Behind the Mic: How Journalistic Integrity Shapes Our Dark Stories

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academics 1:30 Behind the Mic: How Journalistic Integrity Shapes Our Dark Stories

By:

Jasmine Rorrer

10 Dec 2025 43

Take a look behind the mic of a class that focuses on crime, conspiracy, and cult podcasting. The course focuses on teaching students the ethics behind true-crime storytelling and how to critically evaluate the media they consume. This semester explored ways students can move beyond passive listening and instead create thoughtful, responsible, high-quality podcast content.

go, there's someone who's like, I really love true crime, or my partner really loves true crime. The class was inspired by a lot of my own interest, but also a lot of the interest in students to start using some podcast equipment. There's a huge amount of people who are consuming this type of media. So I think it was really important to open up what we're learning to a broader community. I saw it on my schedule and it was um like crimes, cults, and conspiracies, podcasting. I was like what is this and then I went to class and I loved it. My favorite part is probably the open discussions because everyone has a different view. It's really interesting to move from one to another because they have a lot of overlap. I think that's been my favorite part, getting in our groups and making them our own podcasts. We do talk about like serious topics often but it's also good to be able to talk about those kinds of things in like a safe setting i've seen so many people truly engaged with the theory and making really smart and interesting podcast episodes so far