Edgelands: A Telegraph project
The route. This is actually a screenshot from my iPhone at the end of the journey, with all the that places I visited.
“Wow, it looks pretty epic.”
That was exactly the response I had hoped for. I was at the offices of the Telegraph newspaper, and I had just shown Ben Ross, the travel editor, and Greg Dickinson, the social content editor, my route along the New Iron Curtain. To illustrate it, I’d taken along a giant folding map, and traced out my route. 8500km along Russia’s European border, and exploring the countries that it touched.
“And you say you could do some videos?” asked Ben.
“Yes”
“And you’re interested in doing podcasts?”
“Yes”
“I think we’ve got something here. I’ll leave you to chat through the details with Greg, but I think that a couple of articles for the paper, plus the online element, and this could be a great project.”
“What are you doing to call the journey?” asked Greg.
“I was thinking of the New Iron Curtain.”
“Hmm. Might be a bit too political for the Travel section. What about Edgelands?”
“I like it.”
And that was how Edgelands came about. A mix of print articles, podcasts, videos and online articles, documenting the journey in every conceivable medium. It would all be wrapped up in its own microsite, and shared with the world via social media.
How the podcast appeared on iTunes
The podcast, which was Telegraph Travel’s first, excited me the most. The process went thus: I recorded out in the field, with a mix of self-narrative, interviews and soundscape; I sent this back to Greg, who picked out the best bits with Dave, the producer. When I got back to London, Greg and I talked about it in the studio, then Dave added pacing, music and soundscapes.
Here you can read the introductory article that I wrote for the paper. And you can follow this link to see the microsite. From there, you can access all of the different episodes, with videos, photos, the podcasts, and written content.
Or, you can listen to the series on iTunes here.
Over the next few weeks, I will be going through the episodes, with additional information and links.