• Home
  • Latest
  • Fortune 500
  • Finance
  • Tech
  • Leadership
  • Lifestyle
  • Rankings
  • Multimedia

Trendingnow

1

Microsoft AI chief gives it 18 months—for all white-collar work to be automated by AI

2

Former top Russian official admits the country is over Putin and can 'imagine a future without him' — even elites bail as Kremlin seizes their assets 

3

The Bezos family just donated $100 million to help achieve one of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s top campaign promises

1

Microsoft AI chief gives it 18 months—for all white-collar work to be automated by AI

2

Former top Russian official admits the country is over Putin and can 'imagine a future without him' — even elites bail as Kremlin seizes their assets 

3

The Bezos family just donated $100 million to help achieve one of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s top campaign promises
Commentary

How Podcasts Are Filling a Real Need

By
Adam Lashinsky
Adam Lashinsky
Down Arrow Button Icon
By
Adam Lashinsky
Adam Lashinsky
Down Arrow Button Icon
January 10, 2019, 12:56 PM ET
Dear Media Podcast At The Grove Presents As Seen Online With Jilly Hendrix
LOS ANGELES, CA - JULY 19: Social Media Personality Jilly Hendrix (L) and Writer and Comedian Erin Foster (R) attend the Dear Media Podcast presents As Seen Online With Jilly Hendrix at The Grove on July 19, 2018 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Paul Archuleta/Getty Images)Paul Archuleta—Getty Images

This article first appeared in Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily newsletter on the top tech news. To get it delivered daily to your in-box, sign up here.

A journalist friend recently commented to me that soon our entire industry will be made up of newsletters and podcasts. That’s funny, I responded. The former, a compilation of news by other people plus some value-added stuff, delivered in an efficient manner, is what Henry Luce and Britton Hadden did when they founded Time magazine in 1923. (Luce alone shortly after that started Fortune.) Fantastic audio storytelling via podcast is no more than on-demand radio distributed to portable devices. Nothing much is ever completely new.

We’ve written about the growth of podcasting a few times in Data Sheet. In Las Vegas this week I met with one of the leaders of the new/old medium, Hernan Lopez, founder and CEO of Wondery. His three-year-old Los Angeles company is part audio studio, part broadcast network. It creates its own shows, like the popular Business Wars, and it helps create and distribute others, like Dirty John (in collaboration with The Los Angeles Times) and Gladiator (with The Boston Globe).

The entire podcast industry is small, around $500 million in annual revenue, reckons Lopez, and so is Wondery. Lopez, a longtime Fox broadcast executive before deciding he needed to scratch the entrepreneurial itch, says Wondery turned profitable on a cash-flow basis last quarter, has “8-figure” revenues that have doubled for two consecutive years, and has raised all of $5 million in venture capital. Lopez says the opening he saw was that “long-form narrative storytelling was all public radio” in the United States. But consumers love serial stories, and just as TiVo birthed a golden age of narratives on TV, podcasts could do the same for audio.

An old medium is reborn, and consumers—plus a few aggressive entrepreneurs—reap the benefits.

***

The recent coverage of the startling prosecution of Renault’s (RNSDF) Carlos Ghosn reminds me I never shared with you an article posted over the holiday that I wrote in the January issue of Fortune. “Hot Under the White Collar” strings together the recent spate of arrests of corporate executives on charges of murky or otherwise not-plain-vanilla criminal activity. Besides Ghosn (in Japan) these include the finance chief of Huawei (in Canada) and an Alibaba (BABA) executive (in China). I wondered if the trend suggests more business types are going to jail these days. Spoiler alert: not yet.

***

A few readers—including one participant at our CES dinner Monday night—took me to task for painting Las Vegas with too broad a brush. For clarity, “Vegas,” to me, is what I experience when I go to that vile stretch of real estate known as the “strip,” particularly during that sweaty, smoky, pushy, glitzy, sea-of-humanity consumer-electronics event. I am aware there’s more to Vegas than that.

Tech journalist Gabe Goldberg offered me his own epiphany on the city. “After being to Las Vegas a couple times and hating it, I realized that if I look at it as an anthropologist, simply noting its differences from my own civilization, it’s tolerable,” he writes. “Plus, I’ve found quite a lot to like there: museum-class exhibits in hotels (loved Titanic and Da Vinci), recreation (pinball museum, firing range, Las Vegas Big Dig, race track, etc.), plus ample, wonderful dining. Plus nearby sightseeing (Red Rocks Canyon, Hoover Dam, etc.).”

Thanks Gabe, and others, for helping me see the bigger picture.

