Shure24: Finding New Models for Podcasting Culture

Shure24: Finding New Models for Podcasting Culture

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Shure24: Finding New Models for Podcasting Culture

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Nominated for SHURE24 by AI innovator Holly Herndon, the NEW MODELS podcast has become a centerpiece of the eponymous online platform parsing culture and current affairs.

Something strange started happening in 2016. The online world seemed to be shaping real-life events rather than the other way around, a phenomenon Caroline Busta calls “The Weirdening.”

After an extensive career in print publishing in New York and Berlin, Busta saw the scope – and need – to create a fresh format equipped to explore the complexity of current affairs and culture in today’s constantly shifting digital landscape. So she founded New Models: a progressive online platform comprising aggregate and original-source content, and a sparkling podcast at the heart of it.

“I was working as the editor of a print-based art journal,” says Busta. “However, there was a growing disconnect between the pace of that publication and the way that discourse was circulating online through things like 4chan and memes.”

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Though print was losing relevance as a vehicle for new information, the magazine format was, in Busta’s eyes, more important than ever: something that could give context to a set of terms, styles, codes, and ideas centered around community.

New Models selects news articles by hand, based on tips sent in by users and in-house scanning. The site evolves at a human pace, with a few new articles each day – a strong counterpoint to the turbo-paced approach employed across much of the internet today.

Given the noise in the digital space, where finding quality stuff to read has become somewhat of a chore, New Models provides a kind of filtration tap to the media swamp. “Sort of like how, in the days before peer-to-peer file sharing, the cities with the most interesting music scenes usually had at least one really good record store,” says Busta.

Teaming up with collaborators Daniel Keller and @LILINTERNET, New Models went on to expand its offering with an in-house podcast: an organic and logical addition to the main deal.

“I wanted to create an online vehicle for amplifying good articles and for allowing them to appear in the company of other related takes,” says Busta. “This process of sifting through the news naturally lent itself to debating the news, and recording those debates in the form of a podcast.”

Starting out in the storeroom of a friend's techno label, the crew has since started recording together at the dinner table, engendering a sense of informality that levels well with their listenership. 

“Hearing and reading people discuss issues relevant to your world in plain language, in a relatable way, has always been appealing – and even more so now.”

Web: newmodels.io

Insta: @newmodels_io

Twitter: @cbcb2000

This article originally appeared in the Shure24 Takeover edition of LOUDER magazine. Download the entire issue here!

Words: Cam Hassard

Images: New Models