Just recently I was able to have a conversation with James Giehm a 44-year-old man of Cedar Rapids, Iowa who is an Admin, Podcast creator, writer, and is in charge of the social media and Discord for SimplyStogies. We had this conversation over zoom to be Covid friendly, not just because we live over 14 hours away from each other…
James has been creating podcasts for over 10 years now on a variety of different subjects ranging from politics to food, to show the disparity on them. When he took up the hobby of smoking cigars, he thought to himself, “why not combine the two?” Killing two birds with one stone by using both hobbies to fuel the other. His site came about 6-7 months afterwards that he started with a friend of his he met in a cigar community forum called “simplystogies.” This helped him to transform this site from just reviews to the way it is now with a variety of info and ways to take it in. Where after bringing along Matthew Kang, an editor for EaterLA, James said they’ve been able to “turn into more of a news magazine direction”
As a content creator James stated that the most difficult part of maintaining this platform he now has is none other than “creating content!” The biggest challenge in it “is finding what is going to keep your audience engaged and engrossed in what you’re doing.” Cigar smoking is a rather static hobby, “it’s not like there’s a lot of new things that come along with cigars.” You have to manage keeping the content you create relatable while not much else has changed.
Despite the challenges he may have creating that content, what draws him back into creating more is the people that he meets. He describes meeting people through cigars as something that is so organic and allows people to just click.
When he reached out to Tim Allen, a now admin for the website and Cigar Rights of America ambassador, he was able to be introduced to Glynn Loope, the then Executive Director of the CRA. Not only that, Glen Lue would end up taking part in only the third episode of the SimplyStogies podcast. Talk about a way to get the podcast rolling! Glen and him kept chatting offline where they discovered they live near each other so he became a usual part of the podcasts and YouTube videos they create. “It’s the only hobby that I know of that brings everybody together, from kings to street-sweepers… As much as we’re divided today it brings everyone together. ”
In order to maximize the outreach to different types of media consumers, using the variety of ways they have now is important. For those that love to listen they have their podcast, which James says will always be active, and they have articles for those that like to read and digest information at their own pace. Their digital media is available for everyone “to go to the website (at) any time and look up anything we’ve done past or present.” Which is important for them to pay attention to because as James states, “we have to keep this in mind… what is this gonna look like, what is this gonna sound like, what is this gonna read like in five years.”
To James, the most exciting part in producing this content is the interactions he gets to have with all these people who have different views than you. “When you have a cigar in your hand you want to relax, you don’t want to have an argument.” He’s been fortunate enough to talk with many important people in the industry and lounge owners alike, who are able to teach him something. “If you listen, you can learn something from anybody.”
His advice to all those that are trying to follow suit and create digital journalism is to not get discouraged! “It takes time to create a brand, especially for something like what we’re doing, but you can’t get discouraged, you have to be patient and don’t look at the numbers!” When he first started doing podcasts he did not get many listeners for his first month, but he did not let it discourage him. “If you’re passionate about what you do numbers shouldn’t matter… Do it for the love of it.”
James view on the future of web-based journalism is that “it already plays such a huge role and I don’t think it’s going to get any smaller… The newspaper’s already going the way of the dodo, (and) I don’t watch news on the television anymore, because it’s more opinion than it is news.” Although he does add that “in a hundred years maybe the internet will go away and we’ll have something different.” Showing that the future of journalism cannot truly be predicted.
~Connor Coles
Beforetheash 