Ellin Bessner, who has recently left full-time teaching in the Journalism program at Centennial after 17 years, has delved into the world of podcasting, as she has become the host of The CJN Daily – a new podcast with Canadian Jewish News that provides listeners with bite-sized pieces of breaking news happening daily, but with a Jewish angle. “You're going out for coffee, you're going out for your walk, or you're going from your bedroom to your office in your house, and you got 10 minutes, you put it on, and you get everything you need,” she says.
Accepting the Offer
Ellin taught podcasting and radio for many years. Combined with her experience working as a radio reporter, journalist, and foreign correspondent for CBC Radio, she has an immense amount of skill within this industry that helped launch her into the podcast she hosts today. She has always wanted to do a podcast about Jewish history and military history, as she has research and books about these topics, in addition to 400 hours worth of tapes, videos, and audiotapes with veterans, and she always wanted to do something with it.
In December, she received an email from the Canadian Jewish News editor, and he brought up the idea of creating a podcast and asked if Ellin was interested. She enthusiastically agreed and shortly after asked if she could host it, which he agreed to. It took some time to get it into development, but Ellin told herself if she doesn’t leap now, she will never have this chance – and she did exactly that.
Creating The CJN Daily
The process of constructing the podcast took a great deal of planning, as Ellin essentially crafted it from the ground up. “I created it from scratch with some advice from [Canadian Jewish News] about how this was going to be the New York Times or the front burner of the Jewish community in Canada, and it is.” The topics include breaking news, news about Israel, Canadians, and politics, and Ellin says she conducts interviews with “newsmakers from wherever Canadian Jews are making news, whether it's at home, in Israel, or in Florida or Arizona during the winter.” She continues, “I've interviewed people in California, I've interviewed people in Israel, I have interviewed people all across Canada from Halifax to Vancouver, I have interviewed people in the Yukon so far… and we launched May 3rd.”
Compared to the other podcasts by the Canadian Jewish News, Ellin’s is much shorter in length; it is more like a daily news bite. It drops at 4:00 AM EST, and she shares that each episode receives between 1500 to 2000 listeners a day.
You can listen to The CJN Daily Podcast. Congratulations, Ellin, on this new and exciting venture!
Image Credit: Sarah Zahavi, Designer
By: Alexandra Few