Serial Host Sarah Koenig Says She Set Out To Report, Not ...endsley18.weebly.com/uploads/1/1/5/6/115614111/serial-_report_not_exonerate.pdf8/19/2018 Serial Host Sarah Koenig Says She

8/19/2018 Serial Host Sarah Koenig Says She Set Out To Report, Not Exonerate : NPR

https://www.npr.org/2014/12/23/372577482/serial-host-sarah-koenig-says-she-set-out-to-report-not-exonerate 1/12

ARTS & LIFE

Serial Host Sarah Koenig Says She Set Out To Report, Not Exonerate

LISTEN · 45:21 Download

TranscriptQUEUE

December 23, 2014 · 1:06 PM ET

Heard on Fresh Air

The Serial podcast is Sarah Koenig's reinvestigation of the murder of Hae Min Lee, a Maryland high school student who wasstrangled in 1999. Lee was found in Baltimore's Leakin Park. Her schoolmate and ex-boyfriend Adnan Syed was convicted ofthe murder and is serving a life sentence.Courtesy of Serial

Sarah Koenig didn't expect her new podcast, Serial, to get so much press, but she saysthe attention helped keep her on her toes: "It was just a constant reminder of howcareful we needed to be," Koenig tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross.

Serial is Koenig's reinvestigation of the murder of Hae Min Lee, a Maryland highschool student who was strangled in 1999. Her body was discovered buried in a park inBaltimore. Her schoolmate and ex-boyfriend Adnan Syed was convicted of the murderand is serving a life sentence. Nearly 16 years later, he continues to maintain hisinnocence. Syed's conviction was based on testimony from his friend, Jay — identifiedonly by first name in the podcast — who said he helped Syed bury the body.

Since its launch in October, Serial has become the most popular podcast in history.Online the story took on a life of its own, as podcast listeners — wrapped up in the"whodunit" aspect of the case — began tracking and discussing the evidence presented

Pick Your NPR StationThere are at least three stations nearby

NEWSCAST LIVE RADIO SHOWS

8/19/2018 Serial Host Sarah Koenig Says She Set Out To Report, Not Exonerate : NPR

https://www.npr.org/2014/12/23/372577482/serial-host-sarah-koenig-says-she-set-out-to-report-not-exonerate 2/12

in each episode. Serial is a spinoff of This American Life, where Koenig was a producerfor 10 years. The first season of 12 episodes ended on Thursday.

Serial presents detective interviews and excerpts of the trial, along with new interviewsKoenig conducted with Syed, who spoke with her by phone from prison. Koenig guidesthe audience through the story, uncovering information that apparently neither thedefense nor the prosecution had been aware of at the time of the trial.

"We wanted it to feel like a live thing ... a vital thing in the sense of the word of being aliving thing — as we went," Koenig says. "And we were still reporting last week for thefinal episode."

Koenig says classmates of Lee and Syed have been in touch with her throughout thepodcast and since it ended. It helped her to know that so many people had the samequestions she had.

One person, she says, told her, "At least I know it wasn't just me being a teenager notunderstanding the world. ... There are a lot of people still who don't understand this —and I'm not alone in feeling this way."

Koenig also says she wasn't trying to rouse painful memories for those involved in thestory — she was trying to get to the bottom of a case that seemed to have holes in it.

"I wasn't — and we weren't — trying to create problems where there were none,"Koenig says. " ... Obviously I don't want anyone to suffer because of the work I'mdoing, but I also feel like there's a strong tradition of doing these kinds of investigativestories. And we weren't doing anything differently than we would do in any otherstory."

This American Life has raised money for a second season of Serial, but the show hasn'tannounced what the focus will be.

Interview Highlights

8/19/2018 Serial Host Sarah Koenig Says She Set Out To Report, Not Exonerate : NPR

https://www.npr.org/2014/12/23/372577482/serial-host-sarah-koenig-says-she-set-out-to-report-not-exonerate 3/12

Koenig says that she and executive producer Julie Snyder were making changes to Serial episodes just hours before theyran.Elise Bergerson/Courtesy of Serial

On whether she felt she needed to provide closure

It's funny, I did not fret about the ending that much. I really didn't. ... So many peoplewere asking me [about that] and I was like, "Wait, should I be more worried aboutthis? Should I be more freaked out? Should I be thinking about this in a differentway?" But I always just felt like I'm just going to keep my head down and keepreporting and keep reporting and keep reporting, and it will come to an end, as allstories do. The reporting is going to take me there. I can't pre-engineer this, right? So Ijust have to keep going with it.

