Podcasts, the rising stars of digital media, have a significant portion of their audience being listeners in their 20s and 30s. As this modern medium reshapes how stories are told, it’s also finding new ways to revive an old one: local news. But what’s it like to work in this dynamic and fast-growing industry? We wanted to find out.

Dan Kennedy, co-host alongside Ellen Clegg of “What Works: The Future of Local News,” a podcast focusing on research about the efforts to reverse the spread of news deserts across the U.S., sat down with us to share insights on his journey as a podcast creator, what he has been working on since his last interview with Storybench, and what is coming next.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

“What Works in Community News” was first published as a book with co-author Ellen Clegg. What made you also launch a website and become the co-host of a podcast for this project?

When we started thinking through the book, we knew that it’s a very fast-changing environment, and we would only be able to look at a limited number of local news projects that deserve to be highlighted. So we look at the website and the podcast as an extension of the book. We look at the book as being in the middle of a hub, and the website and the podcast are two spokes in that hub. It is hard to turn a wheel with only two spokes, but that’s what we’ve got, and it’s enabled us to do two things: write and podcast about many topics that we weren’t able to get to in the book, and update people on some of the projects that we wrote about in the book. For instance, one of our major chapters in the book is on the Colorado Sun, and after the book came out, they shifted from being a full-profit to a nonprofit, which was a pretty big deal. So that would be an example of that.

Have you noticed a rise in engagement with your work on local news research since creating the website and podcast?

I think that we’ve been able to punch above our weight in terms of an audience for the podcast because everybody we interview gets the word out. It increases the audience beyond what Ellen and I would be able to generate on our own, and we hope that it engenders interest in the book.

Since your last interview with Storybench 10 months ago, have you learned something new through the podcast that you’ve applied in your career or research?

I’m always learning new things. One thing I have learned is that the hunger for new forms of local news really continues, and people start projects like this in their own communities. So we’ve talked to many people who want to do that, and we try to give them what help we can.

In a recent summer episode, you and Ellen discussed the low cost of podcasting by producing the show independently. Could you share more about your production process and the pros and cons of handling everything on your own?

Podcasting is the ultimate long-tail medium (a platform that supports niche content, allowing creators to reach smaller, specific audiences over time rather than relying solely on mass appeal) in some ways.

A number of people and news outlets have gone into podcasting thinking that they’re going to find a pot of gold, and with very few exceptions, they’re not going to find a pot of gold. But if you can do it without spending any or spending very little money, which is what we’ve done, it can be a terrific way of amplifying what you do in other media; in our case, the book and the website. It’s just that people make a mistake if they get into it thinking it’s going to be lucrative, but it is satisfying. You are able to reach people you might not otherwise reach, and it’s fun.

Do you have any recommendations for podcasts similar to yours in terms of local news research, or any multimedia projects that you think journalism students should be keeping up with?

I think that all journalism students ought to be reading Nieman Lab every day. They should be looking at Poynter Online on a regular basis, subscribing to some of their newsletters. The Editor and Publisher podcast E&P Reports often does local news topics, and in fact, we’ve stolen some guests from them from time to time.

Let me suggest [another] one that people ought to check out. It’s not a podcast about local news, but rather it’s a local news podcast. The Colorado Sun, which is one of my favorite projects, does a daily podcast called The [Daily] Sun-Up, and they just look at it as a completely different way of getting their journalism out there aimed at a younger audience, and they do a really good job of that.