"Best Practices"--The Humanities Podcasting Network 4th Annual Symposium

For our fourth iteration of the HPN Symposium, we find ourselves interrogating, engaging with, and pushing the boundaries of the concept of  “best practices” and how it relates to humanities podcasting. Our initial inquiry was born out of a discussion about the need to counteract worker invisibility and exploitation on university campus podcast teams. But this raised a larger, thornier debate: Are there other agreed-upon principles of podcast-making and audio creation?  If so, have they emanated from particular forebears and models, or sprung up out of habitual creation like unwritten, but widely understood, common laws? Are there contexts peculiar to podcasting that deserve their own careful ethical treatment or understanding?

So, now we are turning to podcasters in academia, industry, and everywhere else to make headway on these questions. What methods and trends evident in scholarly, educational, activist, and other creative spaces point toward the existence or need of “best practices” for humanities podcasters? Or are there reasons to believe that no such code exists or can be set down?