Posted November 22nd, 2008, in: Ideas, Observations, Opinions, Rants Etc| New Media| Technology| Web 2.0

I just had an idea.

We could get a few people together to take turns reading and recording interesting articles from the Wikipedia and release the audio as a weekly podcast.

A sort of audio-book version of the wikipedia.  Maybe it could be five or ten articles at a time, that way it could be a one-hour program.  Maybe they’d be related in some way.  

This is just a midnight harebrained scheme, so if it’s a stupid idea, I don’t really care.  Seems like a natural progression to me though, at least at 5am it does.

I think it would only work if it was for a general audience.  Let’s say we focus it on the public radio audience, so the topics are all things that your average consumer of liberal information would enjoy.

The entry on the Electoral College might be a good example.  It could be coupled with others loosely about Democracy and the founding of the USA, for example.

Maybe instead of putting multiple readings together topically, it could be a reading of one article followed by a discussion by some invited experts via skype etc?  

This would also be a good place for new VO talent to cut their teeth and get out there and build some resume material.

I’m not interested in doing VO myself, but I’d be willing to commit to one article per month. 

Anyone?

Maybe Wikipedia articles are just too crude to read in an enjoyable way.

Maybe we need to re-write them for audio?  All just random late-night ideas.