INTERVIEW: TESSA KRAMER OF 'ADMISSIBLE: SHREDS OF EVIDENCE' (Part 2) Tessa Kramer, host of "Admissible: Shreds of Evidence," shares the challenges she faced while creating the podcast and her advice for budding audio journalists.
Shreya Sharma (SS): Tell us about some challenges you faced while making this podcast. What kept you going through them? Tessa Kramer (TK): One of the biggest challenges was figuring out how to discuss the reality of horrific crimes of sexual assault in the context of a story also dealing with wrongful convictions. This is a series about evidence, but at the other end of every case number – every "Jane Doe" in a police report — there's a real person who went through something traumatic. There are the 13 exonerees, of course, but also the victims of the original crimes, who were also impacted by the fact that the wrong person was convicted. Several of the survivors of these assaults shared painful details of their experiences with us, and I definitely felt the responsibility of handling their stories with care. Part of that, for us, meant not including gratuitous detail. We held to that principle throughout the series. At the same time, the reality is that these women's horrific experiences were a central piece of this story, and we wanted to capture what they went through. So, we kept doing gut checks — and brought in sensitivity listeners to gut check our gut checks — to make sure we were handling those stories with care and attention. Another challenge was that many of the people in this story are dead, including Mary Jane Burton. I'd much rather report on someone who can respond, especially when the things I'm reporting are less-than-flattering. But without the ability to talk to certain people directly, I sought out as many other voices as possible to try to consider every angle and possibility. Another thing I did quite a lot as I was writing was to ask myself, "How would I feel if this were about my dad? Or my mom? Would I feel like the reporter was being fair?" That mental exercise helps me check myself when I might be getting unnecessarily harsh or personal. The last challenge I'll mention (there were so many!) was the nagging feeling that we were just looking at the tip of the iceberg. Once we had verified the issues with Mary Jane Burton's work, we started to wonder if the 13 wrongful convictions were just the beginning. We could have spent who knows how many years investigating every case Mary Jane had ever handled, but after several years of reporting, we decided that the best thing we could do was to get this story out. SS: What is your advice for budding audio journalists? TK: 1. Always be rolling! Long before this story even got picked up, Sophie and I were recording every beat of our reporting process. Just leaving your mic rolling while you're making cold calls or discussing logistics — most of that you'll never use, but even a little bit can add a lot of texture. More importantly, you never know when you're going to catch a wild moment that you can't re-create. 2. Look out for your future self (aka organize your media files as you go.) I label every file — no matter how short or insignificant — with the date and a description, and I don't let myself get more than a day or two behind. It is more work in the moment and might feel like overkill, but when you find yourself several years into your reporting, with hundreds of media files, and someone asks you to turn those files into a comprehensible story … it's worth it. 3. Make timelines (and find a great editor). For me, chronology is the only way to make sense of a complicated narrative. This series spans several decades, with many branches and characters. I made many timelines for this story — they're color-coded by storyline, theme, character. Weaving the disparate plotlines and characters was very tough. What really helped us figure that out were, one: our incredible editor, Danielle Elliot, and two: super detailed timelines. Shreya: Thank you, Tessa! And, big thanks to Alexandra Cohl and Ellen Horne for facilitating this interview. |
