Week 7 Prompt: All Good People Here by Ashley Flowers

I have been a true crime fan for years and I've always had a fascination with it. True crime podcasts have been a huge hit over the last several years and when I was commuting an hour to work, I used to listen to Crime Junkie and Morbid faithfully. I rarely listen now just because I'm not in my car as much but will still tune in every once in a while. 

When one of the hosts of Crime Junkie, Ashely Flowers, announced she wrote a book and it was available for pre-order, I pre-ordered it so fast. I figured it would be really good considering her life is true crime research. I thought she would be able to bring in some truthful elements from her years of podcasting, but I will say I was disappointed. I was disappointed because I felt like with her years of experience, she could have come up with something better than a reimaging of JonBenet Ramsey's case. I still read the book once I picked it up and did enjoy reading it. It kept me entertained and I flew through it quickly. Even though it seems like she ripped from JonBenet Ramsey's case, it still had other fictionalized elements, but after the plagiarism accusations came out, I wondered how she settled with this story. 

About a week after it was published, The New York Times published this article and there was not just one instance of plagiarism taking place on Crime Junkie. After these allegations, several episodes were removed from Crime Junkie and they began citing their sources regularly. They went back and also added sources to older episodes. This article by Variety also gives a great overview of the situation. 

Her celebrity status within the true-crime podcast community caused her sales to skyrocket and her book ended up as a New York Times bestseller, despite her controversy. I still have mixed feelings about her and her book, even though I was a once loyal fan. Before I decided to go to library school, I had even applied to work at her company, Audiochuck, as a researcher. I used to teach English at the college level and have another master's degree, so I thought that would be a cool use of all of my research skills. 

I'm always curious to hear how other people feel about this situation and if they even knew about it. I feel like with all the press from her book, this situation was not heard about a lot. Even after all of this, Audible's Top Ten True Crime Podcasts still includes Crime Junkie in the number three spot. On Apple Podcasts, it is ranked number five out of all genres.