Podcasts are not great sources of news. David Plotz knows this, yet here he is, the co-host of a long-running gabby political podcast, now bringing a series of locally focused, newsy pods to cities throughout the country.
On any given day, City Cast [INSERT CITY NAME] delivers 11 different locally focused episodes in 11 different cities. In 20-minute bites, co-hosts chew over the top stories of the day pulled from local headlines, chitchat about personal gripes, and give you suggestions for date nights. They interview reporters, artists, authors, public officials, and business owners. By the end, the pods aim to come across as relatable, conversational, informative, and just slightly smarter than you.
City Cast DC, for example, has explored historic alleys and what the hell is going on with the demise of the Connecticut Avenue bike lane. City Cast Pittsburgh did a segment on foraging for mushrooms. City Cast Boise gave listeners a little peek into the best potato dishes. And over at City Cast Denver, the podcast focused on where to find snack food if you’re smoking pot and get the munchies.
These customized city podcasts are trying hard to scratch an itch, to serve a specific niche, and to tap into an ever-elusive combination of curiosity and fun. But the question remains: Do people in D.C. (and elsewhere) want more podcasts?
Plotz thinks so.
“There’s an opportunity in local podcasting,” he says. “Podcasting has colonized all these bits of traditional audio … so why isn’t there a podcasting version of local news?”
Plotz, a former City Paper writer and editor and now the CEO of City Cast, sees his venture as a way to build community rather than a primary source of news.
“It’s really good at creating this medium for emotion and feeling and community and connection,” he says. “Daily local podcasts are designed to make you feel more connected to the city. You should listen to the cast and feel more attached to the community.”
Ruth Werner might be a perfect audience member for City Cast DC.
A former longtime D.C. Council staffer (and current analyst for the D.C. Auditor) who follows politics just as closely as she follows culture, Werner sampled both the podcast and the newsletter when they started. “I like the variety of hyper local topics and length of each episode,” she says.
Out in Denver, Lauren Gifford says she has some of the same positive feelings about the podcast.
“I think the podcast taps into pretty interesting people,” says Gifford, who was recently a guest on an episode in Denver. “It’s a little bit of a cool kid vibe. … They speak very conversationally; it’s not NPR important. … It’s just like a cool conversation.”
Listeners such as Werner and Gifford are an essential part of the blueprint if City Cast is going to grow the way its investors want to see.
There are about 180,000 listeners nationally to the podcast, each of which have a sister email newsletter, called Hey [INSERT CITY NAME] (a name coined by a former City Cast Houston host Lisa Gray, who also did a stint at City Paper many years ago). Those emails enjoy an enviable 60 percent open rate and about 350,000 newsletter subscribers nationally, according to Plotz.
In D.C., he adds, there are about 42,000 newsletter subscribers with a 67 percent open rate on the emails (D.C. and Chicago have the largest email subscription rate, not surprisingly). There are about 22,000 people who listen to the City Cast DC podcast in a given month, though the daily listener count is much smaller.
Plotz says City Cast podcasts around the country are designed to deliver three messages. First is what he calls the “pleasure” center: a new restaurant or a weekend museum or concert. Second is news, which Plotz defines as informing listeners about what is important in their city—the biggest stories of the day—and what they need to know in order to be an informed citizen. Government policy, crime, and local schools are all part of this category. And third: ways you can be a better citizen. Plotz says that includes everything from how to properly dispose of an old mattress to composting and volunteering.
“That is the category that we struggle the most with,” he says. And rightly so; everyone’s definition of what it takes to be a good citizen is different.
As the podcast takes aim at that lofty goal of improving humanity, Plotz acknowledges that the venture isn’t turning a profit. “Though we are nearing local profitability in some of our cities,” he says.
One obvious weakness in the model is that the pods are unlikely to produce any original news reporting. In fact, the whole business model is based on not producing original journalism or public accountability, despite the presence of some talented current and former journalists on their mastheads.
The daily episodes feel like a cross between Fresh Air and The View, while the newsletter primarily aggregates news coverage and links from other media outlets—credited but always a day after the news came out. Their event listings aren’t bad though.
Although the City Cast DC pod has its own staff, they recently hired freshly laid-off local reporter Jacob Fenston as he pursues a plan to visit all 683 parks in D.C.
Only a fraction of these so-called parks actually fit the generally accepted definition (large, green, free). Most are chunks of land adjacent to roadways or patches of grass alongside federal properties. But they are officially designated as parks and overseen by the National Park Service. Many are chronically neglected or underused, which is part of what sparked Fenston’s interest.
Fenston, considered one of the ace environmental reporters in the city, was laid off when American University-owned NPR affiliate WAMU decided to shut down DCist back in February. But don’t expect any hard news reporting on those issues during Fenston’s appearances on City Cast DC, though he says his contract includes appearing on the podcast a few times but only to talk about his park visits and seeking out boundary stones.
