Two years ago, John Barth met Joaquin Alvarado, the CEO of the Center for Investigative Reporting, for martinis at the Sir Francis Drake hotel in San Francisco. Barth is the chief content officer for Public Radio Exchange, a hub of radio innovation responsible for shows like Snap Judgement, The Moth Radio Hour, and the podcast network Radiotopia. He was visiting for a conference, but he also was there to pitch Alvarado on an idea: a radio show and podcast dedicated to investigative reporting.
“NPR occasionally does investigations; local shows almost never do investigations,” says Barth. “There was an amazing radio hole to fill.” As it turned out, Barth says, Alvarado had been thinking the same thing.
The result of that drink, Reveal, aired a pilot in September of 2013, followed by two test episodes in 2014. But after raising $4 million in grant funds, the show ramped up production in January, debuting a monthly podcast and radio show, a beefed up staff of audio reporters, and a new website, which also acts as a landing page for CIR’s work.
Tagged as “a new home and podcast for investigative journalism,” Reveal is intended to be an audio consortium for reporting deep-dives. Just 30 percent of the show’s stories originate from CIR’s original reporting–a big part of Reveal‘s production is partnering with other investigative outlets and newspapers to help them translate the kind of work that fits into the show to audio, a process that starts early on in reporting. “You don’t want to just say, ‘Okay, we did a big investigation, now someone do some radio,'” says Alvarado. “You have to integrate that medium from the beginning.”
They’re also integrating on their home turf. All of CIR’s content is now hosted on Reveal’s website, which launched six weeks ago. And more than just a show, Reveal is a rebranding of the public face of CIR–using audio and narrative storytelling to make more complicated journalistic projects accessible to a broader audience.
“There are lots of parts of investigative reporting that can be very wonky,” says Barth.
During a stint at WHYY, Barth would read his local paper, the Philadelphia Inquirer, then in the midst of an investigative journalism renaissance. Magnificently reported stories, published serially over days or weeks, garnered Polk awards and Pulitzers. But Barth was skeptical that audiences stayed for the duration. “My question always was: How many readers stuck with the story by day four? Would they follow the story jump after jump?”
It’s a question that publications are increasingly able to answer, as digital metrics make it easier to pinpoint the size (and attention span) of audiences. And the answer to retention increasingly seems to be podcasts. After Serial garnered over 5 million listeners during its 13-episode stretch, making it the most popular podcast in the history of the genre, a flood of new ones followed, many by prominent outlets–even the New York Times Magazine unveiled a podcast, covering ethics, with its recent redesign.
And this audience is likely growing. Last month, the percentage of Americans who listened to a podcast rose from 15 to 17 percent–that’s approximately 46 million people overall*, according to a survey by Edison Research.
Beyond raw numbers, the intimacy of the genre–an inviting host, delivering words directly to listener earbuds–when done right, creates an an especially sticky audience. That engaged audience commandeers higher CPM rates–the advertising rate per thousand impressions– than radio, Web, or network television. As New York magazine describes it, “as an advertiser, it’s far better to have ‘Serial”s Sarah Koenig reading your copy out loud than to burst in with a prepackaged ad that nobody will pay attention to.” It’s the kind of engaged audience that could give the wonkiest investigative reporting additional reach.
The podcast’s been downloaded just over 205,000 times and over 200 radio stations have picked up the show, numbers that Barth expects to increase when they begin a weekly broadcast in July. “We know that in order to reach a substantial audience and keep them engaged we have to reach them on a regular basis,” says Barth. There’s also the bottom line: “You’re going to have a much better opportunity to attract sponsors.”
“One of the things that nonprofit investigative organizations all struggle with is that we play a long game,” says Alvarado. “You can’t keep pace with the drumbeat required to do the clickbait thing…We feel like with this we can be constantly available to new audiences.”
Until then, the show’s founders hope that format can help good content compete in an increasingly crowded playing field. “This is not a side project for the Center of Investigative Reporting,” says Alvarado. “We are putting all of our energy and resources into making this successful.”
*The story has been updated to correct that the podcast listener number is in total, not additional audience.
Alexis Sobel Fitts is a senior writer at CJR. Follow her on Twitter at @fittsofalexis.