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Making Podnews: How James Cridland Publishes a Daily Podcast & Newsletter

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Jun 12, 2025

James Cridland, the mastermind behind Podnews, has been delivering essential daily briefings to podcasters since 2017. In this discussion, he shares the secrets of running his consistent content operation, including insights on equipment preferences like the Lewitt RAY mic and software choices such as Hindenburg PRO. He opens up about managing feedback and maintaining journalistic integrity while exploring the challenges and triumphs of publishing daily. Cridland also highlights the importance of creativity, resilience, and diversified revenue streams in the podcasting world.

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ANECDOTE

Origin Story of Podnews

James Cridland started Podnews in May 2017 after realizing there was no dedicated podcasting news source. - A chat with a friend at a radio conference sparked the idea to create a daily briefing for the podcast industry.

ADVICE

Why Daily and Brief Content

James chose a daily publishing schedule to make selling advertising viable. - He kept content brief to fit it into about an hour of daily work as a side hustle.

ANECDOTE

Growth Through Podcast Events

James grew Podnews by networking at events like Podcast Movement and Podfest in 2018. - He knew he was gaining traction when people recognized him as 'the Podnews guy' at conferences.

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Since 2017, Podnews has been an essential daily briefing for podcasters and industry folks who want to keep their finger on the medium’s pulse.

But this newsletter and its companion podcast aren’t just brilliant sources of news, data, and analysis – they also make for a fantastic case study of creating content consistently over a long period of time.

In this episode of Podcraft, I caught up with James Cridland, the one-man operation behind Podnews, to pull back the curtain on how he's built what might be the most consistent content machine in podcasting.

We covered a lot of ground, from why James started Podnews in the first place, to why he chose to publish a daily briefing in both newsletter AND podcast form.

We also talked about tools and workflows. You'll find everything James uses in this Podnews piece, but some notable picks for me are:

The Lewitt RAY mic and Scarlett 2i2 interface - I'm a big fan of both
Hindenburg PRO v2 as his software of choice
FreshRSS - an RSS reader to keep up with new articles and blog posts

We got into some of the more "human" aspects of putting Podnews together, too. How does James manage to take holidays while still publishing every day without fail? How does he handle negative feedback when writing about something not everyone will respond well to? And how does he maintain journalistic freedom when sponsors help pay the bills?

Then there was the growth and reach stuff. How did he market Podnews in the early days? How did it grow, and was that growth slow and steady or 'spikey'?

James also chooses to run Podnews largely by himself, where others in his position might look to build a team of employees. I asked him about his thought process there, and that led to a conversation about how he's thinking about eventual semi-retirement.

All in all, this was a deeply enjoyable case study and a look under the hood of one of the industry's most prominent and prolific voices. So much so that I even manually wrote the shownotes(!!), and who even does that in 2025?

Also mentioned: If you want free podcast coaching on a future episode of Podcraft, fill out this application form as soon as you can!