I can't remember when it was, but maybe after Episode 3 or 4 ... I was having ameeting with Julie Snyder, the executive producer, and I think Dana [Chivvis], who isalso a producer, and Ira Glass came in, who's like, our boss, and Julie said, "Ira says hehas some ideas about the ending." We were like, "Oh! Great. Let's hear it." He came inand more or less said, "So I think it would be great if you guys, like, solved it." We werelike, "Wait, that's your idea? Uh, OK, we'll do our best."

That was a little disconcerting. ... I have great faith in the people I work with to helpme get there [and] we know how to make stories on This American Life. We all havebeen doing it for a really long time, and it just felt like, we'll get somewhere and it's notgoing to please everyone, but tough luck.

“Sarah Koenig, executive producer and host of Serial

For all the accusations that Adnan is manipulating me: Hello, I'm also manipulating him.

8/19/2018 Serial Host Sarah Koenig Says She Set Out To Report, Not Exonerate : NPR

https://www.npr.org/2014/12/23/372577482/serial-host-sarah-koenig-says-she-set-out-to-report-not-exonerate 4/12

On finding the right tone in her conversations with Syed

It was very complicated. A lot is going on in any one conversation with Adnan, which is... he might be innocent and he might be guilty. It's zero sum, a little bit, right? Boththings are happening, and I, meanwhile, want him to talk to me, and I want him tostay on the phone and I'm totally aware that he can hang up at any time and ceasecommunicating at any time, and I don't want him to do that. So for all the accusationsthat Adnan is manipulating me: Hello, I'm also manipulating him. I'm using all thetricks. "Tricks" sound ... sneaky, but you know what I mean, [I'm using tricks] that youdo in any interview, that you do with anybody or any conversation, frankly, withanother person where you are playing the angles to a certain extent.

I was definitely never lying to Adnan about anything and certainly not about myintentions, but there would be no point in trying to create a relationship with thisperson and be antagonistic. That would be ridiculous. ... But by the same token, youdon't want to be all suck-up-y and fake and pretend you're their best friend. ... Thiscommunication that we have is — there's only one way it can be, and this is the way itcan be, which is, neither you nor I trust each other fully, but we proceed as if we do.That's the only way you could have this. I've been open about that. He knows, we bothknow that there's, like, two other conversations happening on top of the conversationwe're actually having, which is: "Do you believe me? Do I believe you? Are you tryingto get me to say something? Are you trying to get me to repeat that so I'll saysomething different?" We both know what's happening.

On Syed reading transcripts of the podcast while in prison

I don't know how many transcripts he's read and I don't know who is sending them thetranscripts, because we're not, but I think he's read a bunch of them. ... He doesn'thave Internet. ... He has an Xbox, one of those game things for the TV, and apparentlyyou can play a CD on it, so at one point I said, "I can burn them onto CDs for you andsend you those." I think he has to get special permission to receive a CD in prison, andhe said, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll let you know when I get the permission." ...

I don't know if part of him doesn't want to hear it, that he'd rather read it on the page.I don't know. We've argued about that, actually. ... I'm like, "It's meant to be heard."And he's like, "No, I want to see it in its purest form, on paper." And I'm like, "No, no,no. You're missing a ton. You're missing all kind of nuance that is happening inpeople's voices." Or he's taking stuff at face value that I say, that I'm like, "No! If youheard the way I say it, you'd hear that it's like in passing or it's like I'm being ironic, orwhatever!" And he's just like, "No, YOU don't get it, the real version is on paper!" Andthen I was like, "You don't understand radio!"

On advantages and disadvantages of producing episodes week by week

The disadvantages were that it was kind of a ridiculous production trap we encasedourselves in by the end. Julie and I were making changes to the final episode themorning that it ran, like at 1 in the morning, to be released at 6 a.m. So, that's a kind ofdown-to-the-wire stress that I frankly feel too old to be engaging in at this point. Thatwas just hard in terms of the workflow of it; [it] was hard on everybody.

