"Unpolished and quirky, with plenty of dead air and 'ums.'"

What are we looking for in a podcast? The NYT writes:

But the real fun is finding the homemade ones, the amateur attempts made in somebody's basement with a laptop and a microphone. These can be unpolished and quirky, with plenty of dead air and "ums," but that's their charm. Podcasts, in other words, are the audio version of blogs - the Web logs, or daily text postings, that made up last year's hot dinnertime conversation.

Yeah, sure, it's the charming, fumbling writing style of blogs that we like so much. It seems to me that what we like about blogs is the pithy writing style -- how they cut right to the quick and tell the truth. By the same token, I think what we want in a podcast is to hear some people who are really good at talking, saying interesting things and saying them well. In other words, podcasting, like blogging, shouldn't be an amateurish, relaxed step down from MSM, but a freer, sharper alternative.