She's The Quincy Jones Of Podcasting
Dispatch and a catch up on what's been going on...Northward in Canadaland
Last summer I was approached by an editor for a documentary film magazine that I’ve worked with in the past, POV Magazine, the publication that’s the heart and soul of doc filmmakers in Canada. They had decided it was finally time to also cover podcasts as a part of the documentary scene, and wondered if I had any story ideas that might also be relevant to doc filmmakers.
I told him that the indie-owned podcast company Canadaland had just announced an open call for pitches—which in a year that had already seen a slowdown begin, was notable. But what was more, they were looking to build a slate of new series with the help of their big new hire, Julie Shapiro.
Who’s Julie Shapiro, the editor asked?
That’s the thing about crossing industry lines; often the people who are very well-known in one industry are complete unknowns in the industry that’s exactly adjacent.
My pitch to the editor was that I would write a profile of Shapiro, showcasing her luminous podcasting career, while also highlighting the story of Canadaland, and how for it’s 10th birthday celebration it had appointed a new set of C-Suite managers, with Shapiro taking on the role of Executive Producer, and had just launched an open call for pitches
Even though I’m from Canada, I went into this story wondering how this small indie start-up had managed to expand, especially at a time of such extreme contraction…and then how did they lure her to Canada (virtually at least) for this new role?
But as to the question of who she is, I wrote in the POV Magazine piece, that takes some knowing:
To understand the importance of Julie Shapiro for the podcasting industry, one has to draw a careful line through her career. She’s not the host of a wildly popular series. She’s not a founder of a company that was acquired for x million dollars. She’s not the giant media personality that some of her fellow podcast pioneers have become. But she has been at the centre of many significant moments of the industry. One can easily argue that she’s played a major role in how this nascent cultural form has shaped itself, in terms of spirit and intent, over the last 25 or so years.
If we were to make an analogy to the music industry, her importance to the many podcasters whose careers she’s nurtured over the years is like that of Quincy Jones to the careers of Michael Jackson, Dinah Washington, and Lesley Gore. To make the same analogy to the documentary film world, she’s perhaps what Jeffrey Skoll of Participant Media is to filmmakers like Laura Poitras (Citizenfour, 2014) and Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth, 2006).
What Shapiro really has is a knack for being in the right place at the right time, doing the right things, being curious about the best new ideas, and then being daring enough to take a leap of faith and start something new.
After Shapiro graduated in the early 1990s with a sociology degree from the University of Colorado, she spent time working in a record store, and also created a zine. Then in 1998, she moved East to do an internship at WUNC, the NPR affiliate in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. On a whim, she included her zine with the application.
In what would be an oddly prescient moment, during the interview, John Stempin, then interim news director, took out her zine, put it on the desk, and asked: “How do we turn this into radio?” From there, Shapiro would go on to work at the Duke University Center for Documentary Studies for a few years, before relocating to Chicago in the year 2000.
I love this part of the story for a few reasons
But mainly because it shows me that how we spend our time in our twenties, sometimes even if that’s work in the service industry, while also doing side projects, can lay the foundation for a career.
The other reason is that buried inside Stempin’s interview question was actually a much deeper challenge: How do you adapt a creative project for a new format that doesn’t yet exist?
The kernel of this idea would become the DNA of the Third Coast audio storytelling festival that she would later co-found with Johanna Zorn in the year 2000.
Zorn had an audacious idea: She wanted to make “the Sundance of the audio.” And that’s just what she and Shapiro figured out how to do; Third Coast would become a beloved home for the audio community.
After Shapiro left the Third Coast, first she briefly went to Australia, and then returned in 2015 to become the first Executive Producer at Radiotopia/PRX. From there, she would spend the next seven years working to help build that audio collective into a defining space of the audio industry and helping to nurture and produce a number of hit shows.
And then, after a brief stop at the UK-based Novel, Shapiro would make the metaphorical trek Northward to Canadaland to a new role as Executive Producer at Canadaland, where she would first help them to field the entries from their open call, and then work with the team to help decide on the winning pitches, and the follow up from there.
Last month, Canadaland announced their new slate of shows, most of which came directly from their open call last summer. This announcement has been echoed widely across the Internet.
It is notable that in a moment where podcast series are being cancelled, companies are slashing their staff, entire podcast departments are [mostly] eliminated in one blow, Canadaland splashes out with a whole slate of shows.
Jesse Brown, the founder of Canadaland, has a knack for saying things plainly on Twitter/X to his 76k followers:
It could be possible that Canadaland is one more reason to feel optimistic about the industry, aside from the three I mentioned last week (is it odd that Julie Shapiro is also implicated here, I think not).
On their slate, there’s even an ambitious investigative show, The Copernic Affair, which will tell the story of a Lebanese-Canadian sociology professor who was accused of masterminding a bomb attack on a synagogue in Paris. Hold tight, this is not scheduled until at least the end of 2024.
Also of note is the English-language adaptation planned for the Prix Italia-winning series from France Inter, “Inside Kabul.” This makes sense for Canadaland for three reasons: first, it’s a bilingual country, and they have been trying to grow their francophone audience here with shows in French like Détours, avec Emilie Nicolas. And second, because spotting a European radio award-winner and bringing it to a North American audience is smart. It’s a business move that happens all the time in the film world, something that the COO of Canadaland Alan Black knows from his decades at Hot Docs Documentary Film Festival. And third, because this is an adaptation, this means the creative is already done, so it will be available by the summer (supply chain solved).
Months ago, I brought the question to Canadaland in my 10th-anniversary interview with them about what’s up with their growth:
[Samantha Hodder]: Longform journalism is a tough business. And in the year that’s basically been a bloodbath, you've added three new executives who are all sitting on this call. What's the secret?
[Jesse Brown]: We've been doing long form for years now, sporadically, and I think that we have cracked it. We have figured out a way for it to actually build the business and not be a loss leader.
When you ask our audience why they support Canadaland, they're very likely to say things like Thunder Bay, or the White Saviors [two narrative Canadaland series].
We've gotten more skilled at how we release things and offering support or benefits, the same things that everybody's doing…but we [also] have this backbone of a profitable regular RSS feed on the main Canadaland channel.
This is why, Brown goes on to explain, that the narrative series that Canadaland has produced over the years have actually contributed to the growth of the company/channel/brand, and not sunk the ship, as is the salty tale over yonder.
You can read the full post HERE.
I like positive signs
It makes me feel hopeful. When things get local, and small, and fun, it feels like things just might work out. And it allows for growth; maybe smart growth. And this is positive. Because stupid growth has put us in the place where we are now. And that’s not fun for a whole lot of people. Onwards.