Teaching History Communications & Internships at Ben Franklin's World

Of late, several professors have inquired whether I offer, or have considered offering, semester-long internships at Ben Franklin's World. Their requests relate that I could teach their students valuable digital communications skills they could use in either history or non-history jobs.

Teaching history communications is something I have thought about and something I may pursue in the future.

Teaching History Communications

My thoughts about how I would teach history communications come from thinking about how my involvement with Ben Franklin's World will change or end.

The podcast has been a successful history communications experiment. Within 15 months it has surpassed 500,000 downloads and become a top 8% podcast.

At the moment, I enjoy the intellectual, technical, and interpretive challenges the show offers. But it is not a project I see myself pursuing in its present form for my entire career.

I am a serial problem solver. I find a project or problem that interests me, study it, solve it, and move on to the next project or problem. At some point (I don't know when), I will move on from Ben Franklin's World to one of the other history communications project ideas I have or will have.

Knowing that I have a propensity to seek new challenges, I have started thinking about the long-term future of the podcast. I have three or four ideas about what the future might look like. With the exception of one scenario, all of the ideas involve ensuring that the podcast will continue to exist as a platform for early Americanists to communicate their work to the public.

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One idea for Ben Franklin’s World would be to adapt the project for use as an in-classroom educational tool. This would allow me to keep tabs on the project and use it to train students in history communications. [1. I am aware of the many challenges associated with this scenario.]

I imagine a history communications course as a full-year commitment and one that is run more like a science lab than a traditional history course.

The first semester would be the equivalent of a how-to tutorial. We would discuss an interdisciplinary assortment of texts about history, writing, social media, marketing, broadcast journalism, and software and apply the ideas we discuss to podcast episodes in progress.

The second semester would be about the students taking what they have learned to develop their own history communications projects.

This course would offer a win-win situation. The students would benefit from having a working platform to learn on and a project for their job portfolio. I would be able to handoff and work on some of the numerous ideas I have for projects.

I also imagine that the profession would benefit from a course like this one as at least a few of the students’ projects would take off and ultimately provide historians with more communications infrastructure.

Internships at Ben Franklin's World

Although I have sketched the above course in my brain, there are three reasons why I can't adapt and offer it as an internship at present.

First, I don’t undertake any project unless I can do it right and I am not convinced that I can teach all of the skills the professors have asked for virtually and in one semester.

Trying to offer a virtual, semester-long internship would prove frustrating for me and the students.

Some of the software I use for social media and the podcast (which could also be used for websites, blogging, and videos) would be best taught in person so I can provide hands-on assistance.

Also, I can't see how I can offer both the context for how I do what I do and technical skills in one semester. There wouldn't be enough time and to teach one without the other doesn’t make sense to me.

Second, I already have students, thousands of them.

Ben Franklin's World has created a virtual, limitless classroom. Thankfully, not all of my listeners e-mail, tweet, or Facebook message me, but many do and their thirst for information keeps me busy.

Third, there are time and financial aspects of the professors’ requests that do not make sense for me.

Each correspondent has espoused the benefits of “free student labor.” Students would learn about my project while taking some of the work it requires off my plate.

Truthfully, even if I just taught technical skills, it would take me a semester to get a student to the point where they could reliably help me with the technical and time-consuming aspects of the project. For most of the semester they would slow me down. As a historian with many projects and students of my own, time is not a resource I have in abundance.

There is also the fact that professors get paid to teach valuable skills and knowledge to their students. I have valuable skills and knowledge these professors want me to teach their students. Why should they get paid to teach their students while I provide the same service for free?

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I realize that all of the professors who e-mailed me value my work and skills. None of them intended to suggest that I teach their students for free. Their requests came from a place of interest in my work and a recognition that I could offer their students a history education with identifiable and marketable job skills.

However, the facts remain that I am not an institutionally supported professor and I do not presently have the resources to teach history communications effectively or add more teaching to my workload. Therefore, for the time being, I will not be offering any internships.

Edupreneur or Institutional Historian? Questions Raised by SHEAR & Podcast Movement

This past weekend, I attended Podcast Movement, the world’s largest podcast conference. In this post, I reveal the ideas Podcast Movement 2015 gave me and helped me to articulate, including the idea of whether I want to be an edupreneur or an institutional historian.

Culture Shock

Podcast Movement marked my first non-academic conference and it left me with a feeling of culture shock for two reasons: First, the conference took place in Fort Worth, Texas.

Second, I attended the conference as an historian in a world that appears dominated by marketers.

