ABSTRACT
The podcast Serial took America by storm in fall 2014. Attracting more than five million listeners by week six, it cemented the new narrative genre into popular consciousness not only because of its compelling story but also because of its accessibility. Serial is a new model of re-combinatory narrative in the digital age. Koenig and team construct a collage, mash-up, repositioning of old documents, and intercalation of new material. Even with this strong audience role of transformation of the sender's text, the relative power of the podcast itself invites narratalogical and rhetorical analysis to understand its immense popular attraction as a twenty-first-century cultural artifact. While few today insist that mass communication simply imparts ideology from the culture industry as the Frankfurt School argued, it is still important to call attention to the commercial nexus of Serial. Creative journalism in the digital age becomes an immense profit-making enterprise that is lucrative personally for the new media star Koenig.
