By Katharine Mieszkowski What kind of lofty media credentials do you need to nab interviews with GE CEO Jack Welch, PBS host Charlie Rose and actor Martin Sheen? None at all if you're Alison van Diggelen, a plucky citizen journalist based in Silicon Valley, whose podcasts about green living and technology air at FreshDialogues.

The San Jose Mercury News has a nice profile of van Diggelen, 42, a one-time stay-at-home mommy-blogger turned green-living interviewer, who works out of her spare bedroom with a computer and less than $1,000 of recording and editing equipment.

What's her secret? Persistence, enthusiasm and doing lots of research before interviews. She also isn't shy about buttonholing notables at public events. So far, no one she's tried to get on the record has turned her down.

The Mercury News dubs van Diggelen "an example of a new brand of journalist. Using tech tools, many developed in the valley, they are able to tell their own stories on their own terms without the need for backing from big media outlets."

Now, if van Diggelen, who has been broadcasting her shows weekly for about eight months, could just find a way to make her podcasts pay for themselves. "…Like many of the new media breed (and even the old media) breed she's searching for a way to make money with information," notes the Merc. This maven of the microphone is seeking a sponsor, but for now she and her family live off her husband's salary as an executive at Broadcom.