So do the podcasts report on information which is new to the listener? Yes.
Publishing and distributing – being findable on a story – is part of the newsgathering process. In a networked age that takes on a new dimension, because newsgathering, production and distribution are not distinct. This is what the Watergate journalists did, for example. In reporting on the case of Adnan Syed while she is still chasing down details, Koenig is surely doing what many journalists do: putting information into the public domain in the hope that witnesses, experts, and others might come forward. The second mistake is to assume all journalism should be ‘finished’.
But there is no excuse to forget that the stakes here are much higher than our entertainment.” It’s not about the finished product
SERIAL PODCAST EPISODE 7 DEIRDRE ENRIGHT SERIAL
“Sarah and the Serial team have done a remarkable job in presenting a complex story, that no one paid attention to for years, in a compelling and entertaining way. That’s good journalism: not merely getting the information but getting that across to an audience.
SERIAL PODCAST EPISODE 7 DEIRDRE ENRIGHT SERIES
But the series humanises the issue: it makes us care.Īnd it gives us an empathy with Sarah (not Adnan) which provides for greater insight. You might argue that she could have merely done that interview and not the series of podcasts. In fact, I would go as far as to say this would make an excellent piece of required listening for journalism students. The best episode to understand this is Episode 7, where Koenig talks to Deirdre Enright, a person who works on similar cases professionally (if you skip the ‘story so far’ in the first couple minutes there aren’t really any spoilers here). Koenig does not need to establish a miscarriage of justice to ‘finish’ her story: her story is about problems in the fact that the case was brought at all. It uses a suspected miscarriage of justice to report on the justice system and take the listener through the same journey as an investigator or juror: first we think he’s innocent, then guilty, then innocent… You might even say it’s about reasonable doubt. Koenig’s story is, for me, not about a miscarriage of justice. I think Jones makes a mistake common to those used to traditional journalistic production practices: firstly to mistake the subject for the purpose and secondly to misunderstand modern journalism techniques. “Real-life stories hurt the peopled involved … When the reporting phase is exhausted, it’s crucial to understand what kind of a story it is, and maybe whether it is a story at all.” The fact that she does not know whether it is or not is the basis of Jones’s misgivings: Serialfollows Koenig as she attempts to get to the bottom of a murder conviction she suspects may be a miscarriage of justice. “ Sarah Koenig, the lead producer and narrator … used the tools of legitimate reporting - the right to public records, access to experts, the goodwill of interviewees, compelling soundbites, stylish storytelling … - to intrude into and disrupt real lives for the fun of it. It’s voyeurism, not journalism.” Jones leveled this accusation at the podcast sensation Serial: After reporting on online journalism for some time you tire quickly of people saying “ this is not journalism“. On Tuesday Brian C.
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