“Sarah Koenig, executive producer and host of 'Serial'

It felt like I had people looking over my shoulder into my notebook before I was ready to tell people what was in mynotebook.

Then the other hard part — or sort of the downside, which I think also partly is anupside ... is that there was this ... big public response. And at times it made me feelvery vulnerable about my reporting or it felt like I had people looking over myshoulder into my notebook before I was ready to tell people what was in my notebook,but that's also what was good. We did that ourselves. Obviously, that's the structure wecreated, so I just didn't know how that would feel as a reporter. I didn't think twice

8/19/2018 Serial Host Sarah Koenig Says She Set Out To Report, Not Exonerate : NPR

https://www.npr.org/2014/12/23/372577482/serial-host-sarah-koenig-says-she-set-out-to-report-not-exonerate 5/12

about it before it happened. Yeah, it feels a little weird, you know? But the great partwas that it made us able to be really responsive to new information — and that's whatwe wanted.

On whether she worried people treated the podcast like entertainmentrather than investigative reporting

We worried about that a lot and we talked about it a lot. We didn't know that wasgoing to happen at all, which, again, [to] our surprise, maybe it was naive, maybe itwas shortsightedness, I don't know. I was talking to Julie Snyder about this recently ...she was saying this thing like, "There's this Internet world, which can get ... out ofcontrol and just throwing stuff around and interacting with this material that'sincredibly serious to all of us. ... We need to treat [it] with the utmost professionalismand care. ... They're interacting with it as entertainment."

Koenig (left) is an executive producer and host of Serial. It's a spinoff of This American Life, hosted by Ira Glass (center). JulieSnyder is an executive producer of Serial and senior producer at This American Life.Meredith Heuer/Courtesy of Serial

So that was the first thing we weren't totally prepared for, I think. Then just the largerfact that a public radio podcast would intersect with that world, with that Internetworld of armchair sleuthers and people who throw out accusations. Never in ourwildest — it's not the usual combination. It was worrisome. I fretted a lot about it,about this stuff flying around. ... At the end of the day, we couldn't control it. It wassilly to think we could control it, but we certainly tried, and even up to last week, wewere still trying when we saw stuff out there to just say, "Please, can you respect thisand that."

On whether the podcast's popularity affected her personally andprofessionally

8/19/2018 Serial Host Sarah Koenig Says She Set Out To Report, Not Exonerate : NPR

https://www.npr.org/2014/12/23/372577482/serial-host-sarah-koenig-says-she-set-out-to-report-not-exonerate 6/12

Read All About It: Breaking News From NPRWhen major news happens, stay on top of the latest developments, delivered to your inbox.

What's your email?

SUBSCRIBE

By subscribing, you agree to NPR's terms of use and privacy policy.

More Stories From NPR

Yes, it did. ... It was stressful and I also tend to focus on the negative, as my colleaguescan attest — so in the beginning, when ... there started to be press about it, I wasreading a lot and Googling it several times a day, like, "What's new? What are peoplesaying?" And it just started to be bad for me. So I kind of stopped, honestly. ... I'mthin-skinned in a way that's just dumb. I mean, doing this work, you would think that Ishould be able to get as good as I give, but ... I take criticism personally, and so thatwas sometimes hard.

More On 'Serial' On Syed saying hedidn't know if Koenigis his "savior" or his"executioner"

I think all of us like theidea of, "Maybe we couldright a wrong, andwouldn't that be great?"That faded pretty fast. ...

The way that I dealt with itwith Adnan and with hisfamily and his advocates

was kind of twofold: It was never totally addressing it head-on because we all knew itcould go either way — they knew and I knew. And then also just being as upfront withthem as I could from the very start of saying, "I don't know where I'm going to end,just so we're all clear — I'm not here to exonerate Adnan. I'm here to report this story.I don't know what I'm going to find, and I might find evidence that he's guilty, and weshould all be prepared for that."

MONKEY SEE

Sarah Koenig On Serial: 'I Think SomethingWent Wrong With This Case'

MONKEY SEE

Yes, Serial Is True Crime — And That's OK

MONKEY SEE

What Is An Ending? 'Serial' And The OngoingStory Of Wanting Too Much