A Successful First Edition!

The first edition of the European Podcast Academy gathered 50 journalists from across Europe for a week-long series of workshops and masterclasses on audio storytelling, production and professional podcasting.

The course ran from the 17th to the 21st of March 2025 in Milan, Italy and offered media professionals a deep dive into the world of professional podcasting. Sessions included podcast conceptualization, production, interview techniques, scriptwriting and promotion & distribution alongside a series of workshops and listening sessions offering a behind the scenes of WePod's co-productions (Sea of Rage, A Grain of Power, Truckers and more).  

The Academy was organized by Chora Media, Italy's leading podcast company, in cooperation with PRISA Audio (Spain), Università di Roma Tre (Italy), Europod (Belgium), Magyari Jeti (Hungary), Outriders (Poland), News Decoder (France), Press Freedom Foundation (Serbia) and Hiberus (Spain). 

The Academy is part of the WePod Project.

In line with WePod's stance on knowledge sharing and dissemination, the sessions from the 2025 European Podcast Academy are available for your viewing below.

The lectures are organised by day. You will find the title, main speakers and some information about each session, followed by a link to the lecture recording. A list of all of these lectures with links to the recordings is available at the bottom of the page.

All of the lectures were recorded as part of the European Podcast Academy (March 17-21, 2025, Milan), the first academy on cross-border podcast production, targeting a wide European audience of audio professionals and journalists with a keen interest in audio production. 

Credits: 
The Academy was organized by Chora Media with the support of the other partners of the WePod Project.

Video production: Not A Product
Filming and editing: Andrea Frigerio and Dario Ubaldini
 

Monday 17 March 2025

An overview of the different formats of audio journalism (field reports, documentaries, press reviews, talks, interviews…), with a distinction between daily/weekly podcasts and narrative shows + international case studies.
 

What are all the steps involved in the creation of a podcast, depending on the different formats? In this lecture we are going to review each phase of the process, from conception to post production and promotion through structuring, research, writing, recording, sound design and monetization strategy.

Podcasting is 100% audio: this is the first thing that you have to keep in mind when you start working on a podcast project. This means that you’ll have to be sure not only that your podcast will sound well, but also that you’ll collect valuable audio content and that you’ll make the most of soundscape for creating an immersive storytelling. This lesson talks about all this and more.

Some suggestions for journalists and podcasters to pitch an idea to a newspaper, a sponsor or to potential listeners/supporters.

Tuesday 18 March, 2025

Podcasting is the most trusted source of news, studies say. Audio journalists and podcasters covering current events have to make sure to deserve this trust. In this lesson we’ll talk about how to ethically manage audio storytelling for journalistic purposes.

When developing a podcast, one of the first steps you’ll face is pre production. It’s a part made by deep study, research, and often interviews (or pre interviews, in case you’re working on a talk). Your goal is to collect all the information and material that you’ll need in order to choose what structure to give to your project and, then, start writing. Here we tell some important best practices to know when dealing with research and interviews.

What’s the best microphone for soundscape recording? And the one for interviewing? And the best one in the studio? How to best use each type of micro or digital recorder, or even your phone (if you don’t have anything else to record with)? What other instruments form the must-have kit of every podcaster/audio journalist?

Once you’ve done the research and the interviews (if needed), it is time to decide exactly what structure to give to the podcast (in case it is a closed series/solo show) and to each episode, or to think about the outline (if it’s a talk). In this lesson we explain how to go about shaping our material, with practical tips. 
 

Wednesday 20 March 2025

What are the main things to keep in mind when writing for audio? How to catch and keep people’s attention? How to make the storytelling effective but still rigorous under the journalistic aspect? And how to proceed when editing others' scripts? Here we’ll answer these and other questions, bringing examples from the best journalism podcasts.
 

How to work on a podcast, from researching the story to writing and recording, when you are out in the field reporting. The case of Stories by Cecilia Sala, and other examples to take inspiration from.
 

Thursday 20 March 2025

How to build a community and target audience for your podcast, how to best promote it (with some suggestions also on how to create an effective title, description, and cover), and how to publish it on listening platforms.

So you have a podcast. How to make a life from it? All the options, with case studies, for monetizing a journalism podcast, also distinguishing between newsrooms and freelancers. From advertising to subscriptions, from crowdfunding to brand journalism.

Friday 21 March 2025

The most useful AI tools for working on the various fronts of podcast creation, and the risks of malicious and/or naive use of artificial intelligence in the sphere of spoken audio.

How to figure out if a story is suitable for co-production between different countries, how to set up a team and work process that crosses borders, and what possible difficulties to keep in mind when working on a multi-national podcast project.

DAY 1: 
WePod Academy Day 1 - The different forms of journalistic podcasts
WePod Academy Day 1 - Before starting: creating a podcast, step by step
WePod Academy Day 1 - Thinking in audio
WePod Academy Day 1 - How to create the “perfect” pitch

DAY 2: 
WePod Academy Day 2 - Ethics of audio storytelling, research, and interviews
WePod Academy Day 2 - All the secrets of recording
WePod Academy Day 2 - The architecture of a podcast: how to structure your material

Day 3: 
WePod Academy Day 3 - Writing and editing for audio
WePod Academy Day 3 - Writing and recording from the field

Day 4:
WePod Academy Day 4 - Community building, promotion and distribution
WePod Academy Day 4 - How to make a podcast economically sustainable

Day 5:
WePod Academy Day 5 - AI for podcasting
WePod Academy Day 5 - Strengths and challenges of co-productions