Write on: The new wave of podcasts

The first time I heard it, I was in the car.

My boyfriend was driving, and I was engrossed in an Elle article about Chris Pratt. It was a good one, and I felt like I was getting to know Chris Pratt, the human, instead of Chris Pratt, the actor. Occasionally, I’d relay parts of the article out loud. “Chris Pratt is eating lunch with his mom right now,” I’d report. Or, “Whoa. Chris Pratt just casually bought his wife a $1,900 geode from the museum he’s visiting with this journalist.”

I was nearing the end of the article when my boyfriend switched from his music playlist to a podcast. I tried to keep reading the article, but the podcast was distracting. When the narrator started talking about a teenager who was convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend—despite no real physical evidence linking him to the crime—I finally put my magazine down.

It turned out we were listening to Serial, a podcast that tells a true story over a series of 12 episodes.

Serial went viral last winter. It broke records, becoming the podcast fastest to reach 5 million downloads on iTunes. (By spring, that number was up to 68 million downloads.)

Serial broke records for me, too. I remember reading Gone Girl in a weekend, turning down invites to hang out with my friends at the beach because I just could not. Stop. Reading.

With Serial, I blazed through all 12 episodes in about 24 hours.

This podcast was fascinating in a way a novel or TV series could never be because the story was real. A 17-year-old girl was murdered, and a man who may or may not have killed her has been in prison for 15 years.

I won’t tell you how it ends. But I was inspired by the investigative journalism behind the podcast.

Host Sarah Koenig and her team were dogged. They visited the scene of the girl’s burial. They visited the accused man in prison. They tracked down friends and family of the dead girl. In one of their boldest moves, they drove to a key witness’ house—a guy who undoubtedly would not have talked if they had called or emailed—and knocked on his door to get an interview. And they never, ever shied away from asking tough questions.

I was impressed by how careful Koenig was to remain unbiased. When she couldn’t confirm a fact, she’d say she had theories—many of them—but not any that she could responsibly report.

The series won a Peabody Award and was called “an audio game-changer.” But perhaps most importantly, it brought national attention to the case—and lawyers who could re-examine the evidence were part of the audience.

I know it’s got me—someone who usually reads news as opposed to listening to podcasts—interested in finding more podcasts to devour.

I’m also fascinated by audio as a storytelling medium—being able to hear 15-year-old clips from the trial and the police’s initial interviews and recorded phone calls of the accused killer in prison. Hearing the emotion in the voices of the people who were affected by this crime moved me in a way that just reading quotes might not have.

Anyone who works in the publishing industry wonders about the future of journalism.

To me, listening to Serial solidifies that as long as reporters keep finding creative ways to tell stories, quality journalism isn’t going anywhere.

Because storytelling—whether through photography, videos, magazines or podcasts—will be around forever.