A New England Yankee in Fort Worth, Texas

My trip to Podcast Movement marked my first visit to the Dallas/Fort Worth area. I have visited Houston twice and find it to be a cosmopolitan city that sprawls like no other city I have ever visited (even Los Angeles). Although I have enjoyed my visits to Houston, I will admit that I left disappointed that it didn’t feel like the Texas I had imagined.

I am disappointed no longer.

Not long after I deplaned in Fort Worth, I asked for directions to the shared van stand. The man who assisted me called me “darlin’” and pointed the way. I had expected a slightly southern accent, but the term caught me off guard. I couldn’t help but think that my helpful guide was being a bit fresh.

It turns out, he wasn’t being brazen. When I reached the shared van stand the male attendant also used “darlin’” to address me. In Texas, “darlin” is used in place of “ma’am.”

Other cultural experiences included country music (not the pop kind), cowboy boots (Texans really wear them), choices regarding the pork and beef you put in your Tex-Mex tacos (choices?), and a few other linguistic variations.

My visit to Fort Worth reminded me why I love, and am so fascinated by, the United States. The U.S. stands as a huge country, with many regional identities, and yet every citizen who lives within its borders proclaims to be “an American.” We portray ourselves as one people and yet Americans in Fort Worth, Texas are different from Americans in Boston, Massachusetts.

An Historian Attends a Non-Academic Conference

What happens when you attend a non-academic conference? You get a hefty conference badge and a swag bag!

Inside my swag bag I found a glossy, color program, ads for corporate sponsors, a book, sunglasses, and a portable power stick to charge my smartphone or tablet.

Aside from the swag bag, I experienced business card overload.

A friend told me that I should bring at least 100 business cards to the conference and develop a system for dealing with the business cards I received. I laughed at these suggestions.

Earlier this month I attended SHEAR. I handed out more business cards at SHEAR than I have ever handed out at one conference; I probably gave out between 15-20. At SHEAR and other academic conferences I follow the tried and true etiquette of giving a card only when asked or when I want someone to remember me after a conversation.

At Podcast Movement, attendees handed out business cards to everyone they saw, regardless of whether they engaged you in conversation.

I must have given out between 75 and 80 business cards and between 100-200 Ben Franklin’s World bookmarks. I think I came home with more than 100 business cards.

Finally, I have never been to a conference where so many of speakers presented without being aware of the composition of their audience.

Podcast Movement attracted an audience of hobbyists, business owners, marketers, and public radio professionals. I enjoyed many conference sessions and panel discussions, but the public radio professionals spoke to everyone as if their audience worked in public radio and had NPR’s budget. As small as NPR’s budget may be, it is much bigger than that of an indy podcaster.

Additionally, many of the presenters at “How-To Monetize Your Podcast” sessions spent more time selling themselves than they did conveying useful information about how a podcaster could court advertisers or develop salable products. They were marketers, not educators.

When you attend a history conference, nearly every presenter knows their audience. I found the change of pace at this quasi-business conference a bit jarring at times.

Standing at a Crossroads

As different as Podcast Movement was from the academic conferences I normally attend, I had a really good time. I met many amazing podcasters and made several new friends. I heard fantastic talks given by Roman Mars (I met him too!), Marc Maron, and Sarah Koenig. I also came home with several ideas about how I can tweak Ben Franklin’s World and grow its audience.

I plan to start with developing an app and by seeking crowdfunding.

Attending both SHEAR and Podcast Movement also helped me articulate that I feel like I am standing at a crossroads with Ben Franklin’s World.

The podcast started as an experiment. Now that it has and continues to succeed, I need to decide whether I am an “edupreneur” starting a history-based business or whether I am a podcaster looking for an institutional job.

If I am honest with myself, I want to be the latter.

I am an historian and educator. I know little about starting a business and the thought of "monetizing" history makes me uneasy.

At SHEAR some of my colleagues seemed surprised I wasn’t on the job market. They told me I have an impressive work portfolio. I appreciate their recognition, but no institutions place job ads for the type of work I do so I have stopped looking.

Creating public digital history projects is important work, it is the type of work that will return history to the forefront of the public mind, which will in turn help us get funding and increase our enrollment rates.

But public digital history projects do not contribute to our culture’s corporate model of university education. Nor is it the type of work that earns tenure or garners an alternative academic position. I am a digital historian, but I don’t work on databases that lead to a better understanding of historic sources.

There is also the not-so-insignificant price tag that comes with creating and operating a public digital history project. Technology allows us to convey history in incredible and meaningful ways to large public audiences. But technology isn’t always free.

Ben Franklin’s World costs approximately $90 per episode to produce (sometimes more) and this cost does not include my time.

