“Podcasting is the new wave, this is where things are happening,” said English student Connor Adams. “You can just be really creative with all the different stuff that you do with audio.”

Adams, a rising Junior in the College of Arts and Sciences, is spending his summer with the  Community News Service – which pairs student reporters with professional editors to provide content to Vermont’s struggling community papers.

Adam’s work is featured on LocalWire – stories of the people and places of Vermont. For example his piece ‘Vermont Beavers and Deceivers,’ zoomed in on the story of a Vermont local who came up with an incredibly simple way to stop beavers from clogging culverts with their damming behavior.

The usual response of towns in response to this is to kill beavers, Adam’s said. “But it's completely unnecessary to kill the beaver. There are much better alternatives. And I think that was the thing that was really mind blowing to me… like, wow, these things are so easy. And there are such available alternatives, and a lot of this stuff is available for people to learn about.”

Listen to Beavers Deceivers here.

Making stories like this accessible to people is a large part of Adam’s motivation for his podcasting work. “Part of the reason I really wanted to do it was because I think it's a lot more accessible than just straight articles. I think people can be a lot more engaged with podcasts” Adams said.

“It’s also about telling stories, and learning about communities and the people within those communities,” Adams said. “A lot of it is the same skills that you would apply to writing, but instead you're taking it from the perspective of audio and you can add new things into it.”

In addition to the wider range of creative opportunities presented by the audio format, there are also unique challenges and skills required, Adams said. For example, the style of interviewing is different, because you are organizing the raw material from the interview into a different kind of product.

“A lot more of it is just letting the person talk as much as possible,” Adams said. “That was definitely one of the things I learned. Everyone else is the one making the story. And you just kind of have to organize that. You're more like the organizer instead of the actual voice.”

Podcasting also presents the technical challenge of working with audio, which requires an understanding of software, equipment, and how to make things “sound good,” Adams said.

As is the case with his fellow student interns, the internship has helped Connor explore a potential future career path that is enjoyable and satisfying. “I can imagine doing something in the future with radio,” Adams said. “And I definitely think just working with audio is something that I really like to do… I guess nothing is completely set in stone about where I want to go with it, but I think this is definitely a skill set and type of work that I really enjoy doing.”

Localwire can be found on the Community News Service's website , or on whatever platform you find your podcasts.

Gideon Parker is a Sophomore Anthropology major who loves listening to all kinds of audio, podcasts included!