There’s a podcast in which actors present the daily happenings at Harvey Weinstein’s rape trial. Bloomberg reports that producers of The Harvey Weinstein Trial: Unfiltered arrive at the site of Weinstein’s trial at around 4:30 each morning to ensure they get seats in the courtroom, then — by 5 AM the next day — produce a show in which performers present the testimony for about 50,000 listeners per episode.

“We’re trying to create a story arc every day,” the podcast’s co-creator says, which kind of suggests that the story presented in the trial itself isn’t enough? They’re not the only ones using actors to illustrate the trial, though: under its “Instant Replay” umbrella, Court TV says that “Seasoned voice talent will read trial transcripts, statements and exchanges verbatim in real time as they happen. That transcript audio will then be synced with highlighted images of the trial participants who are speaking,” and the married media will be broadcast “almost instantaneously.” This sounds completely wild; has anyone checked this out? — EB

A federal judge has reduced the number of charges filed against Elizabeth Holmes. Judge Edward Davila of the U.S. District Court in San Jose ruled Tuesday to drop charges related to patients whose Theranos blood testing was paid for by insurance, but said that charges for tests paid for by patients can move forward. The reasoning, SF Gate reports, is that users whose tests were covered by insurance companies were not themselves defrauded.

While that’s arguably a victory for Team Theranos, it’s still far from the defense team’s ultimate goal of getting the case completely dismissed. That’s not something Davila was open to, it appears, as he ruled that prosecutors could move forward with claims that Holmes and former Theranos President Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani defrauded investors of $700 million. As you likely know from our regular announcements that if Best Evidence hits 2000 paid subscribers, we’ll cover the case in person, the trial is scheduled to begin in August of this year. — EB

Now there’s a game show that’s all about true crime. There’s no doubt in my mind that Best Evidence subscribers could easily dominate Killer Knowledge, a new trivia podcast in which “two competitors go head-to-head to correctly answer multiple-choice true crime questions.” The game drops every Tuesday, and there are three episodes so far, on “Football Crimes” (OJ and domestic violence, I assume), Manson, and — oooh, Sarah! — D.B. effing Cooper. You can listen to Killer Knowledge here. — EB

A dirty secret behind some newspaper websites is the reliance they have on mugshot galleries — page after page of photos of recent arrestees — as a driver of traffic. It’s been a long-accepted practice to use the booking photos freely shared by police to illustrate crime stories, and until recently, it went fairly unexamined.

The first time I recall seeing a dissenting voice on the issue was the Columbia Journalism Review, which in 2018 asked, “Mugshot galleries might be a web-traffic magnet. Does that justify publishing them?”

Since then, I’ve heard more and more news orgs voice concern with the practice, and this week it seemed like it was a constant discussion in journalism circles. Part of that is due to a Medium post from Cincinnati ABC affiliate WCPO, an item headlined, “We changed our approach to using mug shots online and on-air then told our community why.” The broadcast station said that the policy change was made because “the potential for mug shots to reinforce racial stereotypes and suspects that don’t meet the above criteria can be haunted for years after their mug shot is published/aired for a minor crime.”

A few days later, Poynter reported that the Houston Chronicle (a publication owned by the Hearst Corporation) had decided to “stop posting slideshows of people who have been arrested but not convicted.” Via email, managing editor Mark Lorando said that “Mugshot slideshows whose primary purpose is to generate page views will no longer appear on our websites.” They join sites like Cleveland.com/Advance Ohio, which curtailed the practice in 2018, and the Biloxi Sun Herald, which in 2018 announced that not only would it dump booking photo galleries, but would reduce its coverage of low-level arrests. — EB

Friday on Best Evidence: Want to party like Elizabeth Holmes? Plus, a weekend open thread!

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