If I fulfill my goal of completely outsourcing my audio editing, each episode will cost $165, again not including my time. This cost is far less than NPR spends on each of its podcast and radio episodes, but it still means that a project such as mine requires a minimum operating budget of $360-$450 per month to keep it going.

Ideally, I would have a budget of $660-$825 per month so I can create more time for my scholarship.

In a perfect world, my monthly budget would be closer to $1,000 per month so I could hire graduate students to find and attach primary source documents, and suggestions for how educators can use them in their classrooms, to each episode.

I am not sure an institutional digital history job is in my future.

Conclusion

I suppose in the end I will be an edupreneur who holds hope that some day there will be institutional jobs for historians like me. Then we can help institutions build new projects and train others who want to engage in public digital history.

Until that day comes, I will persist in my work. I keep going because I believe that the historical profession has to take history to the public. We need to help our fellow citizens remember why the past and what we do is important. I believe that technology and new media can help us bring history back into the forefront of the public mind.

I am not sure how long the podcast will continue, but I do know that I want to build a career that includes both traditional archival research and writing and experimentation with public digital history projects. I am not alone in this desire. However, ours is a tricky road.

When we bootstrap and succeed in our work the beancounters at institutions will at some point take note. I think they will appreciate our work, but they will question why they should hire us. We are, after all, doing this important and beneficial work for free. This thought has me staring down the road of edupreneur.

How Do We Monetize Digital History Projects?

How do we monetize digital history projects? This question preoccupies my mind. I am in a position where I need to seriously consider how I can make Ben Franklin’s World both self-supporting and a job that pays me for the time I put into the show.

In this post, you will discover how Ben Franklin's World has fared six months since its launch and six ideas for how history communicators might monetize their projects to earn the financial support they need for their work.

State of Ben Franklin’s World: 6 Months Since Launch

Ben Franklin’s World: A Podcast About Early American History launched just over 6 months ago. To date, it has 36 episodes and has received over 185,000 downloads.

Podcast Statistics

Statistically, Ben Franklin’s World has done exceptionally well.

Podcast hosting service Libsyn released statistics for January 2015. Libsyn hosts approximately 18,000 podcasts. In January 2015, new podcast episodes averaged 195 downloads within the first month of release. On average, each podcast experienced 1,921 total downloads over their entire catalog for the month.

New episodes of Ben Franklin’s World receive around 2,000 downloads within their first week of release and the entire catalog averages over 25,000 downloads per month.

Measurable Impact

Listeners engage with me to tell me how much they enjoy the show and specific episodes. Guest historians have told me that they have seen sales spikes in books after their interview aired. Recently, Mental Floss featured Ben Franklin's World in its list of “19 History Podcasts that will Delight Your Brain."

By all measures Ben Franklin’s World is a success. The podcast is realizing the goal I set out to achieve: create wide public awareness about early American history and the work of professional historians.

Financial Realities

I love producing Ben Franklin’s World and being a part of its success, but what started as a side project and hobby has become my full-time, unpaid job. In fact, I pay the podcast to keep it going.

Each episode costs $90 to produce. This cost includes website and audio hosting services, the discounted fees of my professional audio engineer, and the fees associated with the tools I need to promote each episode and help grow the audience.

This fee does not include any of my start-up costs: recording equipment and software, graphic design, website theme, educational resources, and professionally produced segment bumpers (the Ben Franklin’s World intro, outro, and in-show music and voiceovers). Nor does $90 per episode include my time.

Like many digital history projects, Ben Franklin’s World has become a very expensive hobby. As an historian without institutional support, my family funds my podcast. This needs to change.

I want to keep Ben Franklin’s World going, but I need to find a way to make the show self-funding. Ideally, I would find a way to earn enough money so that Ben Franklin’s World could start paying me for my time too.

I would also love to generate enough revenue to hire people to help with the show so I can produce more episodes, shows, and historic event podcast series (i.e. 10 episodes on the American Revolution, Civil War, Native American History, etc.) and add educational resources to each episode.

This leaves me with the quandary: How do we monetize digital history projects?

Ideas for Monetizing Digital History Projects

Presently, I have six ideas for how I and others with expensive, but worthy digital history projects might earn revenue to help support our work.

1. Advertising

Website Advertising: Google Adwords offers the easiest way to place ads on your website. However, unless you have a high-traffic website, you most likely won't earn enough income from Google Adwords to cover your website hosting costs.

The most profitable way to earn money through website advertisements is to seek out partners who want to reach your specific audience.

