On Assignment

Ed Ou is co-director of the duPont-Columbia award-winning documentary A Different Kind of Force — Policing Mental Illness. Ou joins host Lisa Cohen to talk about the process of creating a nuanced and intimate documentary that tackles two of the most fraught subjects in American life — police violence and mental illness.

Earlonne Woods and Nigel Poor are the co-creators and co-hosts of the 2021 duPont Columbia Award-winning podcast Ear Hustle, a unique podcast produced in San Quentin State Prison. In this interview, they recount the origin story of this unlikely project, offer insight on the challenges of reporting inside prison, and share the true definiton of "ear hustling."

Isobel Yeung talks about India Burning, her 2021 duPont Columbia Award-winning work for Vice on Showtime and the importance of international journalism. Visit our website: www.onassignmentpodcast.com Visit the duPont awards website: www.duPont.org Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/columbiajourn Like is on Facebook: facebook.com/duPontColumbiaAwards

Nicole Newnham and Jim LeBrecht discuss their 2021 duPont Columbia Award-winning documentary Crip Camp. The directors of the film, which was also nominated for an Oscar, speak candidly about topics like disability representation in the media, the film's relationship to present-day grassroots movements, and what it was like to get edit notes from the Obamas. Visit our website: www.onassignmentpodcast.com Visit the duPont awards website: www.duPont.org Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/columbiajourn Like is on Facebook: facebook.com/duPontColumbiaAwards

Radiolab's Jad Abumrad and Shima Oliaee join duPont-Columbia Awards Director Lisa R. Cohen to discuss how they reported "The Flag and the Fury" which won a 2021 duPont award. They explain how what started as an historical audio documentary turned into a breaking news story in the summer of 2020 and the ways they handled that change. Visit our website: www.onassignmentpodcast.com Visit the duPont awards website: www.duPont.org Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/columbiajourn Like is on Facebook: facebook.com/duPontColumbiaAwards

KSTP News Director, Kirk Varner discusses the difficulty of reporting on the murder of George Floyd and the protests that rocked Minneapolis throughout the summer of 2020. In this conversation with duPont Awards Director Lisa R. Cohen, Varner tells behind-the-scenes stories about split second newsroom decisions, like when a truck drove through protestors on live air. Visit our website: www.onassignmentpodcast.com Visit the duPont awards website: www.duPont.org Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/columbiajourn Like is on Facebook: facebook.com/duPontColumbiaAwards

David Ushery, discusses reporting on coronavirus last spring, as New York City became the epicenter of a pandemic. The WNBC team brought viewers vital life and death information about COVID, day after day, in real time. Their reporting won a 2021 duPont-Columbia award. In this conversation with duPont Awards Director, Lisa R. Cohen, Ushery recounts the uncertainty of the pandemic’s early days, his team’s commitment to transparently inform viewers, and how WNBC reporters and photographers grappled with the fear of reporting on a highly infectious virus. Visit our website: www.onassignmentpodcast.com Visit the duPont awards website: www.duPont.org Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/columbiajourn Like is on Facebook: facebook.com/duPontColumbiaAwards

Nadine Ajaka, The Washington Post’s senior producer for visual forensics, talks about her team’s reconstruction of the crackdown on peaceful protesters in Lafayette Square in Washington D.C which won a 2021 duPont-Columbia award. By analyzing visual evidence, Ajaka and her team meticulously recreated the moments leading up to Donald Trump’s infamous “bible photo-op” in front of St. John’s church. See the full reconstruction, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxYmILDya0A&t=77s Visit our website: onassignmentpodcast.com Visit the duPont awards website: duPont.org Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/columbiajourn Like is on Facebook: facebook.com/duPontColumbiaAwards

In this conversation with duPont Awards Director, Lisa R. Cohen and Executive Director of Prizes, Abi Wright, Radiolab's Latif Nasser discusses his podcast "The Other Latif". Tune in as Nasser talks the challenges of reporting on Guantanamo Bay, reveals how he initially found this story via a tweet, and reflects on his own identity as a Muslim living in the United States.

In our latest episode, Rachel Maddow and Michael Yarvitz discuss their duPont Award-winning podcast, Bag Man, which details the brazen wrongdoing of Richard Nixon’s Vice President, Spiro T. Agnew -- and why so many have forgotten about him altogether.

The New York Times’ Science and Health Reporter Donald G. McNeil Jr., was months ahead of the general public, as he foretold the disastrous effects of COVID-19 early last spring. The winner of the 2020 John Chancellor Excellence in Journalism award-winner has been informing audiences of The Times’ podcast The Daily, and he’s joined here by The Daily host Michael Barbaro in a recent J-School student session to celebrate McNeil’s Chancellor win.

In our latest episode of On Assignment, Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and duPont juror Mark Whitaker reflect on the lessons learned from Gates’ 2020 duPont-winning documentary series Reconstruction: America After the Civil War. The conversation is timely, as the nation reckons with the current fragile political climate, and the country’s legacy of slavery in the wake of the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, among others.

In this month’s On Assignment episode, listen to the 2018 duPont-Award winning filmmakers describe the tenacious reporting required to produce “Let it Fall: Los Angeles 1982-1992.” Director John Ridley and ABC News Producers Jeanmarie Condon, Melia Patria and Fatima Curry revisit the newly relevant documentary about the decade preceding the Rodney King beating.

In this episode of On Assignment, CBS News 60 Minutes producers Michael Rey and Oriana Zill de Granados go behind the scenes of their duPont-winning reports on the US-Mexico Border. They describe basement meetings, months of back-and-forth with government sources, and having a U.S. president criticize their reporting. They also talk about how they have adapted to producing television news remotely in the time of COID-19.

In this episode of On Assignment, we revisit a conversation with Kai Wright and Kaari Pitkin, creators of the award-winning podcast Caught: The Lives of Juvenile Justice. The WNYC series showed the human side of the web-like juvenile justice system by giving young people the chance to tell their stories in their own words.

In this episode of On Assignment, we revisit a conversation from 2016 between New Yorker Staff Writer and Columbia Journalism Professor Jelani Cobb, FRONTLINE Producer James Jacoby, and Columbia Journalism Professor Betsy West about Cobb and Jacoby’s documentary Policing the Police. The film examines the troubled Newark, New Jersey police department from the inside.

WKBW's Charlie Specht talks with Professor Nina Alvarez about a reporting journey that took many unexpected turns: from covert emails sent anonymously from inside the church, to parking lot meetings, from undercover recordings to Specht’s own conflicted personal ties as a devout Catholic.

In this episode of On Assignment, Clarissa Ward joins duPont Awards Director, Lisa R. Cohen for a conversation about how CNN managed to break story after story on Khashoggi’s disappearance; how she has handled challenging reporting situations, including trauma self-care; and the creative ways she has continued reporting on COVID-19.

Local reporters Joe Bruno and Michael Stolp of WSOC in Charlotte, North Carolina discuss their duPont Award winning reporting “Something Suspicious in District 9.”

Directors of the duPont winning documentary Love them First, Lindsey Seavert and Ben Garvin, talk with Director of the duPont-Columbia Awards, Lisa Cohen (Serving Life) about their film. The documentary, built on unprecedented year-long access, is an intimate portrait of a North Minnesota elementary school and its visionary principal. Seavert and Garvin describe the challenges of creating a feature length documentary while still fulfilling their obligations as reporters at a local, daily news outlet.