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Interview: NORM Lead Podcast on Media Career and Launch of Own Conversation

If you would like to diversify the informational diet and dilute articles about the epidemic with short stories of people who started their business, we recommend switching to podcasts .

We record a program about those who build and conduct small content projects. In this issue, Nastya Kurgan talks about the history of the NORM podcast and media career:


Nastya Kurgan, recording the NORM podcast and other conversational shows


alinatestova: The first question for you, Nastya: how did you get into the media, and then into the podcasts?


Nastya: I arrived in Moscow in 2011 and entered the journalism department at the Higher School of Economics. It started to work quite quickly there, because journalism education, as you know, is such a social construct: it seems that they give it to you, but you don’t really learn much. So I went to The Village and worked there for four years. She started as a very young junior and grew up to the chief editor, dealt with all kinds of cultural agendas and everything related to entertainment and cinema. Then she worked in a number of other publications - a little in TJournal as editor-in-chief, tried to do other things. Because, judging by my experience and the experience of other editors I know, when you work with content, from time to time it seems that you can no longer and want to try yourself in a new role. But I didn’t manage to stop dealing with content.

Then I got to Yandex, worked there for two years and was engaged in branded media. She left because we had the NORM podcast - it’s already two years old. Somehow suddenly podcasts began to take up so much of my personal time that I thought it was already hard to combine this with another work. Therefore, I want to deal only with them and see where this will lead, but I do not think.

alinatestova: I want to ask a lot about podcasts and about NORM. But first of all, I’m interested in knowing what qualities needed to be shown in order to make a cool career in The Village in a short time? Many of the guys who come to us in the podcast have similar stories. They say: "Well, I came to work as a small junior, and then an unknown business process, profit, and now I am the chief editor."


Nastya: Listen, I was just in my place. This is some kind of inner feeling when you are doing what you want to do in the moment. I don’t think that if I would come to work at The Village or another publication now, I would do everything with the same rapture and dedication for many reasons. It's just that I'm in something else, and I have slightly different interests. And then I was so high that I sat at work for 11 hours. I did not graduate from the institute, because I was constantly there, and I really liked it. Work was my life. When you are so involved in what you do, and of course, if you try and you have the makings in you, you begin to grow very quickly. It sounds corny, but you need to get high on what you are doing, then the result quickly appears.

I remember that at that moment there were two or three editions in Moscow, in the editorial office of which I really wanted to get in, and it just happened. It's not that I was a talented serving. I think that a combination of circumstances always plays an important role. It so happened that in The Village they were looking for a junior editor. I wrote to Slava Chemodanov, who then worked there as a chief editor, and he invited me. I really think this is a high degree of involvement. I was not interested in either money or career growth - it was just high and I liked working there.

After a few years, I have everything similar to podcasts. A number of my friends began to engage in them and just caught fire. Podcasting seems to be one of the most interesting media areas in which a lot of things are happening, and people are launching a lot of new projects. So when I started doing podcasts, my eyes lit up like that, and I thought: “wow, how cool I can just sit all night and do something - not for money, but just for fun.”

“I did not graduate from the institute, because I was constantly there, and I really liked it. Work was my life. ”


Alina: This drive has just reached a new round ...

Nastya: Yes, drive is really important.


Alina: You said that an editor who has been working with content for a long time understands that he can’t do it anymore. And the podcasts - did they become a solution to the issue, or did you have other ways to stay with the content and solve the problem of internal fatigue?


Nastya: A difficult question. I dont know. For a while after The Village, I tried to figure out what I wanted to do next. I have editorial expertise, and I can come to some publications, services, brands with her and make money from it. But for some time I could not find a job that would be right in my heart: so that I would not just earn, but would enjoy it wildly. In 2017, Dasha Cherkudinova and I did not have a plan or a business plan. We just sat in the bar, thought and decided - try to make a podcast.


A playlist with key quotes from our interviews about content marketing and the work of the media was

done, and then everything just turned around. But I can’t say that I tried to record and immediately went mad. No, it didn’t. We did it for about a year, listeners began to write to us. We began to receive feedback, and he gave quite a lot of energy. You absorb it all and gradually start to light up, and you want to do better and better. When we first launched NORM, I didn’t listen to the podcasts very much. And then, when I began to deal with them, I began to listen a lot and became very interested. It was a whole process, not at one moment everything happened.


