I started reading Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s Rolling Stone story “A Rape on Campus: A Brutal Assault and Struggle for Justice at UVA” expecting another version of a story I’d read, depressingly, so many times before of unresolved sexual assaults on campus. But from the first paragraph, I was hooked on overachieving, finally-able-to-cut-loose Jackie — the way she slyly ditches her spiked drink so she can stay sober but not look like a scared freshman, her excitement over her first big party, what she wore and how she fixed her hair. Erdely brings Jackie right into my living room with me and when she is gang raped in the frat house all of the breath rushes out of my lungs. I gulp the rest of the story down and by the end I am stunned. The searing unfairness of how Jackie has been treated by the people of an institution she trusted, where she could have felt liberated and empowered instead, is simply crushing. Not only am I devastated on her behalf, I’m also devastated on behalf of every girl and woman who’s ever been brutalized like that. That’s what a good story written extremely well should do. That’s art.

That I don’t even notice that Erdely never mentions trying to get an interview with the men Jackie says raped her until I read the follow-up pieces this week speaks volumes about how well Erdely crafted the narrative. Some critics say Erdeley should not have agreed to Jackie’s request that she not contact the men she accused of rape, that journalistic diligence demands that they be given the opportunity to address the accusations or refuse to comment. Others say whistle-blowing stories often start with one source. Rolling Stone stands by Erdely’s reporting in a statement: “Through our extensive reporting and fact-checking, we found Jackie to be entirely credible and courageous, and we are proud to have given her disturbing story the attention it deserves.”

But this isn’t Jackie’s memoir. “A Rape on Campus” is journalism, and now the story isn’t just about Jackie, it’s about the concessions Erdely did or did not make in pursuit of a powerful story, which has now sparked a police investigation, a frat suspension and institutional reforms. The emotional payoff for being invested in Jackie is intense and ongoing. Jackie isn’t a character, she’s a real person. But in the case of how her story was written and read, she had to be a little bit of both in order to transcend campus apocrypha and gain the power to force a tradition-bound institution to face its toxic culture.

I think about this weird and uncomfortable space journalism and entertainment can occupy when I listen to Sarah Koenig’s “Serial” with my husband. I believe Adnan Syed, who says he didn’t kill Hae Min Lee. I can’t give you legally sound reasons why, because I’m not a lawyer, and I’m not reporting the story, I’m just consuming it. At this point in Koenig’s narrative, I simply believe the version of him that her podcast delivers. My husband believes Jay, the star witness for the prosecution. We both have our own capricious reasons that basically boil down to which character we each like more.