by Rob Walch

Back in my 20s I used to date this girl — let’s call her Heather. I was living in Kansas and my family was all back on Long Island so thankfully my mom never got to meet the girls I dated. Heather and I were together long enough for me slip up and mention her to my mom, and like all nosy Italian mothers she asked lots of questions including what Heather did for a living. I said she was a dancer. My mom was excited because she used to be a dancer, and my sister was also at the time a dancer. Heck, my grandmother was a dancer when my grandfather met her. See my mother, my grandmother, and my sister had all been ballet dancers. But let’s just say that Heather was a slightly different type of dancer. So what does this have to do with podcasting? Well, I’m now starting to think the term “new media” has the same breadth of meaning that the term “dancer” has.

Today I see a vocal minority in the podcasting space trying very, very hard to generalize themselves as “new media” and shed the term podcast. I’m not saying podcasting is not part of new media — it clearly is — but then, so too is YouTube with the dramatic prairie dog and the leave Britney alone “guy”. It seems to me that podcasting is a niche in the new media space — but one that holds much greater value than most others. If you were an advertiser, who would you want to use to get your mes­sage out or do a call to action: the prai­rie dog or the host of a show that is pro­duced on a regular basis and has a very loyal audience? For some reason many of these people fighting for the new media moniker seem to think it is best for us to be generalized down and as­sociated with the YouTube and myspace crowd and other fringes of new media. Have you ever really looked at what is on YouTube? I mean really looked. Most of it is either stolen content, one-hit wonders, or videos with deceptive tags and thumbnails. There are only a very, very small number or real good repeat­able content (Hot for Words, Chad Vader, LisaNova, Will It Blend) — the type of repeatable content that flourishes over in podcast land — you know, the type that builds up a loyal audience, the type advertisers covet.

I recently exchanged some emails with Leesa Barnes, author of Podcasting for Profit. [Ed. Note: See our third excerpt from this book, “Joining Forces,” on page 32.] And for the life of us we could not figure out why so many people were working so hard to generalize what they do and try and get themselves thrown in with the laughing baby and the history of dance. Leesa made a great point: She said you don’t see bloggers running away from the name blog. I know some people have proclaimed that podcast­ing, or at least the name, is dead. Really? Based on what? In November Microsoft launched the revamped Zune Market Place with “podcast” support. Seems to me the two biggest companies in the computer OS world have both planted a stake in the ground and accepted the name podcast. If it was dead, then the phoenix has risen from its ashes. But I digress. For more on the name issue of podcasting, please read my August 2007 article in Blogger & Podcaster magazine.

Here’s what I think is happening — some people are upset, worried, jealous of the “success” of YouTube and other video-sharing sites and they need someone or something to blame for video streaming taking off faster than podcasting. So they jump on the band­wagon of the next big thing, and seem to think calling ourselves podcasters is somehow holding us back. But how many YouTubecons, Expos, or camps have you heard of or been to? There is a community here in podcasting (be it audio, video, or both). And you see that at events like the Podcast Expo (sorry, that’s the name to me), the original PodcasterCon in North Carolina, and the PodCamps everywhere. The people put­ting up their videos of getting smacked in the crotch by a rogue skateboard just don’t have a connection to other producers or their audiences like we do in the podcasting community.

If you performed for the NY Ballet, would you call yourself a dancer, or would you say you were a ballerina? If you produce repeatable content people can subscribe to and/or have download­ed automatically to their computers, would you say you were a new-media producer or a podcaster?

I know what I am: I am a podcaster and I am damned proud of it.

Rob Walch is VP of Podcaster Relations for Wizzard Media, host of podCast411, and coauthor (with Mur Lafferty) of Tricks of the Podcast­ing Masters (Que, 2006). Contact him at rob@bloggerandpodcaster.com.