National World's podcasts shine in Publisher Podcast Awards shortlist for 2025

They include both established and newly launched products including Lancashire Post's Parched Pea Podcast, books and writing podcast Booky, The Athletics Weekly Podcast , The Scotsman's food podcast Scran and political podcast The Steamie.

Nostalgia-themed Wearside Echoes from Sunderland Echo's Chris Cordner was also shortlisted and TV podcast, Screen Babble, also scooped a nomination.

The podcasts face competition from across the publisher spectrum including the BBC, The Telegraph, Bloomberg, Reuters, The Times, Financial Times, The Conversation, The New Statesman, Reach and more.

National World's emerging podcast strategy aligns with the company's north star of building new audiences and revenues by building on our journalistic authority and trust in the communities in which we have been present in some cases - for hundreds of years.

Innovation in storytelling and collaboration are key to this approach. A key part of the strategy is utilising the skills, expertise and passions of our talented journalists to build podcasts into our content offering.

The Athletics Weekly Podcast was shortlisted four times.

Host Euan Crumley said: “Having launched ahead of the Olympics last summer, we're delighted at how quickly this relatively new string to the Athletics Weekly bow is developing and thrilled to receive this recognition.”

Nicola Adam, whose self-hosted podcast Booky was shortlisted three times, has been leading to encourage and enable teams and individuals to get podcasts off the ground locally and nationally.

She said: "I'm delighted to see so much hard work rewarded in this shortlist. We are just starting to explore the potential of podcasting with our teams and there has been some immense work by individuals and teams both in editorial and commercial to get new podcasts off the ground, often with money behind them. Thanks also to our marketing colleagues for great work on branding."

Kelly Crichton, Podcast Producer for National World, said: "It is fantastic to see the great work going into podcasting around the company being recognised in these national awards.

“We continue to see success with our long-established podcasts but the newer titles are also there in strength up against titans of the publishing world. We'll be hoping to have a fruitful night in London in June."

This week two new podcast series' are due to launch - Mrs Yorkshire by the Yorkshire Post's Sophie Mei Lan and Parched Pea Podcast series 2. The Publisher Podcast Awards 2025 take place in London in June.