Transcripts For CSPAN2 2023 20240705

Lynton history prize, mark lynton history prize and the j. Anthony prize, the work in progress prizes are administered jointly by Columbia Journalism School and the Nieman Foundation for journalism at harvard md. And i want to introduce our host for this evening. Thats ann marie lipinski, Pulitzer Prize winning former editor of the chicago tribune, and the curator here of the Nieman Foundation. Weve got a good and very stimulating evening ahead. So ann marie. Were killing the music. Ive done it. Thats it. Its my folks that jazz. Its called the jazz lounge bar. In case anyones interested interested. Thank you, jonathan, and welcome everyone to the presentation of the j. Anthony lucas prize project honoring the very best of american Nonfiction Book writing in celebrating gifted writer winners this evening, we remember Pulitzer Prize winning journalist j. Anthony lucas, a 1969 nieman fellow, and the late mark linton, a history enthusiast and expert and Senior Executive at the firm Hunter Douglas and the netherlands. Lintons wife, marianne and children, lily and michael establish the mark linton history prize and have generously supported and sponsored the lucas prize project since its creation. Tony, as friends knew him, began the that would distinguish him as one of the countrys master storyteller hours while an undergraduate reporter at the harvard crimson. He would go on to win two Pulitzer Prizes, the first in 1968 for his reporting the new york times, the second for Common Ground. A turbulent decade in the lives of three american families. His landmark work about School Desegregation and bussing in boston. The work is american masterpiece. One of lucass great gifts was his ability to pair the common, the combustible. There was always a fine tension running beneath the most mundane moments in the book a writing style that must characterize the social climate in boston during this tumultuous period, tony published five important books each and examined notion of a critical rift in americas social and political landscape, each seen through the lens of individuals caught up in the tides of change. To do this, he brought an intense focus to methodology during the reporting for common, he abandoned one family midway through the seven year project to focus on another family because his first choices said was not working dramatically. He was absolutely brilliant, said. David halberstam. He took journalism to a high intellect full level, yet he also had the doggedness of an Old Fashioned police reporter, colin diver, subject of Common Ground, said in the excruciating obsessive precision of his research, he reminded us of the cleansing power of truth in his relish for the richness of his material he taught us there can be a richness, even a kind of nobility in the ordinariness of everyday life. The year following his death in 97, his widow, linda healy, joined with friends and colleagues, honor his memory by creating the lucas prize project, which is what brings us together this evening. Thank you so much to the judges. These awards who work so hard select tonights amazing winners among hundreds of entries. Some of the judges are with us here. Please stand when i say your name. Jessica bruder, van shereen meraji, ali almalik, Elizabeth Taylor, William Thomas and deidre mask. Some of our distinguished judges are also past honorees of this prize. Thank you. Also to amazing lucas board and welcome to those members who are here. Lily linton, shay earhart, pamela paul, annette gordonreed, sam friedman, abby wright and of course our chair jonathan alter. And to the clinton family, thank you for your generous support and for making these awards possible. We are all so grateful for. Your backing of grants for two of the students and Sam Friedmans very famous book writing course. We have some of the students from sams class with us, and we welcome you all here tonight. I would now invite our board member, jelani cobb, to me for the presentation of the awards he is the recently named dean of the Columbia Journalism School and the henry luce professor of journalism, dean cobb, is also a staff writer for the new yorker and the author of several books, including the of hope, barack obama and the paradox of progress. So next up, the awards we first present the jay Anthony Lucas book prize given to a book length work of narrative nonfiction on a topic of American Social or political concern that exemplify the literary grace, commitment to Serious Research and original reporting that characterized the distinguished work of the awards namesake. The prize, a 10,000 honorarium. This years judges were jessica bruder, emily bazelon, Shereen Marisol meraji and van newkirk, this years winner is, author and journalist Linda Villarosa her book under the skin the hidden toll of racism on american lives and on the health of our nation. Linda is a professor at the Craig Newmark graduate school of journalism at cuny with a joint appointment, the city college of new york, as well as a contributing writer at the times magazine, where she covers the intersection of race and health, the judges citation reads under the skin is a poignant, deeply reported investigation of the racial ethnic qualities underlying the us system, leveraging decades of experience as a health journalist, linda probes some of the darkest despair. Those gaps in average expectancy and the quality of care