Sometimes, We Created The Conversation
A look back at Bello’s contributions to the industry
When you look back at Bello’s collective body of work, you can’t help but notice something: we are relentlessly optimistic about this medium and fiercely protective of its integrity.
Bello may have started casually enough as a place for podcast listeners to convene, but over time, it honed a very specific perspective. We believed there was value in elevating independent and marginalized voices. We emphasized artistry and experience and craft. We not only wanted to cover trends, but to untangle their context and history. And mostly, in the words of Elena Fernández Collins, we wanted people to make more weird shit.
As Bello signs off for now, we pause to reflect on our own contribution to the conversation and the contributions we’re most proud to have initiated.
The Bello 100
List season has its fans and its detractors: those who relish seeing which shows curators rally around, and those who resent the artificial split between “the best podcasts” and everything else (especially when the same few heavily-resourced shows attract all the attention).
The Bello 100 isn’t a “best of” list — we are not the arbiters of superlatives — but for 6 years we have sought to document outstanding episodes and series we think are worthy of your attention.
Listening to the selections on our lists from 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021 should keep you busy for awhile.
Our Audio Fiction Debut Series
Since 2018, we have regularly published a series documenting new fiction podcasts, written first by Elena Fernández Collins and later by Amber Bulinski. This series took the genre seriously, casting a critical and loving eye on all of its potential.
Our Ambitious “Issues” Project
The Bello newsletter is generally pretty topical, but as editors we were hungry to spend time in a more ambiguous space. In 2021, we launched Issues, a magazine-style collection of stories on a shared theme. Read our Translation Issue, edited by Galen Beebe, and our (Non)Fiction Issue, edited by Elena Fernández Collins.
Our Pandemic Coverage
When COVID-19 first shuttered offices and cancelled live events, we turned our eye toward how this pandemic was affecting our industry. We published pieces on the financial impact, the trend toward crowdsourcing content, and how theater companies embraced audio as a way to reach audiences. We also curated shows to keep you informed and entertained; and shared live online podcast events to keep people connected.
We Paid Our Writers
The decision to turn Bello from a low-stakes creative project into a small business was an easy one — our growing community of writers deserved to be paid for their work, and we wanted to ensure Bello could remain a competitive place for writers to publish. We also felt that paying our writers validated podcast criticism as real and meaningful journalism. Finding the funding for those ambitions was much, much harder.
We have endless gratitude to the patrons who funded our coverage through their monthly donations. Debbie Millman and Juleyka Lantigua Williams have been prolific supporters of our work. We also want to thank the indie podcasters who purchased ads in our newsletter, to our fiction debut series sponsor Podchaser, and to longtime Bello 100 sponsor, Podcast Movement.
The Bello Slack Community
This community is everything we hold dear: It is a place for us to work out our thoughts on a new trend, to debate our response to a recently launched series, to convene with our writers, and to scream obscenities into a digital black hole (don’t worry: we are comforted by a bot and each other). We don’t have a paid Slack account, so it has a short memory. Our community guidelines make our conversations off-the-record, so it became a safe space for makers and listeners alike. We dare you to find a nicer and more supportive place on the internet — we promise, it doesn’t exist.
Our Substantive Profiles
Sometimes there are creators who have us fluttering, moth-like, around their work — we are drawn to some light we see there — and often, a casual interview isn’t enough.
In Bello’s earliest days, we struggled with a sort of imposter syndrome about our legitimacy as a forum for critical review. The Mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder was kind enough to join a Slack channel for an hour to let members and our writers interview them. We never looked back.
From there, a conversation with Avery Trufleman could barely contain her multitudes. We talked recipes with Hrishikesh Hirway.
For the pages of Bello, Elena Fernández Collins perfected a type of profile that weaves conversation and review; the result feels lush, immersive, experimental. Their interview with Rose Eveleth broke form completely. A conversation with Sharon Mashihi added depth and context to our understanding Appearances. Similarly, a profile of Kaitlin Prest could have been about the nuts and bolts of running a new business — it was anything but. These profiles sustained us, gave us a peek behind the curtain, made us believe in magic.
Literally Thousands of Podcasts Recommendations
You can find more than 600 podcast recommendations in the annual editions of our Bello 100 alone. Another 1,500 in our newsletters. At least a hundred fiction debuts. And hundreds more through our topical lists.
We documented 66 podcasts that will make you cry. Podcasts that force us to confront racism. D&D podcasts. Podcasts that were short in format, yet anything but small. History podcasts and podcasts for uncertain times.
We hoped that we proved there is truly a podcast for everything.
Our Podcast Criticism
Podcast criticism has been a cornerstone of our work since the beginning, and we’ve pushed ourselves to make our criticism truly critical. Some of our favorite pieces are reviews of The Left-Right Game, Radio Ambulante, and a classical pianist’s 1960s radio documentary.
Our How-to and Technical Guides
In our how-to section, we considered all aspects of creating podcasts, publishing technical, process-oriented, and emotional how-to articles on topics like IP, podcaster self care, and how and why to create press kits and transcripts. And we helped listeners consume responsibly with pieces on optimizing your podcast app and slowing the heck down.
Our International Coverage
We’ve been pleased to bring you coverage of podcasting around the globe, including pieces on the podcast scenes in Argentina, France, and the UK, and to include Spanish-language recommendations in the latest Bello 100s.
Our Trends and Industry Coverage
We always aim to position individual podcasts within the broader ecosystem and understand the influences behind current hits. We’ve published pieces on the history of foodcasts, the evolution of serialized news shows, and the boom of climate-focused shows.
We’ve also published pieces on all aspects of the podcast industry, from the how and why of “podfade,” to podcasting’s benefit to indie musicians, to the issues with requiring ProTools proficiency, and more.
The Bello Collective is a publication + newsletter about podcasts and the audio industry. Our goal is to bring together writers, journalists, and other voices who share a passion for the world of audio storytelling.
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