Ask the Editor: What happened to the Legal Docket podcast?

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Friday November 3rd. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown. Up next, Ask the Editor. WORLD Radio Executive Producer Paul Butler responds to a couple of recent emails.

PAUL BUTLER, EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: Since late this summer we’ve gotten a lot of email inquiries like this one from Mike and Laura Patrick.

MIKE AND LAURA PATRICK: First, we love The World and Everything In It, World Watch and listen to them every morning. We also love and listen to your other podcasts when they air. Which brings me to my question. What has happened to Legal Docket? We absolutely love Mary and Jenny as they break down the different rulings from the previous Supreme Court session. We have been anticipating the new season. Have we missed something? Thanks for all the wonderful reporting and analysis that you all do. Keep up the great work. Blessings, Mike and Laura.

Mike and Laura, thanks for your encouragement! In the Spring we identified a handful of cases from the last term that we wanted to dive into for Season 4. We’ve done a lot of reporting and interviewing over the last eight months, but with some of the additional projects we’ve been working on this year—and with some personal challenges at home—our team just ran out of steam. We weren’t able to finish them up before the new Supreme Court session began last month. So we’ve made the difficult decision to not produce a formal Legal Docket Podcast season this year as usual.

However, we’re just about finished with one of those episodes. And we plan on releasing it later this month as a stand alone special. It’s the case about the postal worker who refused to work on Sundays. You’ll get to hear directly from the named petitioner Gerald Groff. I know you won’t want to miss it.

We are still planning on releasing stories on the three other cases after the new year…but these stories won’t be presented as the Legal Docket podcast. Rather they will be part of a new World and Everything in It weekend program that we’re currently working on. We think that will be even more appealing as you’ll be able to count on engaging long form stories and interviews every single weekend of the year. Whether important Supreme Court cases, poverty fighting stories, or long-form journalism that causes you to take a second look, but we’ll have more to say about that in the months ahead.

In the meantime, we’re thankful for the many listeners who have asked about Mary and Jenny and we’re sorry that we just couldn’t pull it off this year. But be assured that our in-depth legal coverage isn’t going away, it’ll just appear in slightly different packaging moving forward.

Next, a daily listener wrote in with some suggestions for this program. This is what he writes:

I am a subscriber to several podcasts that I like to work through each day, mostly in the morning while getting ready for and commuting to work. For me, time is of the essence, and I don't like to waste time. The first minute and a half of every podcast seems like wasted time. Plus, there also seem to be random musical interludes that last nearly 30 seconds. I'm sure that you may have reasons for the set up and structure of the program. I took a chance though, just in case you hadn't thought about it and were willing to streamline it a little bit more. Signed, Scott Hollander

Scott, we appreciate listeners like you who join us everyday as a part of your morning routine. You suggest that the opening 90 seconds of the program seems like “wasted time.” We do have a method to our madness, here’s a quick explanation.

As you know, our program begins with a pre-roll. It’s a way for listeners to participate in each episode. That’s important because it helps foster loyalty and “virtual community.” As you hear from fellow listeners, you realize that there are a lot of other people who appreciate the program and support it. I will say the pre-rolls at times do go a little too long, and we’re working on that, but we’re committed to the concept.

After the pre-roll, we have a preview of the program. We call it the “billboard.” It fulfills a handful of functions. There are listeners like you who catch us everyday, but we also have listeners who are checking us out for the first time, and others who only listen a few times a week. The billboard is a way to draw people in. It’s not click-bait, but a sampler that we hope motivates irregular listeners and new ones alike to stick with us. Frankly, it’s also for people like you: listeners who are busy, and may not have time for the whole program. So you can hear what’s coming and decide which segments you want to catch immediately, and which ones you may want to come back to.

Lastly, you mention the thirty second musical interludes. I want to make the case here for actually slowing things down. The music serves that function. Now: I understand if you need to skip ahead to get the whole program in before you arrive at work, but here’s why we do it. In an audio magazine like ours, we cover a lot of stories in each episode. We believe it is important for listeners to have a moment to reflect. For instance: what might I do with what I’ve just heard? Should I look for ways to address the issue in my own life or community? Can I help those featured in the story?

In this day and age, reflection is something that social media and news feeds don’t encourage. They foster endless scrolling, a steady stream of information, for information’s sake. But we seek to do more than inform. We want to inspire and transform our audience. And while it’s only a few seconds, we hope that the music transitions give people just a little bit of time to consider what’s important before moving on to the next thing.

Thanks for your feedback, and we’ll keep working on making the program as valuable as we can for you each day.

That’s this month’s Ask the Editor. I’m Paul Butler.

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