Since the dawn of time… well that may be slight hyperbole. Since the modern age, since the printing press and widespread accessibility of news and knowledge, there has been a phenomenon in the public. I’m dubbing this phenomenon: the creation of the Detectivilian.
What exactly is the Detectivilian one may ask? Detectivilian (de-tect-tiv-il-ian) – Noun: A person, who is NOT a police officer, whose obsession is to investigate and solve crimes. However, the medium through which the Detectivilian has been Detectivilianing to the public has changed drastically throughout the years. It started with simple word of mouth, to article pieces, to television shows, and the most significant evolution: the podcast.
Why have true-crime podcasts been so successful? What are the key differences between, the leading detectivilian mediums, the podcast and the article? I seek to answer these two questions in today’s Stringer Bell blog post.
To facilitate answering this question, I will compare two pieces detailing the Golden State Killer. The written piece is entitled ‘In the Footsteps of a Killer’ and the podcast episode is ‘Phantom in the Fog’ from the series ‘Man in the Windows’.
In my eyes, the strengths of the written piece are the abundance of knowledge, the established form, and efficiency. This is seen in the aforementioned article. Because it does not rely on the speed of someone talking, it can almost overwhelm with knowledge and hypothesis. This gives space for further elaboration which may not be possible in the case of a podcast. The weakness that I gathered from the use of articles, as opposed to podcasts, is mood. When you’re reading an article you have no exposure to sound, voice, and more importantly changing these to fit the mood. The last weakness I want to discuss is the issue of the guest. Podcasts often invite experts to speak on podcasts, whereas you can only really quote in written arguments. I find this to have a much weaker effect on the magnitude of the argument.
The strengths of podcasts are as follows: Require less attention, involve vocalization, use of music/ambiance, and guest speakers. The weaknesses are ironically the strengths of the written piece.
Thus, in conclusion, combining both mediums (i.e having a description under a podcast), is the key to a more complete, strong detectivilian piece.