About the Author
By Adam Lashinsky
See full bioRight Arrow Button Icon

Latest in Commentary

Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025

Most Popular

Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Fortune Secondary Logo
Rankings
  • 100 Best Companies
  • Fortune 500
  • Global 500
  • Fortune 500 Europe
  • Most Powerful Women
  • World's Most Admired Companies
  • See All Rankings
  • Lists Calendar
Sections
  • Finance
  • Fortune Crypto
  • Features
  • Leadership
  • Health
  • Commentary
  • Success
  • Retail
  • Mpw
  • Tech
  • Lifestyle
  • CEO Initiative
  • Asia
  • Politics
  • Conferences
  • Europe
  • Newsletters
  • Personal Finance
  • Environment
  • Magazine
  • Education
Customer Support
  • Frequently Asked Questions
  • Customer Service Portal
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms Of Use
  • Single Issues For Purchase
  • International Print
Commercial Services
  • Advertising
  • Fortune Brand Studio
  • Fortune Analytics
  • Fortune Conferences
  • Business Development
  • Group Subscriptions
About Us
  • About Us
  • Press Center
  • Work At Fortune
  • Terms And Conditions
  • Site Map
  • About Us
  • Press Center
  • Work At Fortune
  • Terms And Conditions
  • Site Map
  • Facebook icon
  • Twitter icon
  • LinkedIn icon
  • Instagram icon
  • Pinterest icon

Latest in Commentary

murdochs
CommentaryMedia
OpenAI paid $100 million for a talk show. James Murdoch is eyeing an even bigger deal. The hot new asset class is humanity
By Lin CherryMay 17, 2026
6 hours ago
dennis
CommentaryAI agents
Freshworks CEO: why agile enterprises are winning the AI race — and what they did differently
By Dennis WoodsideMay 17, 2026
6 hours ago
Mary Moreland-Abbott Executive Vice President of Human Resources.
CommentaryRetirement
Gen X is the most indebted generation in America. Their employers can fix that
By Mary MorelandMay 17, 2026
8 hours ago
liberman
Commentarystart-ups
We watched social media concentrate. The same thing is happening in AI, only at a deeper layer
By David Liberman and Daniil LibermanMay 16, 2026
1 day ago
olivier
CommentaryAnthropic
I’ve been studying Big Tech for a long time. What just happened with Anthropic and the Pentagon terrifies me
By Olivier SylvainMay 16, 2026
1 day ago
lawyer
CommentaryLaw
Would you hire the lawyer who just got sanctioned for using AI?
By Alexandra SmythMay 16, 2026
1 day ago

Most Popular

Microsoft AI chief gives it 18 months—for all white-collar work to be automated by AI
AI
Microsoft AI chief gives it 18 months—for all white-collar work to be automated by AI
By Jake AngeloMay 16, 2026
1 day ago
Former top Russian official admits the country is over Putin and can 'imagine a future without him' — even elites bail as Kremlin seizes their assets 
Politics
Former top Russian official admits the country is over Putin and can 'imagine a future without him' — even elites bail as Kremlin seizes their assets 
By Jason MaMay 16, 2026
21 hours ago
The Bezos family just donated $100 million to help achieve one of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s top campaign promises
Politics
The Bezos family just donated $100 million to help achieve one of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s top campaign promises
By Jake AngeloMay 12, 2026
5 days ago
SpaceX heads into a record-shattering IPO with the 'deepest moat that exists today' as investors vow to 'never bet against Elon'
Innovation
SpaceX heads into a record-shattering IPO with the 'deepest moat that exists today' as investors vow to 'never bet against Elon'
By Jason MaMay 16, 2026
1 day ago
Oil markets could be a month away from the moment of truth. Brace for a 'non-linear' price spike and panic buying, analysts warn
Energy
Oil markets could be a month away from the moment of truth. Brace for a 'non-linear' price spike and panic buying, analysts warn
By Jason MaMay 16, 2026
24 hours ago
Meet the 20-year-old CEO who launched a company in high school to solve Gen Z's entry-level job crisis
Future of Work
Meet the 20-year-old CEO who launched a company in high school to solve Gen Z's entry-level job crisis
By Jake AngeloMay 16, 2026
1 day ago

© 2026 Fortune Media IP Limited. All Rights Reserved. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy | CA Notice at Collection and Privacy Notice | Do Not Sell/Share My Personal Information
FORTUNE is a trademark of Fortune Media IP Limited, registered in the U.S. and other countries. FORTUNE may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website. Offers may be subject to change without notice.