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This is\u00a0<\/em>Hot Pod,\u00a0<\/em>The Verge\u2019s newsletter about podcasting and the audio industry.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Today is my last day at The Verge<\/em>, and this will be my final issue of Hot Pod<\/em>. I\u2019ll have one more story coming out in the next week or two. But until then, I wanted to offer some parting thoughts on the industry I have covered so closely for the past two years.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I have this thing in my career where I always get to the party too late. I joined my college newspaper just as it was becoming clear that printing a daily no longer mathed out. I had a good year at the Melissa Harris-Perry<\/em> show on MSNBC shortly before the beloved executive producer left and the program imploded. I missed the heady old days at Forbes<\/em> when magazine writers would drink champagne on a boat on the company\u2019s dime. Maybe I am a bad luck charm, or maybe I am just too stuck in old ways of thinking about media.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In some ways, I think the same holds true for my time at Hot Pod<\/em>. When I started two years ago, there was a lot of excitement. But despite the talent deals and M&A still happening, the anxiety was already there. And you know what happened next.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n There are those shows that are adapting to the new landscape and making it work<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n That said, the party isn\u2019t over for podcasting. This medium is still in its infancy and is becoming an increasingly integral part of the public\u2019s media diet. But I did come in at the end of a particular era. There was a point, now past, that it seemed podcasts might be the new magazines: a place where writers and producers could take their time to focus on in-depth reporting and storytelling. A lot of top journalistic talent flocked to the medium for that reason. And those types of shows are still being made (10 years later, Serial<\/em> is still at the top of the charts), but as companies withhold their spending on limited series and time- and money-heavy projects, it\u2019s clear that it won\u2019t be at scale.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Podcasting is affected by the same macro forces that have resulted in layoffs and closures across media. The investments have dried up, and every single project needs to be profitable in order to survive. In this way, podcasting is unexceptional. But even if the lofty promises of podcasting\u2019s early days do not come to fruition, there are those shows that are adapting to the new landscape and making it work. I think of Normal Gossip<\/em>, which manages to combine storytelling and shit-talking in brilliant form and publish often enough to avoid the drop-offs experienced by other seasonal podcasts. Or Unholy: Two Jews on the News<\/em>, which has used its weekly chat format to feature genuinely challenging conversations at a time when they are really, really necessary. Or Decoder Ring<\/em>, which has transitioned from seasonal to biweekly, much to my personal benefit. Even if the producers, hosts, and editors deserved better from their corporate overlords than what transpired over the past few years (and they did!), I am hopeful that creators in this industry will continue to innovate.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n