WHYY don’t people share audio?

Hi, reporters – this week we’ve got a guest post from Alan Yu at WHYY (which is, in fact, the call letters of a radio station, and coincidentally a very on-point name for a journalism outlet). Alan, take it away!

Audio, it has been said, does not go viral.

NPR has tried to figure out what audio people will share (what it sounds like inside a hurricane, what a prison sounds like), and put it on people’s newsfeeds. But still, videos are shared more widely.

So WNYC came up with a slightly different solution: they made audio clips into short video clips that can be shared on Facebook or Twitter. They call these audiograms.




I followed their instructions and set it up on my Macbook Pro using the Terminal. I barely know how to code, but I do know how to type commands into the Terminal and press enter, and that worked for me.

We recently started making audiograms to promote our shows, and thus far it’s been a fun way to spice up our tweets and Facebook posts. There are several templates to choose from, and you can upload your own pictures, logos and text.

Alan Yu is a reporter at The Pulse, a health and science show from WHYY in Philadelphia. You can follow him on Twitter @Alan_Yu039.

And if you’re interested in audio, check out these previous TFR posts on Soundcite and Pop Up Archive!