Podcast Episode Advertising: Many podcasters offer ads in their episodes. Some have national sponsors like MailChimp, Squarespace, Lynda.com, and Audible.com. Others have more local sponsors that are unique to their audience or they advertise their own products and services.

Podcasters present sponsor ads by reading a blurb about their sponsor or by talking about their experiences with the sponsor and their product or service. These ads might be heard at the beginning, middle, or end of the show.

Podcasters need to consider sponsor advertising carefully. When podcasters read or discuss a sponsor they provide an implicit endorsement of their sponsor.

2. Consulting

People who start digital projects often attract the interest of others who would like to start a similar project. History communicators might consider charging for the times we offer more full-length advice on how someone else can do what we do.

3. Grants

Most digital history projects should be eligible for state, federal, and private grants.

Most often this model provides only temporary support. Many public historians refer to grants as "soft money" because they offer a pre-determined amount of support for a pre-determined period of time.

With that said, I noticed at NCPH 2015 that there are many historical consultants who make a living income by pursuing “soft money” opportunities.

4. Institutional Backing

Similar to a sponsor, historians with digital history projects could seek institutional support.

There are several history organizations as well as university initiatives that have mandates or missions to support public outreach and/or digital humanities work. There is a potential that one of these organizations might be interested in bringing in a proven digital history project to help bolster their goals.

I imagine that such a partnership would require public recognition on the digital history project, consulting work to help others in the program get their projects up and running, as well as use of the proven project to help launch new, organizational digital history or humanities projects.

5. Charge Admission

Charge visitors for use of our projects.

Historians with digital history magazines, databases, podcasts, or exhibits could follow the model established by The New York Times and other digital media outlets by offering some content for free while charging for other content.

Some podcasters provide free access to their most recent episodes and charge listeners for access to their back catalogs.

I am not a fan of this option, but it does exist.

6. Crowdfunding

Sites like Kickstarter and Patreon make it possible to fund digital history projects through crowdfunding. Patreon provides a particularly attractive model.

Patreon allows content producers (bloggers, vloggers, podcast producers, writers, etc.) to ask their friends, family, and followers to become their patrons. In exchange for a monthly donation or some other reward, support for your work comes from those who consume it.

Some content producers have created four- and five-figure monthly incomes by using the service, although most content producers earn significantly less.

(See: Loug Mongello of WDW Radio and Kinda Funny Games.)

Conclusions

Digital history projects offer historians an awesome opportunity to reach out to and interact with the history-loving public.

These projects have played, and will continue to play, a large role in historians’ work to bring history back to the forefront of the public mind.

Unfortunately, all of these projects come at a cost of time and money and few academic or public history institutions have the resources to support them. This means many digital history projects will continue to be bootstrapped and exist in a precarious state until we find ways to support them.

I don’t know how I will make Ben Franklin’s World self-supporting. But, I will choose a method that ensures that all of its valuable content will continue to be available free of charge to anyone who wants to access it. This is a goal that is important to me.

What Do You Think?

Do you have ideas about how we might fund digital history projects?

Are you or your organization interested in sponsoring or forming a partnership with Ben Franklin’s World?

Let’s keep this conversation going! Leave a comment, tweet, or send me an e-mail.

4 Tips for How to Tailor Your Public History Job Search

Are you looking for a public history job? In the latest issue of “Public History News,” Nick Sacco, keeper of the National Council on Public History's wonderful job board, offered 4 tips for job seekers.

In this post you will learn about Nick Sacco’s 4 tips for public history job seekers. You will also find additional resources and insights that I have added.

(You may also find 5 Job Search Sites for Historians a helpful resource too.)

Nick Sacco's 4 Tips for Public History Job Seekers

1. Know What You Are Looking For

Public history covers a wide array of occupations.

The breadth of the field makes it imperative that you know what professional skills you have.

Sacco advises that you develop a “clear vision” of the type of job you want, your professional goals, where you want to live, and your salary requirements.

How do you identify your “clear vision?”

Research the different types of history jobs available. Read job descriptions and ask other public historians about what they do.

Reading job descriptions and talking with other public historians will give you a good idea about what types of jobs, titles, and responsibilities are available to public historians. It will also provide you with information you can use to direct your job search.

I interviewed 2 National Park Service historians when I considered becoming an NPS historian.

My interviews helped me realize that I did not want to be an NPS historian based on the fact that many of their responsibilities included tasks that I did not find appealing.

You may also find cost of living calculators and salary comparison tools useful as you try to determine whether or not to apply for a job or accept a job offer.

2. Be Aware of Deadlines

Apply before it’s too late.

