Interview with the podcast hosts of Klimanews  “We Want to Make It Easy to Engage With the Climate.”

"Klimanews"' volunteer podcast hosts, Valeria and Jonathan, give an insight into their day-to-day editorial work.

Producing a podcast with the latest climate news three times a week on a voluntary basis sounds like a lot of work. And yet there are now over 200 episodes of "Klimanews" - a podcast that has been online since autumn 2022. The team consists of 10 members and it takes them about 4 hours to produce an episode.

We met two members of the team in mid-March for our "Podcast Portraits" series: Jonathan is the co-founder of the podcast. He writes scripts, edits and hosts. Valeria is mainly responsible for hosting. She joined the team in spring 2023.

As the Klimanews editorial team, how did you get started?

Jonathan: I'm active in Fridays for Future and met people there who were interested in media and climate. The initial idea for the podcast came out of the climate movement. But now our team has become more diverse: Some are training to be journalists, some are studying, some are still at school.

How would you describe your podcast in two sentences?

Valeria: Our podcast is a short, snappy climate update with low-threshold information and scientific analysis from experts.

Jonathan: Exactly, and we appear three times a week with an episode length of less than 10 minutes.

There are already several podcasts covering the latest climate news. What makes your format different from other podcasts?

Jonathan: Most climate podcasts are more detailed and go into more depth on certain topics - but they don't come out as frequently as ours. We are short and snappy, but also very up to date in our reporting. We want to make it easy for our listeners to engage with the climate.

Valeria: Because climate is not in the focus of the media at the moment, if you want to be informed, you have to gather climate reports from a variety of news formats. We want to do this work for our listeners.

Conversely, this means you have to do the research. How do you identify the topics you want to talk about?

Jonathan: We have created a pool of different media that cover climate. This includes climate newsletters. We also follow the news very actively.

Valeria: The good thing about our team is that everyone is involved in the climate issue in different ways. Thanks to the knowledge of each member, we have a whole collection of ideas that we want to tackle. In our podcast, we also talk about big news and link it to climate policy. For example, we look at the climate implications of the US election.

And how do you organise yourselves as a team?

Valeria: We have the editorial team and the production team, which includes editing and presenting. We also work in shifts. This means that each week a team of 3-4 people is responsible for the podcast, both the editing and the production. That responsibility is handed over at the end of the week, and then it's your turn again a month later.

Your profile says that you often invite experts to join your podcast. How often do you do that and who do you invite?  

Jonathan: Our aim is to have a guest at least once a week who can analyse current events or provide expertise on specific topics. For example, we recently had Baro Gabbert, the spokesperson for Greenpeace. Claudia Kemfert and Luisa Neubauer have also appeared on our podcast.

Some of you are also active in the climate movement. In journalism, however, the mixing of activism and journalism is viewed very critically. How do you deal with that?

Jonathan: We've often discussed this in the team. On the one hand, it's clear that we're not journalists, so our podcast is not a journalistic product in the strictest sense. At the same time, we are transparent about our activist background - we have set up an "About us" page on our website where you can read about our engagement outside of the podcast. We also try to clearly separate our engagement from our podcast.

Valeria: We again benefit from our large team. Sometimes we produce scripts on topics that individuals aren't sure we can broadcast. As a team, we try to find an answer to this. A script is also always proofread by at least one person. Our information is therefore factual and technically justifiable. We also communicate very transparently when we as the editorial team have an opinion on a topic. At the beginning of a sentence, for example, we say: ‘The editorial team thinks...’

Is it easy to come to an opinion - you are a team of 10?

Valeria: It's very rare that we disagree on content. We tend to have discussions on a linguistic level - for example, when we ask ourselves how sharply we can formulate our opinion.

Can you think of a situation where you disagreed?

Valeria: The only situation I can remember was a discussion about the aim of the podcast. One member of the team wanted to be more opinionated, which is understandable. But since we're a short podcast, where we don't talk for an hour, and we don't have the time to set up a format like that, we decided not to do so.

Jonathan: Right, I'd almost forgotten about that situation because we don't disagree so much.  

Sounds like a really cute team!

They both nod and laugh.

April 2025