Podcast host and reporter Connie Walker and team accept the 2023 duPont-Columbia Award for “Stolen”
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“I deserve to know the truth about what happened to my dad and how it affected his life and how it affected mine.”
–Podcast Host Connie Walker
Gimlet Media won its first ever duPont in February 2023 for “Stolen: Surviving St. Michael’s,” a podcast series that follows audio journalist Connie Walker as she unravels the disturbing story of her father’s abuse at St Michael’s Residential School. Her findings lead to a deeper understanding of not only her relationship with her late father, but how these stories were commonplace for so many indigenous Canadians.
Walker and her team’s dogged reporting has earned them not just a duPont Award this year, but in one recent week they also won a Peabody and a Pulitzer Prize!
Walker discusses the importance of featuring Indigenous voices, both as the subjects and as the journalists themselves, with the J-School’s Professional Prize Director Abi Wright and duPont Award director Lisa R. Cohen. She describes the ethical dilemmas and challenges she faced while reporting on such a sensitive subject, and the thrill of unearthing a trove of documents that would corroborate dozens of painful personal accounts, some from her own family.
Listen to Stolen here.