Many job postings have strict closing deadlines. The government of the United States has very strict deadlines and if you miss them you will not be to apply for the position.

3. Look For Job Openings on the State and Local Levels

If you want to work for the government remember that the United States has 3 levels of government: local, state, and federal.

Many job seekers consider only the federal level, but many states and local communities employ historians too.

Sacco offered the California Association of Museums, the Association of Mid-West Museums, PreservationDirectory.com, and statelocalgov.net as useful sites that will help you find state and local history jobs.

If you live in Massachusetts, you should also check out HireCulture.org.

4. Look Everywhere

Check institution websites.

As the NCPH’s job site guru, Sacco has found that many cultural institutions promote jobs only on their home website.

Be sure to check the websites of the organizations you dream of working for. If you have a strong desire to work for a particular organization you may consider volunteering, which would allow you to network within the organization.

With that said, the panelists on the Public History Jobs panel at the 2014 History Camp Boston differed in their opinions about whether volunteer service would help you get a job. About half of the approximately 8 panelists said that volunteering would help, the other half said you shouldn’t work for free.

Conclusion

Nick Sacco offers fantastic advice for public history job seekers.

He encourages job seekers to develop a clear picture of the types of jobs they want and to cast as wide a net as possible when they conduct their job search.

Share Your Story

Are you working your dream history job? If so, tell us about what you do.

What tips helped you during your job search?

Getting to the Malleable PhD

In January 2014, I participated on the “Getting to the Malleable PhD” panel at the annual meeting of the American Association Historical Association. Jacqueline Jones organized the panel, which consisted of myself, Walter M. Licht (University of Pennsylvania), Ramona Houston (Scholar and Consultant), and R. Darrell Meadows (Kentucky Historical Society).

Each panelist offered a personal narrative.

Some offered policy proposals and critiques about graduate eduction.

I tried to keep my presentation practical.

Recap of My Presentation

I began my talk by offering a couple of confessions:

First, I am still in the process of making my PhD malleable. I do not have any concrete answers for how to make a living as an independent historian, yet.

Second, I have the luxury of being able to take my time and figure out what career path will work best for me because I have spousal support.

My partner Tim has a great job; he works for Google. He is incredibly supportive and has the patience of a saint. Tim helped me through graduate school and now he is content to let me explore how I can create a career as an independent historian. I do not know how I got so lucky in life, but I am grateful for it.

Next, I discussed how I work as an historian and writer and dabble in entrepreneurship.

Finally, I talked about what I wish I had known at the beginning of my transition out of academia.

 3 Things I Wish I Had Known When I Started to Leave Academia

1. Nearly every person who leaves academia experiences a similar period of transition

Step 1. Depression and Mourning

Even if you don't want a traditional tenure-track job, most people who leave the academy experience a feeling of loss over their unrealized dream of living the “academic life.”

Step 2: Acceptance and Hope

You emerge from your gloomy phase into one of acceptance.

You recognize the fact that you were not meant to be a "traditional academic" and you have hope that you will be able to follow your passion in a fulfilling way.

Step 3: Exploration

Most of the time you know deep-down what it is you want to do, but few of us will admit it right away, which means many of us will explore different career options.

I explored a lot last year and I am still exploring. Last year, I interned with 2 public history groups and found that I did not want to run a non-profit.

Step 4: Action

You admit what you want to do and take steps to pursue your calling.

Deep-down I knew that I wanted to make a career as a public historian, someone who makes history accessible for everyone through my writing and speaking.

This year, I am experimenting with how I can earn a living from my writing and speaking.

2. Twitter is a great resource for people who want to transition out of the academy

I am still in awe of the generosity of the #postacs, #altacs, and #twitterstorians on Twitter.

Nearly everyone in these communities has a helpful story or advice that they are willing to share with you.

All you need to do is ask.

3. You HAVE transferrable skills

Graduate school was a valuable experience that taught us skills that “real-world” companies and organizations value.

A list of just a few of our marketable skills • Analytical Thinking • Ability to Write • Ability to Synthesize LARGE amounts of information into digestible nuggets • Computer Skills • Research • Project Management • Entrepreneurialism

Conclusion

The above outline represents the information you will find during my segment of the panel, which begins at about 23 minutes 20 seconds.

You will find a lot of value in this video if you are thinking about, or in the process of, leaving academia or if you are a professor thinking about ways you can improve your graduate education program.

You will find that some of the most valuable insights come during the Question & Answer session at the end of the panel.

Please feel free to tweet me, send me an e-mail, or leave a comment if you have questions about how you can embrace your post-academic or alternative-academic life.