Meet Tim Utzig, student on the world’s first MA in Podcasting

After graduating in 2020, Tim worked for the US government contractor ANSER, building its corporate social media presence from the ground up.

Three years on from his degree, his calling toward journalism remained. When he discovered the MA in Podcasting at City, he jumped at the opportunity.

Living in London was another major draw. As well as being a cultural capital, the city is more accessible than his car-centric hometown because of its highly developed public transport system. He navigates the city with the support of his guide dog Alisa, a yellow Labrador.

“I’d studied in London for a month during my undergraduate degree and fell in love with the city,” he says. “When you’re blind or visually impaired, accessibility is always at the foreground of your mind, so it was very nice to be in a city that I can get around independently.”

A longtime podcast listener, he has had his finger on the pulse of the industry for over a decade. Regardless of whether he had experienced vision loss, Tim suspects he would have been “knees deep” in podcasting.

He’s not alone – podcasting continues to boom in popularity and as of December 2023, there were 464.7 million listeners globally with predictions that this will only increase in 2024.

Podcasting: the future of longform journalism

City has one of the most prominent Departments for Journalism in the UK and in the world. The master’s is the first postgraduate degree in podcasting of its kind in the world and launched in September 2023.

Brett Spencer, Director of the Journalism Department’s Centre for Podcasting Excellence, helped set up the programme. Brett has over 20 years of experience in radio, working for a range of BBC networks, for Bauer Media and founding the SJ Broadcast consultancy. He was an early proponent of podcasting, creating the highly successful BBC podcast ‘Kermode and Mayo’s Film Review’.

Addressing City journalism students last year, Tina Brown, who has held editor in chief roles at Tatler, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and The Daily Beast, said: “podcasting is the future of longform journalism.”

“Podcasting has become one of the prime mediums for storytelling and longform journalism,” Brett agrees. “It was important for City to set the pace.”

He has been hard at work creating partnerships with industry leaders such as Spotify, Acast, Goalhanger and many others across the industry.

Some students in the cohort are fresh out of their undergraduate degrees, while others have had extensive careers in print and radio journalism and are looking to change tracks.

Sports, storytelling and disability activism

In his first term, student Tim became increasingly interested in narrative storytelling in podcasting, with a focus on sharing voices that don’t often reach the mainstream.

For one of his assignments, he co-produced a podcast about the charity Achilles International, which pairs sighted guide runners with blind runners.

“I’ve been running for several years. It started as a way to stay physically in shape and it became a version of therapy for me,” he says. “I still felt pretty comfortable running in my neighbourhood in my hometown, but when I moved to Washington DC for university, I knew it wasn’t a good idea.”

He initially ran on his own on a treadmill until he discovered the charity, which has chapters worldwide.

In London, there are two chapters which meet weekly. As part of the podcast, Tim got mic’d up and joined the chapter which meets at Arsenal, running with a first-time guide and interviewing him about what the experience of guiding was like.

Moving into his second term, Tim would like to become a “Swiss army knife” of a storyteller and would like to work on projects about disability advocacy, politics and sport.