When a journalist sits down to create a long-form piece, he or she already knows how the story ends. Now, the job is to make it interesting and meaningful.
Then along comes Sarah Koenig, a producer at the famed This American Life radio show, who has brought a whole new level of transparency to the practice of newsgathering and created a pop-culture sensation along with it.
Koenig’s podcast Serial investigates the conviction of a high-school student found guilty of strangling his girlfriend in 1999. The podcast, and the reporting, unfold, episode by episode, with all the cliffhangers and uncertainty of a TV drama. The Guardian calls it “Breaking Bad radio.”
Koenig says she has no idea how the story will end, a bold move in a profession littered with the crumpled notes of dead-end stories. The Columbia Journalism Review argues that this transparency brings credibility to the reporting process, letting the fans (yes, Serial has fans) in on the digging and the fact checking and all the musing that reporters and editors usually do behind the scenes before a story ever sees the light of day.