Sarah Koening is the host of the podcast Serial, a story that follows the murder of teenage Hae Min Lee and her alleged murderer Adnan Syed. Koening put herself out into the world with the serial podcast in 2014, and once the podcast was finished it ended up being worth twenty-five million dollars. Even though Sarah deliberately says throughout the podcast that she is pursuing this case for her own curious reasons, she really wants us to listen for her own personal gain. She demonstrates this want for fame, money, and views by effectively making the case a narrative rather than an expositive story, through her author's craft and use of rhetorical devices, and her constant use of cliffhangers at the end of each episode.
A good true crime story
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Episode 3 for example she ends it with this sentence “And while I don't exactly know why suspicions about Adnan start to percolate, I have an educated guess. Next week, on Serial.” Endings like this are what make her viewers ask the questions “Well what evidence makes her suspicious of Adnan?” and “What does she know that we don't?” Even though she could easily wrap up the end of each episode with a complete ending she purposely chooses not to. This is how she manipulates foreshadowing and makes her viewers want to come back for more which inevitably leads to more profit and fame for …show more content…
Her infatuation with the case begins with a call from Adnans best friends older sister Rabia. Koenig looked more into the case and describes it as a “Shakespeare Mashup” in episode 1. Rabia also informs Koenig that she believed Adnans lawyer had botched the case on purpose in order to get more money for the appeal, which enhanced Koenigs interest in the case even more. Throughout the Serial episodes Koenig begins to stray further away from her claim of doing the case out of pure interests. She begins to show bias towards Adnan. Her evidence also becomes sloppy where from in the beginning she is asking multiple sources about one single problem to see all sides of the story, but towards the end of the podcast it feels as if shell take the word of anyone who will give it to her in order to give us