Over the course of the last hour I was had to listen to the "Serial" podcast for an English assignment. I didn't really enjoy it that much, mostly because I'm not that interested in the true crime genre, also because I don't think this should have been a podcast; it could have instead been presented as an audio book and the effect would be the same. In my opinion, investigative journalism cannot fully utilize podcasts, because I think that stories like "Serial" rely heavily on visual depiction which cannot be portrayed in a podcast format. I think that podcasts are most enjoyable when being utilized as a sort of talk show. I also felt like publicizing this story was disrespectful to the victims and the families involved. Sarah stated that she was not investigating for the benefit of law enforcement but for other reasons. I thought that Sarah did not empathize with the families involved and only cared so that she may benefit in some way. I would have preferred reading this text, because I think that the podcast format wasn't the best way to present this type of information. The music as well as live interviews made the podcast slightly more immersive, however I think that a book could have sufficed for the telling of this story. I do not think that telling this story in a podcast offered any major benefits, the story could have been just as effectively told in a book format. Sarah opened the podcast by discussing the challenges of memory, and how many people were unable to recall certain days unless a major event happened. I operate similarly to the people that Sarah interviewed, I am unable to recall events on an average day, but if something major happened I'll be able to remember the day in its entirety. My final thoughts on the podcast was that it should have never been a podcast, I think that Sarah was jut trying to explore storytelling in a different type of medium; which is respectable but I think that this story would have better been told as a book, or even a TV show.
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