Stories Beyond Stories: True Crime and Investigative Journalism Podcasts

True crime podcasts have matured well beyond blood and gore recountings into deeply reported features. The popularity of the genre, combined with the format’s scope for long-form narrative, represents an opportunity for investigative journalism to reach and connect with new audiences.

The event will focus on podcasts as a form of narrative storytelling for investigative journalism and true-crime reports. Leading podcast journalists will explore the role of the journalist in telling these stories, how podcasts have changed the way we think about investigative crime narratives and how the medium is building relationships with audiences.

The webcast is 60 minutes: 45 minutes of moderated conversation, followed by 15 minutes of audience Q&A.

The virtual discussion takes place on January 26 at 1:00 p.m., and features independent podcast producer and host Kathleen Goldhar and editor and partner at Tortoise Studios, Basia Cummings. Journalist and Investigative Reporter at Gimlet Media Connie Walker will moderate the panel.

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Kathleen Goldhar has over 20 years’ experience telling audio stories. She is the host of the podcasts Do You Know Mordechai and True Crime Byline. In February, her next podcast The No-Good, Terribly Kind, Wonderful Lives and Tragic Deaths of Barry and Honey Sherman will be released. Kathleen is also the co-creator and producer of the hit podcast Escaping NXIVM. Before she found her way to podcasting she was a member of the CBC Radio’s The Current for 17 + years – eventually leading the program as its Executive Producer.

Basia Cummings is an editor and partner at Tortoise, an investigative newsroom based in London. She is the host of the weekly investigative show, the Slow Newscast, executive editor of numerous investigative series including Sweet Bobby, Hoaxed and Hidden Homicides (shortlisted for the 2022 Orwell Prize), and reporter of Pig Iron and Left to Die, which won the 2021 Foreign Press Award for best podcast.

Connie Walker (Cree) is an award-winning investigative journalist and host of the acclaimed Gimlet Media podcast Stolen: Surviving St. Michael’s.

In 2021, Connie launched the acclaimed podcast series Stolen: The Search for Jermain which was featured in Vanity Fair, The Rolling Stone, Vulture and The New York Times.

Prior to joining Gimlet Media, Walker hosted the CBC News podcast Missing & Murdered, which focuses on the unsolved cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. In 2018, Missing & Murdered: Finding Cleo won the inaugural Best Serialized Story award at the Third Coast International Audio festival. The podcast was also featured in the Columbia Journalism Review, The Rolling Stone, Teen Vogue, Chatelaine and was named one of the Best Podcasts of 2018 by Apple Canada.

Walker is a member of the Okanese First Nation in Saskatchewan. She lives with her family in Toronto.