I was like, It’s a podcast! Who cares? Try it! What does it matter? Nobody listens to podcasts!” She went on, “That openness is what I hope we can keep. “I didn’t even know what it should be, and it was extremely freeing. What she found exciting, she said, was that whereas she’d internalized the rules about stories for newspaper, radio, and television, and what her voice should be for each form, “I did not know anything about podcasts,” she said.
Koenig played the famous “Shrimp sale at the Crab Crib” clip from “Serial,” and said, “It’s not like I would never have used that piece of tape in a ‘This American Life’ story.” But it was easier to try it on a podcast.
ANY NEW SERIAL PODCAST FREE
Creators of podcasts, which are largely unregulated and independently funded, have been free to make up their own rules and to try new things in ways that public-radio journalists historically have not.
ANY NEW SERIAL PODCAST SERIES
Spiegel said, “ ‘Serial’ really made me feel different about how much detail people can handle.” She added that an “unbelievably intimate” series called “Love Hurts” on another podcast, “Strangers,” brought home how there were “opportunities here for depth” in audio journalism greater than she’d understood. She got letters, e-mails, and voice mails-at home and on her cell phone-saying, “Hey Sarah! Hey Sarah!” We felt like we knew Adnan Syed, too. “People feel like they know me, and they kind of do, in a way,” Koenig said on the panel. “Serial,” which delved more deeply into one story than any popular podcast has thus far, felt especially so Koenig was our guide through all twelve episodes, exploring a complex world of love and murder in a community of teen-agers and their families.
Listeners can feel that they actually know the people speaking and the subjects involved. Voices make audio journalism feel intimate. & A., he admiringly told a “Serial” superfan that she was “pretty far out on Nerd Island.” The panel-like Carr’s writing, like good podcasts, and like “This American Life,” which spawned three of the four shows being discussed-humanized information and made challenging ideas colorful. He asked Blumberg, “Were you surprised at your ability to strip naked, jump over the fence, and sell ads?” During the Q.
“Holy shit! You’re like a czar!” Carr said to Spiegel, when she said that “Invisibilia” had been downloaded about twelve million times. Panels can be dry this one wasn’t, in part because the potted plant was so much fun.
The panelists beside him were the stars of the podcasting world: Sarah Koenig (“Serial”), Alex Blumberg (“StartUp”), Alix Spiegel (“Invisibilia”), and Benjamen Walker (“The Theory of Everything”). “I’m here as your potted plant for the evening,” he said. Carr, bundled up in a fleece jacket, leaned back in his chair and held a mic to his face at an angle that suggested he was about to do some freestyling. A week before he died, the Times media columnist David Carr moderated a panel at the New School called “Serial and the Podcast Explosion,” the first event in a series presented by the university’s newest major, Journalism + Design.