Telegraph gets exclusive Cameron podcast

By Lou Thomas

The Daily Telegraph has pipped The Sun to the post by making the first podcast by the leader of a political party available on its website.

Conservative leader David Cameron’s podcast attacking Tony Blair’s Respect anti-social behaviour scheme was available on the Telegraph’s website on Tuesday morning and was trailed on the front page of the newspaper.

Asked if there were any plans to get other leaders of political parties to record podcasts the Telegraph’s podcast editor Guy Ruddle said: “We’d obviously like to get all of them involved. The plan is for a round table debate.” He said the newspaper’s political correspondents had asked Cameron to do the recording.

The Sun put a podcast recorded by Tony Blair on its site on Tuesday evening, before publishing excerpts of the recording in Wednesday’s Sun.

Derek Brown, who wrote the story in the tabloid explaining how to access the podcast, said: “Blair was well up for the idea. We were doing this big thing on the Respect issue and we approached him and he did it while he was out campaigning. We hope it’s going to have a pretty decent uptake.”

There are no definite plans for The Sun to get other political leaders to do podcasts but Brown said: “As the technology improves and we see how many of our readers pick it up then there’s no doubt we’ll do it in the future at some point.”