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Nastya: Not so much time has passed. I can’t say that we had some period when we had to motivate ourselves for a long time. There was none. The first five or six issues, someone seemed to write to us, and we saw that someone was listening to us, but their number was limited to a couple of thousand and was not very large. And then, when we began to invest a little more in it, record in the studio and treat the sound responsibly, the audience increased. Then there was a turning point.

We started making a podcast because we really wanted to produce some kind of content. We needed some kind of outlet. We wanted us to have a platform where we can talk about what we are really interested in right now. If it listens to 100 people - cool, if 1000 - super.

At work, you are always limited to something like the formats in which you need to act. Especially in large companies, corporations and large media. And here, when you do your small project, nothing limits you. You can do what you want. In our case, this was motivation. What we just could do, what we want in the podcast format and talk about what we want.

When we began to invest a little more in it, record in the studio and treat the sound responsibly, the audience increased. Then there was a turning point



alinatestova: How did you, having worked in large media and corporations, completely switched to podcasts? Is it hard for you, or, on the contrary, was it easy?


Nastya: Well, first of all, we don’t really earn money for them, I still continue to take on some kind of editorial projects. Podcasts are not yet the main source of income. I just left office work with the intention to devote at least some short period of time to my projects, podcasts. We have another podcast that Dasha is releasing, and I play there as such an assisting party. We have a couple of projects that we are going to launch with Lika Kremer and Katya Krongauz. But I can’t say that I devote 100% of my time to this, because I still do freelancers for publications, for brands. It turns out that you kind of quit your job to do only podcasts, but still you just don't do them.


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Nastya: Listen, we see some examples - there are not so many, but they are. Fully branded podcasts appear. For example, “ Money has come ” by Ilya Krasilshchik and Alexander Polivanov - it is fully branded by the bank. Someone starts pages on Patreon and collects money with the help of their listeners. There is Blitz and Chips, which makes Gregory of the Prophets, there is BeardyCast. These are not the amounts that can be earned on YouTube, but even there you can’t raise a lot of money with a kondachka. Therefore, you need to invest all this time and energy. Podcasting, like any media industry, requires it. But brands are quite actively interested, they also began to come to us this year.

We could make more efforts to monetize, but we’re not doing anything special for this. They themselves come and say: "but how much it costs, we want to place something." Therefore, there is a request, and quite a few companies want to launch native podcasts. The question is the quality of execution. But interest has definitely emerged, and over the past year has become stronger. Still, podcasts have a good audience - they are solvent, advanced people, and this is interesting for brands.


Playlist with key quotes from our interviews about content marketing and media work


Alina: And even young podcasters who are just starting their projects have a chance to compete for an audience?


Nastya: Of course. It is believed that there are too many podcasts, and only the lazy did not start a podcast. Therefore, the entry threshold is very high. But I am just against this opinion. It seems to me that the more podcasts there are, the better. Then more people will be interested in them, and the market will grow - new advertisers will come. This is a wheel that should spin. The situation, which was a year ago when there were about five good podcasts or a little more, is just not very cool. And if there are 35, the market will only get better from this. Competition is important.


Alina: Does your editorial experience help you somehow in the production of audio content?


Nastya: It helps, of course. I would like NORM and the podcasts we will be launching to be more journalistic projects. It seems to me that this is more valuable. Editorial experience helps to separate interesting stories from not very interesting ones, helps to remove unnecessary ones. The basic editorial principles that apply to text, about which many popular books have been written, apply to both audio content and video content.

If you know how to work with text, then chances are good that you will work quite well with sound too. You have an understanding of where to cut and where not to. Reveal the topic where you need to disclose. I think this is important. My favorite Russian-language podcasts are made either by journalists or former journalists. It's just that I'm interested in listening to them. Of course, you can make good podcasts without this background, but it just helps.

If you know how to work with text, then chances are good that you will work quite well with sound too



Alina: And how do you work on new topics for the releases? Does the audience influence the issues that you reveal in future releases, are you planning, and so on?


Nastya: “ NORM ” is an indie podcast, and I would really like it to stay that way. We had suggestions to try combining it with something, but I really want it to remain independent. This relieves us of some responsibility, slightly unties our hands. All the topics on which we record releases are topics that Dasha and I would like to discuss and would like to learn other people's stories. Talk about how this happens in the podcast.

Usually we come up with themes. I’m walking along the street, something comes to my mind, I write down Dasha’s voice: “Dash, damn it, let's do a podcast about it.” We have a certain content plan, but we do not strictly adhere to it. We roughly understand what we want to record releases in the next six months, but we are moving them. They write to us sometimes and offer different topics. And we have a number of ideas in the content plan that are inspired by conversations with listeners.


