“I remember,I saw,I knew”: Journalists’ use of first-person storytelling in award-winning podcasts

Abstract

This study focuses on first-person storytelling in six United States, award-winning podcast series. Using grounded theory, first-person language is explored as a unique journalism practice in podcasting, its utility as both a journalistic and storytelling device, and its subversion of Westernized objectivity norms. This study’s analysis found that podcast journalists used their own lived experiences conveyed through a spectrum of journalistic storytelling devices, including reflexive narration, retrospective reporting, memory recollection, translational storytelling, community alignment, metajournalistic discourse, and eye-witnessing. By investigating podcasting’s narrative techniques and its positioning within the process of collective memory, this research sheds light on podcasting’s role in amplifying marginalized voices, examining complex social justice issues, and pushing boundaries in journalism culture in the United States.

Keywords

podcasts first-person narrative journalism practice counternarratives objectivity norms

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