A Review of The Serial Podcast: Unraveling the Story of a Baltimore Murder

The Serial is a suspenseful audio storytelling podcast that explores different and dramatic scenarios for each of their episodes. Investigator and journalist, Sarah Koenig, hosted the podcast and she presents her story in a form of reporter, in which she shares the story of a murder that occurred in Baltimore, Maryland. This critique will review the very first episode of The Serial Podcast and the quality of Sarah Koenig's report from the story of the murder, to the interviews she shared with her witnesses.

In the first episode entitled, The Alibi investigates the story of a high school student named Adnan Syed, who may not or have been falsely convicted of a crime he committed in 1999. His girlfriend during the time named Hae Ming Lee, was murdered and found dead by park in Northern Baltimore. She was confirmed missing after school one day and in six weeks prior to the disappearance, the Baltimore police department arrested her boyfriend, Adnan Syed, for the crime.

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Even though Adnan kept his innocence throughout the investigation, he was still convicted and the court sentenced him to life in prison. Sarah Koenig's (the reporter) purpose in this podcast was to investigate and gain more detail for the killing of Hae Ming Lee. She questions numerous of high school students, one being her own nephew, who attended and who were close friends to Adnan. The main questions she tends to ask are, "Where were you on the day Hae Ming went missing?" and "Do you remember seeing Adnan on that day?" These repetitive, but key, questions where asked towards the students she interviewed during the podcast.

However, before the questioning of the crime, Koenig tells us a brief summary of the story and background information of both Adnan and Hae Ming. She goes in great detail describing who they were in high school to help us, the listeners, place an image towards the two in the story.

During the time she's telling the listeners information about the two main students in the podcast, she also tells information about the other interviewed students as well. This paragraph contains my evaluation prior towards my last paragraph, which described my experience listening to the podcast. In the previous paragraph, I write regarding Koenig's approach towards the students of the high school and the information she provides about each of them. Personally, I believe this was an important, yet appreciable method Koenig took because it helped me (the listener) understand more about the story. To me, I felt when Koenig provided the background information of each student, including to the two main students in the case, it helped me understand the personalities of them and the actions they would partake in.

Also, I consider that the questions that Koenig delivers are very significant towards my experience with podcasting. The reason being, is that the questions kept me intrigued throughout the podcast and the more questions that Koenig carried, the closer she was towards solving the crime, which me, as a listener to a mystery genre podcast, found it exciting as it progressed towards the end. Overall, I found that the podcast was highly entertaining and enjoyable. As the story grows deeper, my level of interest increases. Because of the production, quality, and storyline of the first episode, I personally would continue listening to the other episodes that are created.