The Ending of An Investigative Podcast... Balancing Joy and Disappointment
This is how to finish an investigative series to the best of your ability
I am thinking about how an investigative podcast series could end the second after I decide to take on the story. I become consumed with how disappointed people can become when they invest hours, weeks into a story and it ends (in their opinion) with a dull thud.
Tip 1# - How to finish an investigative series... to the best of your ability
I am a failed fiction writer (MA in Creative Writing, plenty of unpublished manuscripts, you get the idea) and I can tell you it is hard to INVENT a fictional ending that is satisfying. But having to FIND one for a non-fiction six-part podcast series is a far more brutal task.
When I did the first series of Alibi it was about the "possible wrongful conviction of Anthony De Vries" (unashamedly in the Serial vein) and I knew people would want to know in the end if he was guilty or not. And there is an ominous additional wrinkle: if the conclusion is that he's guilty and in jail why did you bother to tell the story at all? Well, for that series there were plenty of miscarriages of justice involved to justify it journalistically, but for a listener it was hard to make the case that he was completely innocent. Which is okay, because you want the debate to keep people listening. Until the end. Then they want a conclusion.
That time I got lucky. Anthony was released on parole just as I was wrapping up the series. I charged down to his mother's house and got tape of him reflecting on his time in prison and how the area where he grew up had changed. Fade to black. Him being out didn't speak to his innocence, in fact he had to admit guilt to his crimes in order to be granted parole. But it FELT like an ending.
For a series I once worked on the magic ending needed to be conclusive proof of who had ordered the hit on Wandile Bozwana and (for a bonus) a conviction of the hitmen that had actually shot him. I knew I'd never get that.
Tip 2# - How to make people care about whistleblowers (or anyone else)
I reckon there isn't enough attention given to telling the stories of whistleblowers, those that call out corruption and injustice for the good of everyone.
The key is to focus on the journey of the whistleblower and keep it as linear as possible. You are looking for their initial situation, what broke them, how they sounded the horn and then the aftermath. Listeners are drawn to the sequence of events, like a slipstream, the empathy follows and the figures can be drip-fed to them in the cracks.
All the best,
Paul
