Polk Award Winners: Meribah Knight

Kelsey McKinney is a features writer and co-owner at Defector.com. She hosts the podcast Normal Gossip and is the author of the upcoming book You Didn't Hear This From Me: (Mostly) True Notes on Gossip. “I was always very interested in how you strategize a creative career. And I think that that is an unsexy thing to talk about, right? It's much sexier to be like, Oh, I love working on my sentence-level craft, which is not true for me. But I think that a lot of a creative career is understanding it is still a job, and then understanding how you make sure that within the container of the job you can do the work that you want to do. That is a really difficult balance to make. So if you can understand how people who have done it before you, you can copy them.” Show notes: @mckinneykelsey kelseymckinney.com McKinney on Longform McKinney’s Defector archive 04:00 “Why Doesn’t Mrs. Dalloway Get a Day of Her Own?” (Slate • Jan 2000) 13:00 “Chris Evans: American Marvel” (Edith Zimmerman • GQ • July 2011) 23:00 McKinney’s Deadspin archive 31:00 God Spare the Girls (Harper Collins • 2022) 39:00 “Gossip Is Not a Sin” (New York Times • July 2021) 43:00 You Didn’t Hear This From Me (Viking • 2025) 58:00 “Learning To Play Piano When There Is No Recital” (Defector • Dec 2023) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Lissa Soep is an audio producer, editor and author whose latest book is Other People’s Words: Friendship, Loss, and the Conversations That Never End. “I am so keenly aware of how much my own voice is a product of editing relationships and co-producing relationships with other people's words. … I will forever feel indebted to those then young people who are now writers and educators and therapists. … I feel like my voice is sort of a product of that time.” Show notes: 00:00 Other People’s Words: Friendship, Loss, and the Conversations that Never End (Spiegel & Grau • 2024) 00:00 YR Media 33:00 "Laurie Anderson Has a Message for Us Humans" (Sam Anderson • New York Times Magazine • Oct 2021) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

PJ Vogt is the host of Search Engine. “One of our tests editorially is if we think we’ve got something good, but we haven’t started reporting or recording on it, I’ll just try asking the question at dinner and stuff. If it derails conversations, that’s a really good sign.” Show notes: @PJVogt Vogt’s Substack Vogt on Longform Podcast 03:00 “Why Are There So Many Illegal Weed Stores in New York City? (Part 1)” (Search Engine • Mar 2024) 03:00 “Why Are There So Many Illegal Weed Stores in New York City? (Part 2)” (Search Engine • April 2024) 03:00 “When Do You Know It’s Time to Stop Drinking?” (Search Engine • Jan 2024) 08:00 “Why Are There So Many Chicken Bones on the Street? (Part 1)” (Search Engine • Jan 2024) 08:00 “Why Are There So Many Chicken Bones on the Street? (Part 2)” (Search Engine • Jan 2024) 13:00 “Is There a Sane Way to Use the Internet?” (Search Engine • Oct 2023) 15:00 “How Do You Survive Fame?” (Search Engine • Feb 2024) 15:00 “The Tao of Rick Rubin” (New York Times • The Ezra Klein Show • Feb 2023) 15:00 “Rick Rubin Says Trust Your Gut, Not Your Audience” (Bari Weiss • The Free Press • Mar 2023) 16:00 “Rick Rubin, The Seclusive Zen Master” (Tim Ferriss • Jan 2023) 16:00 “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold” (Gay Talese • Esquire • April 1966) 18:00 The Ezra Klein Show 18:00 Fresh Air 19:00 Crypto Island (Jigsaw Productions • 2022) 26:00 “Do Political Yard Signs Actually Do Anything?” (Search Engine • Apr 2024) 27:00 Reply All 35:00 “What’s Going on With Elon Musk?” (Search Engine • July 2023) 38:00 “What’s It Like to Go Blind? (Search Engine • July 2023) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Lindsay Peoples is the editor-in-chief of The Cut. “You see so many incredible people make one mistake and lose their job or they speak out about something and then the next day something blows up. And so I do think that I often feel like I have to be so careful. And that's hard to do because I'm just naturally curious and I want to know and I want to find and explore and do the things. But I'm aware that … people think I'm too young. I'm too Black. I'm aware of all those things and I'm still going to try.” Show notes: 01:00 "Everywhere and Nowhere: What It’s Really Like to Be Black and Work in Fashion" (The Cut • Aug 2018) 09:00 The Devil Wears Prada (Fox 2000 Pictures • 2006) 29:00 David Haskell on Longform Podcast 31:00 "Should I Leave My Husband? The Lure of Divorce" (Emily Gould • The Cut • Feb 2024) 31:00 "The Day I Put $50,000 in a Shoe Box and Handed It to a Stranger" (Charlotte Cowles • The Cut • Feb 2024) 31:00 "Age Gap Relationships: The Case for Marrying an Older Man" (Grazie Sophia Christie • The Cut • Mar 2024) 50:00 "Is There Room for Fashion Criticism in a Racist Industry?" (The Cut • Aug 2021) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Jason Motlagh, a journalist and filmmaker, is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone and the founder of Blackbeard Films. He won the Polk's Sydney Schanberg Prize for “This Will End in Blood and Ashes,” an account of the collapse of order in Haiti. “Once you've gotten used to this kind of metabolism, it can be hard to walk away from it. Ordinary life can be a little flat sometimes. And so that's always kind