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How the investigation of Adnan Syed became a podcast phenomenon
Adnan Syed, heart, leaves the Cummings Courthouse in Baltimore on Monday. A decide has ordered the discharge of Syed after overturning his conviction for a 1999 homicide that was chronicled within the hit podcast Serial.
Brian Witte/AP
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Brian Witte/AP
Adnan Syed, heart, leaves the Cummings Courthouse in Baltimore on Monday. A decide has ordered the discharge of Syed after overturning his conviction for a 1999 homicide that was chronicled within the hit podcast Serial.
Brian Witte/AP
“Adnan’s case was a large number. Is a large number. That is the place we have been after we stopped reporting in 2014,” says Serial host Sarah Koenig in her simple, private model within the new episode titled Adnan Is Out.
In 2014, over the course of 12 episodes, Serial probed the main points of the homicide case of Hae Min Lee, Adnan Syed’s former girlfriend. Lee was discovered strangled to dying in Baltimore’s Leakin Park in 1999.
In 2000, Syed was convicted of murdering Lee when he was 17 years outdated. He spent 23 years in jail. On Monday, in a Baltimore courtroom, a decide dominated to vacate his conviction.
Past the large affect Serial has had on Syed’s case and on exposing the failings within the authorized system, the podcast broke new floor in episodic, audio storytelling.
Created and produced by Koenig and Julie Snyder, Serial was a by-product of This American Life. With some 300 million downloads, the primary season broke podcast data and spawned a cottage trade of true crime podcasts. It gained nearly each main journalism award together with a DuPont and a Peabody, the primary ever awarded to a podcast. Koenig was named one in all Time’s Most Influential Individuals of 2015.
Sarah Koenig along with her award at The 74th Annual Peabody Awards Ceremony at Cipriani Wall Road in New York Metropolis on Might 31, 2015.
Jemal Countess/Getty Pictures
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Sarah Koenig along with her award at The 74th Annual Peabody Awards Ceremony at Cipriani Wall Road in New York Metropolis on Might 31, 2015.
Jemal Countess/Getty Pictures
Barry Scheck, co-director of The Innocence Challenge, discovered about Serial from his youngsters. On the time, podcasting skilled one thing of a generational divide. He believes dogged reporting, a reliance on consultants and propulsive storytelling have been key to its success.
He says the best way Koenig related the viewers with Serial‘s reporting made for compelling listening. “One of many intriguing elements of the Serial podcast is that everyone heard her thought processes out loud,” says Scheck, “and that is a part of the enchantment of it. , we’re all on this collectively making an attempt to suppose, is he harmless? Is he responsible?”
There’s the story after which there’s the dialogue it provoked. Within the case of Serial, they labored in tandem.
The Serial phenomenon was not nearly making an attempt to unravel the crime itself. It was additionally concerning the huge neighborhood devouring every episode after which choosing it aside on-line. Journalists at The Atlantic blogged about it. A spot to debate Serial: The Podcast on Reddit reached greater than 72 million members.
As Christopher Dunn, Authorized Director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, marveled in 2015, Serial “unleashed a spirited and wide-ranging civil rights debate on the Web,” he wrote. “Most importantly, the dialogue discussion board Reddit, which is enormously widespread with younger folks, exploded with commentary from tens of hundreds of people that debated and investigated each side of the case, lots of which the podcast had not addressed.”
The concept to delve into Syed’s case originated with Rabia Chaudry, a lawyer and one in all Syed’s mates and supporters. She pitched the thought to Koenig. As Serial unfolded, Chaudry blogged about every episode, sharing her information of the case and airing complaints about the best way she felt producers have been dealing with elements of the story.
Chaudry was additionally struck by how her views have been changing into a part of the narrative. “I noticed that whereas I and others near Adnan have been mired within the trivia of each the case and present, we have been a part of that case and present for the general public. Our interactions on-line have been being mentioned, we have been being judged and assessed, we have been including each leisure and substantive worth to the discourse. We have been additionally characters within the bigger story,” she wrote.
Chaudry went on to write down her ebook and produce a podcast about Syed. She’s additionally an Government Producer on The Case In opposition to Adnan Syed, a four-part HBO documentary sequence.
Whereas Scheck is happy to see the entire different true crime podcasts Serial impressed, he urges warning to anybody who thinks it is simple to do it properly.
“It is one factor to have a podcast and attempt to inform a narrative. It is fairly one other to get into the enterprise of exposing a wrongful conviction,” he says.
Scheck says Serial benefitted from a crew that knew what they did not know.
“What was nice about Serial is that they made no pretense at each flip,” says Scheck. “They have been making an attempt to show to investigators, they have been making an attempt to show to consultants. They have been counting on the viewers for leads. And so they went about it in a really skilled approach.”
“To say it was addictive is an understatement,” Scottish actor Ewan McGregor wrote in Time’s Most Influential Individuals entry for Sarah Koenig. “Out of the blue, investigative journalism turned our interest, our ardour. Individuals have been speaking about it in all places you went. It was a real cultural phenomenon.”