S-Town: Chapter 1 – Analysis

S.Town is an investigative podcast touching on a murder that occurred in Woodstock, Alabama hosted by Brian Reed who worked with John B McLemore. They both had an obsession with this murder and wanted to investigate the son of a wealthy family who supposedly claims that they had gotten away with murder. However that

The podcast is made up of phone calls, and exciting story narratives to capture the listeners attention and engross them in the conversation that is behind had on the podcast. Julie Snyder (co-creator) stated in The Guardian that ‘It seemed like something you would read about in a novel’ which may come across as intriguing for most people as it connotes academia and depth to the story. S.Town became a huge hit with it being ‘downloaded more than 250 million times’ (Locker, The Guardian 2017) which shows success and notoriety. Reed also appeared on the Jimmy Fallon Show to talk about the hit.

However, every show comes with it’s negative reviews and for Gay Alcorn of The Guardian, she found it ‘disturbing’ and ‘ethically confronting in the deepest way: not whether it was good or bad radio, but whether this story should have been told at all. Whether this was a story so fraught and intrusive that it was one of those instances when a journalist, however reluctantly, should turn away.’ Showing that perhaps not all ‘true-crime’ should be touched, some would need to be left alone.

References:

Melissa Locker. (2017). Bittersweet home Alabama: S-Town, the next podcast from the makers of Serial. Available: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/mar/28/s-town-podcast-makers-of-serial-brian-reed-julie-snyder. Last accessed 5 Nov 2017.

Gay Alcorn. (2017). S-Town never justifies its voyeurism, and that makes it morally indefensible. Available: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/apr/22/s-town-never-justifies-its-voyeurism-and-that-makes-it-morally-indefensible. Last accessed 5 Nov 2017.