In the Loop: Opinion - What I've learned in a year of hosting a news podcast for young people

Katie Harris interviewing Zac Guildford. Photo / George Heard

OPINION

This time last year I was pretty tired of hearing young people don't care about the news.

High schoolers have lived through some of the most significant global events in several decades; Russia invading Ukraine, a global financial crisis, a pandemic and the fast-accelerating devastation caused by climate change.

Yet as my social media feed remains packed with images, videos, petitions and messages from young people about current events, the tired trope of youth "not caring" about news persists.

If anything, in my view, the youth of today are across the situations unfolding globally and in Aotearoa far more than our parents ever were.

You only need to look to the climate protests or the overwhelming amount of social media coverage of the recent uprising in Iran to see young people do give a damn.

When we launched In the Loop last year, several media offerings were already targeted at young people.

But my former co-host Rosie Gordon and I still felt young people needed more of a voice within mainstream media outlets.

I had, and still have, a deep belief in the incredible work my colleagues do and saw the podcast as an opportunity to bring the existing journalism we create to where young people are.

It wasn't easy at the start, and I'd hate to hear the pilot episodes the Herald's podcast manager had to wade through, but we finally launched our first episode on October 22 that year.

Rosie Gordon and Katie Harris on the day the show launched. Photo / Supplied

Back then our format was a little different. Each week we'd struggle between the desire to cover as much as possible with the natural constraints of having actual day jobs outside of the show.

In hindsight we bit off a little more than we could chew, but I don't regret it at all.

One week we had Chloe Swarbrick speaking about her ADHD diagnosis, another a female gang leader on life inside the group and later former Prime Minister Helen Clark joined us to speak about Omicron.

As time went on we developed a taste for what the audience wanted and what may not be as sexy but was equally important for us to include.

So many times Rosie would come into the booth and explain a seemingly complex financial story, one that I had previously resigned myself to never understanding, in a way that actually made sense.

In my view, these stories can often feel out of reach for young people, because if you don't have a basic knowledge of the topic, trying to understand the latest issue can seem like too much effort for not enough reward.

As we found our feet with the podcast it evolved. We took out the large weekly interviews and created a monthly deep dive so we could share longer pieces, without the fear of running overtime.

Later, when Cheree Kinnear came on board as co-host, we too grappled with the same complexities of trying to fit in all the top stories, while also giving them the coverage they required.

So again the podcast had a facelift, and we reduced the number of topics we did each week to just three to give us the time and space to relax into each story as well as cover things in a more casual way.

NZ Herald reporters and podcasters Katie Harris and Cheree Kinnear. Photo / Dean Purcell.

Striking this balance between presenting the news and doing so in a not-so-serious way has been fun and engaging - but there have been mistakes.

In one episode we got the tone wrong, particularly given the fact we recorded the show during the day and even more grim news emerged overnight before the podcast came out. The next week we addressed it on the show and learned from it, and we're still learning.

When I look back on In the Loop's first year I feel proud of the space we've created: a space that enables us to share how the latest news may affect young people, a space that is open to those who may not usually have a platform in traditional media, and a space where people don't need an economics degree to understand what's going on.

Cheree has also transformed how thousands of people have tuned in by turning parts of each episode into videos for the Herald website and social media pages.

Cheree Kinnear and Katie Harris in the Auckland studio. Photo / Supplied

Our podcast manager, who is also head of social, has played a key role in pivoting the show to having more snackable bits for social media.

While it may be hard for traditional newshounds to read, it's my belief that we need to go to where the audience is and, undeniably, everyone (even my grandad) is on social media.

News is such a fickle industry, but almost every day I'm heartened by seeing the work being done to ensure young people are being included. And not just in the coverage.

When I look at the Te Rito cadets in our newsroom filming newsreels for social media and creating news in ways I would have never dreamed of, I feel an immense sense of pride.

Although there is still a long way to go, now more than ever I feel confident our industry is changing the way we engage with younger audiences and it's young people who are leading the charge.

So when people tell me young people don't care about news I ask them, which young people? Because the ones I know not only care, they're making it.