The D Brief, our podcast about the Detroit arts and entertainment scene, is patterned after commercial radio morning shows, but it aims to convey more information. We've often described it as "hipster NPR" because it sets out to inform like public radio but have the loose conversational style of commercial radio. These hasn't always been an easy balance to strike.

In the beginning, our podcast contained a lot of lists: lists of upcoming concerts, lists of upcoming plays, lists of upcoming comedy shows, etc. As we realized that audio is not the best format for conveying information this way, we shifted towards news stories. We never abandoned talking about upcoming events, but we began to place higher priority on being conversational than being comprehensive. In other words, we covered fewer events, and our criteria for selecting which events we would cover now focused how interesting a conversation it could spawn.

The first episode of The D Brief, our podcast about the Detroit arts and entertainment scene, was published on October 24th, 2017. As I write this, we've released just over 100 episodes. And a lot has changed over those 100 episodes. Everything gets better with ...

From the moment we first launched The D Brief podcast, one of my goals was to record the show in front of a live audience. During my time in radio, I always loved these types of broadcasts. I first set foot in a radio station as a teenager when I sat in the studio ...

When I set out to create The D Brief podcast, I wanted to borrow ideas from radio broadcasting and adapt them to the medium. I often describe our podcast by saying, "It's like a radio morning show, but it's hyper-focused on Detroit arts and entertainment." Like a radio ...

Becky and I record three episodes of The D Brief podcast every Monday evening. We record at the Jacobs Media Strategies office, where I work by day. These episodes are then released on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday mornings. Over the first year of the podcast, our ...

One of the biggest differences between real-time media like radio and on-demand media like podcasts is that real-time media is a zero-sum game, while on-demand media is not. I can only listen to one radio station at a time. If I'm listening to Station A, it means I'm ...

As a radio programmer, sports was always one of my biggest weaknesses. I just don't care. Outside of the Super Bowl, I never sit down to watch a game on television, let alone attend one in person. I realize that I am the odd man out here. I recognize that for the ...

Everybody needs so time off now and then. Podcasters are no different. But when you establish your podcast as a weekly show driven by current events, what do you do when it's time to take a vacation? In the year since we've launched The D Brief podcast, which focuses ...

I have always loved the idea of a large, regular cast of characters in a radio show. Years ago, when I was still early in my career, I wrote a proposal for a radio show that incorporate recurring characters. The idea was based on the television show The Simpsons. In ...

When it comes to podcasting, one of the questions I hear over and over again is, "What's the ideal length for a podcast episode?" When people ask that question, they usually expect the answer to be a specific length of time: "Ten minutes," "45 minutes," "an hour," ...