As they sidestep hard news gathering, City Cast podcasts and newsletters also are not likely to discuss anything that’s outside their target zone. They are stubbornly urban and ignore everything that happens in the sprawling suburbs outside D.C., Pittsburgh, and other cities where the shows air.
This approach differs from most traditional news organizations, which chase their readers, viewers, and listeners out into the suburbs with stories about the suburbs—to the detriment of more consistent coverage of inner-city issues.
In D.C., for example, the City Cast audience should not hold its breath waiting for a podcast guest from Rockville or a newsletter about Fairfax County—though the CEO would like to see that evolve.
“I think right now we are a little too D.C.-focused,” Plotz says. “Our audience is extremely well-educated, more single, and skews female. We seek as broad an audience as possible. There are a ton of people out there listening to daily national news podcasts. We want to be their go-to local show.”
As they mine the local audience for listeners and readers, City Cast DC is aware that it’s competing with local public radio and local news, including, ahem, City Paper’s District Line Daily newsletter. Plotz sees the Axios model, which uses reporters but also relies in part on aggregation and a catchy morning email to build a loyal readership, as more of a direct competitor.
“Our chief competitor is the fragmentation of time and media consumption,” Plotz says. “We compete with Axios and public radio in most cities … but I don’t see our relationships with other local media outlets as primarily competitive. We want there to be a rich ecosystem of local media, with people engaged with their community and advertisers clamoring to reach local audiences.” City Cast is set up in 11 cities; Axios has reporters in 30.
Plotz is a D.C. lifer, having grown up here, worked here, and raised his family here. He lives in Ward 3 and is steeped in the media world, having spent decades as a writer at Slate after his stint at City Paper and before this turn in his career leading a new podcasting venture into a saturated marketplace.
“Everybody and their brother has their own podcast,” Plotz admits. “My brother has a podcast and my ex-wife has a podcast.”
As chief executive, Plotz is charged with overseeing a national operation with ambitions to continue adding cities. Beginning with inaugural broadcasts Denver and Chicago in Spring 2021, City Cast now employs about 70 people in 11 cities across the U.S.: Chicago, Denver, Houston, Salt Lake City, Pittsburgh, Madison (Wisconsin); Portland (Oregon), Philadelphia, Las Vegas, Boise, and D.C.
Plotz aims to add Austin and Nashville to the list, with the goal of broadcasting in 17 cities by 2025 and 45 cities by 2030—an ambitious growth rate.
Working in City Cast’s favor is its simple, easy-to-replicate template structure—not unlike a Wendy’s franchise—that requires a minimal investment to take hold.
“In every city, we have a team of four on the edit side and one on the business side … an executive producer, a host, staff producer, and a newsletter writer,” Plotz says. “Those four people do a daily newsletter and a daily podcast.”
The model relies on a strong local host to carry the daily conversation and drive interest in the newsletter.
In D.C., local author and journalist Michael Schaffer, yet another City Paper alum, plays host. He lends his encyclopedic knowledge of the city, strong existing relationships with media and local personalities, and a dose of dad jokes.
Schaffer, whose other day job is writing for Politico’s magazine, presides over daily conversations on topics that range from silly to serious. He guides the discussion with incisive questioning, but his real strength is providing historical context for conversations with the guests, who sometimes seem as if they’ve just moved to the city.
City Cast is owned by Graham Holdings, the company spun off from the sale of the Washington Post to Jeff Bezos in 2013. Besides advertising, the program also sells memberships and special one-off, five-minute mini podcasts or an extra sponsored episode on Saturdays.
Graham Holdings, overseen by Don Graham, owns a wide range of investments with no obvious theme or industry. They count Kaplan Test Prep as a property, as well as a few industrial suppliers, seven TV stations in the south, a string of car dealerships, a home health care provider, the Clyde’s restaurant chain and Old Ebbitt Grill, Framebridge, and Slate.
Graham did not respond to requests for an interview, but it’s worth noting that his commitment to local news stories was unquestioned when he ran the Post.
Ahead of its annual meeting in May, Graham Holdings circulated an annual report on its business projections heading into the next year. The company notes City Cast faces challenges in the form of competition from other local news podcasts in cities around the country.
“Several companies operate large national networks of local daily newsletters, notably Axios and 6am City, both of which have many more subscribers than City Cast,” the report says. “There are also single-city daily newsletters—often created by the local newspaper—in every city where City Cast is located. On the podcasting side, public radio stations in most City Cast markets create local podcasts, as do some commercial radio stations. City Cast competes for advertising dollars with all these newsletter and podcast competitors, as well as with local radio, newspaper, TV and digital outlets.”
Despite this prognosis from the accountants, Plotz remains optimistic.
