That’s the question that’s been losing me sleep since autumn last year.

As previously trailed, I’ve been working on building our audio abilities at Guardian Unlimited. We’ve been building a studio, buying equipment for reporters, getting training done for dozens of staff and hiring producers to pull everything together.

Emily Bell, the boss, announced yesterday that we get the show on the road - or, rather, on the pod - on Tuesday, when we launch a new daily news show and a variety of weekly shows covering science, politics, entertainment, media and music. More will follow. You can hear a sample of the new lineup with episode one of Media Talk with Matt Wells, which features some hilarious meedja industry chat (not least about our wonderful Newspaper of the Year win), and the irrepressible Jeff Jarvis on the line from the US.

This, I’d say, has been the most challenging thing I’ve ever done. It’s not just learning the new lingo - from compression to levels to imaging to stings - or the need to get over-familiar with the technology by which one attaches acoustic treatments (foam panels) to studio walls (don’t use Velcro).

No… it’s more to do with the sense that, starting I first started going on - and on - about this back in the late autumn, we were going from near to a standing start. We’d been doing audio for ages, but actually producing proper programmes is a very different thing technically and - vitally - journalistically.

Compare it with starting blogs, one of the other big projects I’ve been leading at GU. Blogs make interesting demands with regards to the positioning of the journalism; the move to a chatty style, the linking out, the acceptance of feedback and the sudden switch in mental mode from lecture to discussion.

By comparison podcasting is, arguably, a much less discursive medium, and less so even than its parent, MSM radio, which is often hugely interactive thanks to the timeless tricks of live phone-ins and, more recently, text messaging.

But, for an organisation like ours, which mainly types out its products either for print or screen, podcasting is a huge stretch in terms of skills. Blogs are, at least, written, and good journalists often seem to make good bloggers. But the spoken word is a very different thing indeed. Among many podcasts already out there you can hear what happens if that gap is not respected, even when you sit very good journalists in front of a microphone. It’s why we’ve had lots of training for our band of pioneer podcasters over the last few months, supplied by the wonderful team at Yada-yada. Slowly, we’re infusing all the stuff they are teaching; old radio tech skills, voice skills, format ideas. We’re getting better with every go.

I hope, over time, that this prep will allow our shows to sound structured and professional, but rarely scripted or formal. We’ll leave that to the BBC, who’ve been doing it rather well for some time. Instead, we’ll go after finding a distinctive voice, going places others can’t (podcasts are, after all, unregulated) while supporting and extending the Guardian’s journalism in an audio world that’s booming. That, after all, is the reason we’re doing this.

The training has also unearthed a few potential podcast stars, which has been of great help in planning the initial line-up. But, lest I doom them early on, I’ll let you subscribe to the shows and discover them yourselves. And maybe you can tell us if you think we’ve answered the question in the headline.

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