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The Times, taking advantage of the good luck of its podcast “Daily,” continues its expansion into audio journalism.
By Rachel Abrams
The New York Times Company agreed to buy Serial Productions, the company of the hit podcast “Serial”, the Times reported Wednesday as a component of the newspaper’s most recent initiative to expand its virtual journalism.
This arrangement will allow Serial Productions to increase the number of systems it manufactures, said Julie Snyder, Editor-in-Chief of Serial Productions, and allow those systems to be promoted on the Times website, in its news announcements and through its other channels.
“The concept is to take New York Times readers and listeners into serial projects,” said Sam Dolnick, deputy editor who oversees the Times’ audio efforts, in an interview. “There will be tactics for Serial to tell more stories, bigger stories, and then perceive how our newsroom and theirs can be further coordinated.”
The Times paid about $25 million for the company, according to one user of the deal.
“Serial,” the series that sought to find out if a student at Baltimore High School, Adnan Syed, had killed his ex-girlfriend in 1999, was a success when it was released in 2014 as a derivative of the popular public radio exhibition. and podcast “This American Life.” It was followed by a momentary investigative journalism project, “S-Town”, through Serial and “This American Life”.
Serial Productions created in 2017 through Ms. Snyder; Sarah Koenig, presenter of “Serial”; e Ira Glass, host of “This American Life”.
Serial Productions has worked on one task at a time, Snyder said, and the purpose would be to develop that production. The partnership with The Times will allow the company to rent to more producers, for example, and may eventually attract Times reporters for long-running stories, Dolnick said.
The Times also stated that it had established a “creative and strategic” partnership with “This American Life” to expand the concepts of independent podcasts that can be streamed under the motto Serial.
The Times has resorted to storytelling in audio and visual in recent years, as the country’s newspapers continue to face the erosion of print media activity.
In 2017, The Times hosted the news podcast “The Daily”, and in 2019, the company partnered with FX and Hulu to launch a television news magazine, “The Weekly”, recently renamed the monthly documentary series “The New York Times Presents. . “This year, The Times purchased the launch of Listen in Audio, the manufacturer of Audm’s subscription service, for $8.6 million, according to a presentation to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
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