Learning to Podcast with Crystal Ligori

Photo courtesy of Creative Commons

By Wren Stuart

In the first week of March, special guest Crystal Ligori came in to teach the mass communications class about the fundamentals of podcasting. With her extensive knowledge of podcasts and how to create them, she helped us create our very own. Ligori introduced the class to a program (Adobe Audition) on our computers that allowed us to piece together audio and music for our podcasts. We started with a topic and conducted two separate interviews while simultaneously recording them. We then uploaded the audio to a computer and recorded an intro and outro for the podcasts. After going through this process, we had a professional sounding podcast.

Crystal Ligori works for the news program "All things considered" and produces the weekly radio program "Literary Arts: The Archive Project". Before she came to Portland, Ligori worked for a modern music station (KZZU) in Spokane, Washington. She attended the University of Montana and earned a degree in Broadcast Journalism (OPB). Just recently, she took part in an article about a measles outbreak and the issue surrounding vaccines (KLCC). She has worked for various other radio and news corporations, which made her the perfect person to teach our 2nd Mass Communications class about how to podcast.

This has been my favorite activity in class so far because it combined two of my interests; computer editing and podcasts. I really enjoyed seeing Crystal go though the steps of creating a podcast and then going about them myself. Being able to edit the sound of my voice and piecing together audio from two different interviews was a fun learning experience for me. I very much appreciate the opportunities this class gives me to explore my interests within journalism. I also liked searching for music to put into the podcast. I hadn't thought about podcasting prior to joining this class, but now I have a new point of interest to expand. It was the best feeling to hear the final product and to have it sound like it was produced by a professional podcasting station (to me, at least).