Unless you’ve been living under a rock these past few months, you must have heard about Serial.
Serial is a podcast that re-tells and re-investigates a real life true crime that occurred in 1999 episode by episode. It has become the internet’s first smash hit podcast with 5 million downloads on Itunes. Its season finale was as much anticipated as any show on HBO or AMC.
I admittedly got swept into it and was hooked from the start. I listened to all 12 episodes and have been advocating it since. It’s a “who done it” mystery, the kind of crime story you may see on a Friday night when nothing else is on. So if this is just another trashy crime story on Dateline NBC, why is Serial such a sensation?
For me I believe its 2 things,
1) Its real lives. This isn’t fiction. Serial affects real people right here right now, it takes people’s lives and turns it into entertainment. It’s controversial, and the producers meander through journalism and storytelling as best they can.
2) Crowd sourcing investigation. Serial maybe the first example of crowd-sourced investigation ever! Serial has built a community online of people trying to solve the mystery themselves (see Reddit). They make youtube videos, come up with new theories, find new evidence, travel to the crime locations, and in the extreme case are hounding the people involved in the case themselves.
If you haven’t I recommend you listen to the podcast www.serialpodcast.org itself and check out the massive amount of addional information generated from the community.
Jay Speaks: Exclusive Interview with Jay
Reddit Commnuity: http://www.reddit.com/r/serialpodcast/
Funny or Die Parody: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjidkNvN-Ps
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