have the chance to sample the full ‘flavour' of that day's newspaper, to experience the full range of the editorial enterprise, from comment to humour to analysis to news digests. In many cases the voice you will be hearing is that of the person actually writing the piece for the Telegraph. To read Simon Heffer or John Inverdale is one thing. To hear them reading themselves, wherever you want, whenever you want, is quite another."