Serial’s crowdsourced sleuthing isn’t new

[Commentary] One of the most fascinating aspects of the Serial podcast craze has been the amount of audience interaction with the story, a novel phenomenon for today’s journalists, though not historically. As Sarah Koenig and her team reported on the case, they didn’t know how it would end, leaving a vacuum for listeners to fill.

[Nathan mcDermott is a student at Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism]