Podcasting on podcasting?

So here's the idea from this weekend, which came about after playing around with audacity: Why not put up a stand-alone podcast called "A Short History of Podcasting" on my newspaper website the day the story runs? I pitched the idea to my boss this morning, and she liked it.

Blogging about my thinking on stories continues to pay dividends. Andy Rhinehart wrote in with good suggestions, and my most recent post got a plug on The John and Steve Show, which might wind up netting me a good interview.

So far so good on the openness experiment. Obviously, there are certain stories I would not blog because there are certain things I would not want to give away before publication, but the more I do this the more encouraged I become. Yes, I am competitive by nature. But as Cara White pointed out last night, cooperation trumps competition over and over. Besides, my biggest competion is typically the eternal conflict between my ideas and my stamina.

A very interesting (not to mention helpful) e-mail from Caleb (Area 51), who points out that Liberated Syndication has set up a public place for people to play with their service (libsyn hosts podcasts). Log in as "sandbox" with "sandbox" as your password. It will take you to a place called -- duh -- sandbox, and you can listen to what others have posted here.

I liked the science package I put together on Discovery Informatics for our Health/Science section this morning, but it just doesn't read as well when you get it on the web. Web readers never see the extremely cool illustration by Jason Fletcher. They don't see the photo by Alan Hawes. The FAQ is tacked onto the bottom of the main story, and the sidebar isn't even given a dedicated link -- it's just a general link somewhere below "Stay at home mom reaching her goals through exercise."

I'm a perfectionist pain-in-the-ass about such things, but there is certainly truth to the statement that the web experience of print publications still pales in comparison to the original. And from our perspective, why shouldn't it? If you get it on the web, you're getting it for free.

Man, we all really need a new business model.