Law and Race Commons^™

In The Dark – Pushing The Boundaries Of True Crime, Sharon Davis

RadioDoc Review

True crime podcasts are a burgeoning genre. As journalists and storytellers, how do we balance the pursuit of justice and our responsibility to the victims with the demand to tell a gripping tale? As listeners, are we using the pain of others for our own entertainment? In the Dark podcast (Seasons 1 and 2) takes us beyond a vicarious fascination with true crime stories into a forensic and essential look at deep-rooted biases, corruption and systemic failures that prevent justice from being served.

The first season (2016) investigates the 1989 kidnapping, sexual assault and murder of 11-year-old Jacob Wetterling In …

Serial, Season Three: From Feeling To Structure, Jason Loviglio

RadioDoc Review

From the start, host and reporter Sarah Koenig presents the 2018 season of Serial as a corrective to the universe-in-a-grain-of-sand approach typical of earlier seasons and much of the work of This American Life, from which Serial spun off. In a thematic departure, Koenig sets out to tell the story of structures, rather than merely structure a story. The first character is a “cluster of concrete towers” in downtown Cleveland, called the Justice Center, a name we’ll quickly come to understand as ironic, if not Orwellian. Host Sarah Koenig describes the structure as “hideous but practical”. Koenig and company …