Another article in the newspaper about podcasting. This time it seems we’re beyond the idea of this as brand new and now onto showing just what it takes to be a podcaster.

Unfortunately, the article completely misrepresents what it takes to create a podcast. Completely.

A picture is worth a thousand words

Head on over to the article and take a look at the nice shot of M. Geoghagen sitting at this podcast rig. If you were a non-technical reader of the paper, what would this say to you?

I think it would convey the idea that it takes an expensive audio setup in order to create a podcast. But that’s simply not true. Not even close to being true, in fact. Even the article headline is misleading: “From your Living Room to the Word, via Podcast.” I don’t know about you, but my living room doesn’t look like that. In fact, my office where I do my podcast doesn’t even look like that.

It’s not that I’m against what the headline implies. I’m not. I just think the content of the article should represent that instead of glorifying the audiophile gearhead angle of podcasting (which is the radio gearhead angle refactored). If we want to reach more people with podcasts — both listening and receiving — then (for the thousandth time) we need to move away from the notion that creating podcasts is a difficult technical task. It’s not.

I recorded a quick rant on my Audio Grab Bag podcast about this and came to a simple conclusion. The tools are out there for easy in-browser podcast recording. Why aren’t you pushing those as viable means of recording a podcast? I realize that people have invested a lot of time and money in writing and promoting books that deal with the technical side of podcasting, but the tools are there. ClickCaster, Audioblog, Podomatic and Odeo.

If we really believe in promoting podcasting for everyone, then we’d be doing it in large readership articles like those in the New York Times.