of built in. I accept that. I think I've just tried to be more honest about like, [am I taking this risk] because I need a bump my life? Or do you really believe in what you're doing? And I feel like I really do need to believe in the purpose of the story. There has to be some motivation greater than myself." This is the last in a series of conversations with winners of this year's George Polk Awards in Journalism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Brian Howey is a freelance journalist who won the Polk Award for Justice Reporting after exposing a deceptive police tactic widely used in California. He began the project, which was eventually published by the Los Angeles Times and Reveal, as a graduate student in the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. “It’s one thing to hear about this tactic and hear about parents being questioned in this way. It’s another thing entirely to hear the change in a parent’s voice when they realize for the past 20 minutes they’ve been speaking ill of a relative who’s actually been dead the entire time, and to hear that wave of grief and sometimes that feeling of betrayal that cropped up in their voice and how the way that they spoke to the officers afterwards changed.” This is the fourth in a week-long series of conversations with winners of this year's George Polk Awards in Journalism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Meribah Knight is a reporter with Nashville Public Radio. She won the Polk Award for Podcasting for “The Kids of Rutherford County,” produced with ProPublica and Serial, which revealed a shocking approach to juvenile discipline in one Tennessee county. “Where does it leave me? It leaves me with a searing anger that is going to propel me to the next thing. But we’ve made some real improvement. And that’s worth celebrating. That’s worth recognizing and saying, This work matters, people are paying attention.” This is the third in a week-long series of conversations with winners of this year's George Polk Awards in Journalism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Jesse Coburn is an investigative reporter at Streetsblog. He won the Polk Award for Local Reporting for "Ghost Tags," his series on the black market for temporary license plates. “You can imagine this having never become a problem, because it’s so weird. What a weird scam. I’m going to print and sell tens of thousands of paper license plates. But someone figured it out. And then a lot more people followed. It just exploded.” This is the second in a week-long series of conversations with winners of this year's George Polk Awards in Journalism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Amel Guettatfi and Julia Steers won this year's George Polk Award for Television Reporting for “Inside Wagner,” their Vice News investigation of Russian mercenaries on the Ukraine front and in the Central African Republic.  “One of the best takeaways I got from seven or eight years at Vice is that it’s not enough for something to be important when you’re figuring out how to make a story. It’s the intersection of important and interesting. And that has taught me that people will watch anything, anywhere, as long as it’s interesting. Nobody owes us their time. The onus is on us to explain things in an interesting, compelling way. I’m hoping that a landscape opens up somewhere else that sees that and understands that can be done anywhere in the world.” This is the first in a week-long series of conversations with winners of this year's George Polk Awards in Journalism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Vinson Cunningham is a staff writer for The New Yorker. His novel, published in March 2024, is Great Expectations. “I think the job is just paying a bunch of attention. If you're a person like me, where thoughts and worries are intruding on your consciousness all the time, it is a great relief to have something to just over-describe and over-pay-attention to—and kind of just give all of your latent, usually anxious attention to this one thing. That, to me, is a great joy.” Show notes: @vcunningham vinson.nyc Cunningham on Longform Cunningham's New Yorker archive 04:00 "’The Suit’ at BAM" (Brooklyn Paper • Jan 2013) 04:00 "Label Maker: Edward Buchanan" (Nylon Guys • Mar 2015) 09:00 circlejerk.live 11:00 Jeremy O. Harris’ plays 11:00 "How Are Audiences Adapting to the Age of Virtual Theatre?" (New Yorker • Oct 2020) 18:00 "The Season of Russell Westbrook and a New Era in N.B.A. Fandom" (New Yorker • Apr 2017) 25:00 Cunningham's McSweeney’s archive 25:00 "The Flies in Kehinde Wiley’s Milk" (The Awl • Jun 2015) 25:00 "Can Black Art Ever Escape the Politics of Race?" (New York Times Magazine • Aug 2015) 25:00 "How Chris Jackson is Building a Black Literary Movement" (New York Times Magazine • Feb 2016) 27:00 "Stephon Marbury Has His Own Story to Tell" (New Yorker • Apr 2020) 28:00 "The Playful, Political Art of Sanford Biggers" (New Yorker • Jan 2018) 29:00 WTF with Marc Maron 32:00 "Tracy Morgan Turns the Drama of His Life into Comedy" (New Yorker • May 2019) 36:00 Redd Foxx party albums 38:00 Alexandra Schwartz’ New Yorker archive 41:00 Simon Parkin on Longform 41:00 Adrian Chen on Longform 42:00 "The Many Lives of Steven Yeun" (Jay Caspian Kang • New York Times Magazine • Feb 2021) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices