I am writing a thing, now, on the tradition of narrative audio and journalism.

My take: there is a deep problem here. The narrative audio tradition prizes compelling narrative over rigorous journalism.

It's not impossible to do both at the same time.

1/

(I like to think I have)

But it's hard and requires thoughtful balancing of narrative power and journalistic excellence/accuracy.

It's hard, it's expensive, it's time-consuming.

My core goal, these days, is developing a biz model for this kind of work.

2/

The Caliphate experience is emblematic.

We see that the NYT sees Rukmini's job as doing "the journalism" and Andy's job as some other thing that, apparently, deserves to be rewarded.

3/

Obviously, Baquet is right: this was an institutional failure. But that failure continues and is compounded by signaling that Rukmini and Andy have different jobs with different consequences.

(Full disclosure: Rukmini is a friend and I only met Andy once or twice).

4/

Audio can be rigorous and compelling and fully journalistic.

Of friggin' course it can and often is.

And the NYT audio team has done so much good. But, damn it, they are missing this moment badly.

More soon. Eager to hear from others.

5/end