Playlist with key quotes from our interviews about content marketing and media work


Alina: How has your podcast changed in the time that has passed since the interview with Dasha ? Were there any powerful shifts, changes, what happened in general?


Nastya: Listen, we did two live, and this is really a really cool thing. I would really recommend to all live podcasts who already have an audience. Firstly, this is a very good experience that develops you as a leader. There is much more responsibility. You need to moderate the conversation very well. Secondly, you can look at the audience. And this is also a cool experience. We made two live. They all went well.

The first was at the Make Culture bar, the other at the Garage Museum. But from the point of view of recording, the issue that we did in the bar had to be re-recorded in the studio. It was a bit of a stand-up. We tried to broadcast on Facebook, but it turned out pretty badly. But quite a few guys came to listen to us, and it turned out that these were not only our friends.

Any media needs its own community of people who support, who associate themselves with this project, who listen, watch, read. And on live you just understand whether it works out for you, whether the community is building up or not. Now we are trying to work with sound.

But I think the content is primary. We thought about sound quality secondarily. Although at some point, when the number of listeners is decent, you start to get a bunch of a hat if you have problems with sound. Crowds of people began to come to us on iTunes and wrote that they had "bleeding from their ears." And then you understand that you need to do something with it. But at the entrance, the meaning is primary.

When the number of listeners is decent, you start to get a bunch of a hat if you have problems with sound ... And then you understand that you need to do something with it



Alina: You looked at the audience on live. Do you have a mature portrait of these people? Dasha said earlier that you had scattered information on this subject.


Nastya: There are some statistics. Mostly these are Muscovites. We are listened to by people from 20 to 35 years old, but they write to me or come to live — 60% are still girls. Our audience intersects with some other podcasts that are made, for example, by Lika and Katya. Sometimes you get a cross audience with a number of other programs where you can also be heard.


alinatestova: It seems to me that I saw on your facebook the phrase “producing podcasts.” What exactly do you mean by that?


Nastya: What does a podcast producer do? He is looking for heroes, he interacts with them, is looking for a studio. You do not sit at the microphone, but come up with something, organize it, and so on. The podcast that we are doing now with the Either / Either studio is such an audio series that is pretty cool and important to us in terms of theme. That's where I act more like a producer. While I was sitting at the microphone there once. There I am a person who comes up with something and helps with the search for heroes, organizes interviews and thinks how it will all look and sound.


Alina: It seems to me that podcasts grew out of such an indie movement, when people just opened the closet, put a microphone in there and recorded releases. Now this thing is becoming more and more commercialized. Do you think that such a direction as the production of podcasts has a chance for further development, will there be a need for such a profession?


Nastya: It seems to me that now no one can answer this question in Russia. Let's see, I hope so. There are projects that generally operate in this field - for example, Leo Pikalev, who makes the "Podcaster". The greater the demand, the greater the supply.

We have been listening to the radio for so many years, our parents have been listening to the radio for decades when driving in cars or cutting salads at home, but now all the old meanings are simply moving to new platforms. Audio content moves from radios to smart speakers, to AirPods, and so on. There are quite a lot of people around me, and I myself have become this person who gets up in the morning and turns on the podcast at breakfast while he is going to work or traveling somewhere. Background consumption of content - parallel to some other process that you are doing - is a pretty promising story. You can combine listening to podcasts with any other business, which is harder to do, for example, when watching a show on YouTube. Therefore, the future of podcasts is.


Alina: Was it difficult for you to transfer to audio content from YouTube or texts?


Nastya: It somehow naturally happens. It seems to me that our habits are largely dictated by the environment and the people with whom we communicate, and some of our behavioral characteristics. I suddenly realized that I really began to consume a lot of content on YouTube. I wake up in the morning, make some porridge for myself, if I don’t listen to podcast or music, then I turn on some show on YouTube. I can’t say that I watched a lot of TV before. A similar story happens with podcasts. There are more of them, cool audio content is becoming more, and you are already starting to get involved, listen, and habits automatically change. It seems to me that this happens by itself.

Many said yesterday: "Fu, podcasts, I don’t have an extra hour to listen to how someone is talking about something there." And then you meet them, and they’re like: “damn, I found such a cool thing here, but did you listen to this?” This is a change of habits that occurs if there is something to listen to.


We help IT companies and specialists record podcasts and prepare technological longreads, hub posts, media columns in Russian and English. Always in touch on Habré and on Facebook ! Here are a couple of materials about our work :

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