afforded black and white americans. She builds her argument on a scaffold of rigorous and sometimes Shocking Research and while painting vivid scenes behind the statistics the section eight apartment of the ralph sisters who were involuntarily sterilized as children at a federally funded clinic in alabama, the louisa diana labor and delivery room where an underpaid dual demands dignity for her callously mistreated black client, the colorado Veterans Hospital where linda horrified her own critically ill father, now thin, disheveled in leg restraints and must lobby his care diggers for his caregivers, for his dignity. Through it all, she is a skilled, steady and even generous guide, recounting her own awakening to the outcomes of systematic bias and inviting readers to join her on the other side of that journey under the skin is elegantly written, revelatory. And given the crisis of black maternal and infant mortality, utterly necessary, please join me and congratulate glenda. This years finalist for the jane Anthony Lucas book prize is. His name is george floyd. One mans life and the struggle for Racial Justice by Robert Samuels and tolu olanipekun samuels became a staff writer at the new yorker in march 2023, focusing on politics policy and the changing american identity. He wrote his name is george floyd. During his tenure as a National Political reporter for the washington post, where worked for 12 years prior to the post, he worked at the miami herald. Tableau is the White House Bureau chief. The post he joined the paper in 2019 and has covered three presidencies. He previously worked at bloomberg, where he reported on politics and policy from washington and florida. The judges write in their citation that when Minneapolis Police killed george floyd in 2020, it sparked an american reckoning and in the public eye, reduced demands, life to 9 minutes and 29 seconds. His name is george floyd fills in the 46 years that came before restoring to floyds story the complexity that he was denied in death. Building on reporting from the washington post, robert, you offer a definitive account of floyds life. They follow his journey from the hospital in fayetteville, north carolina, where he was born to the housing projects in houstons third ward, where he was raised to the minneapolis suburb of saint louis park, where he sought a fresh start. The author, authors share, historical and contemporary contexts reveals how american racism contoured floyds experi ence long before it contributed to his end, their account with the propulsive quality of a novel depicting a man who, despite his flaws, was deeply beloved and optimistic, who dreamed of changing the world until in the most devastating way, he succeeded. Please join me in congratulating robert and told. The mark linton history prize is awarded annually to a work of history on any subject that best combines intellectual distinction with phylliss d of expression and carries a 10,000 honorarium. This years judges were Elizabeth Taylor deidre mask and william g. Thomas. This years winner is Deborah Cohen for last call the hotel imperial. The reporters who took on a at war. Deborah is the Richard W Leopold professor of history at northwestern university. Her previous books include the war home, disabled veterans in britain and germany and family secrets, shame and privacy in modern britain. She writes for the atlantic, the new york review of books and the wall street journal. The judges citation. Cohens brilliant ensemble features american newspaper correspondents john gunther dorothy thompson, Vincent Sheehan and h. R. Knickerbocker. As each arrives in europe after world war one and chases stories that leave readers at home to their place in a changing world. Perceptive and unabashedly inquisitive, cohen has written not only a rich cultural history, a commanding and inspiring account of war and politics in 1930s, as they the rise of fascism and debated. These reporters shared a conviction that the idea of journalist objectivity should be set aside. Truth was more important as sheehan it than quote a litany of facts. They wrote what they felt thought about the world in crisis. Cohens extraordinary narrative combines distinctive literary style and deep archival revelations illuminate the personal as political. She captures these writers as passionate idealists facing a world in crisis, their messy lives caught in a swirl of infidelity and loyalty love and rivalry, pride and loss. Last call is to be savored like a dry martini at viennas hotel imperial. And if i could just add one other thing, lily linton said my dad would have loved book. Please join in congratulating deborah. This years finalists for the mark linton history prize is Kelly Lytle Hernandez for bad race, empire and revolution in the borderlands. Kelley holds the thomas e lipka endowed chair in history and, directs the center for africanamerican studies at ucla. The judges citation says in her vivid history, kelly reframes the relationship between the u. S. And mexico and argues that the mexican revolution not only transformed central america, but also shaped the u. S. In that endure to this day. She has rendered a polyphonic account that entwines the rise of u. S. Imperialism, the making of the american west, and the establishment of the global color line. Deeply researched and interwoven with archival sources held by allies and descendants of the revolutionaries, her masterful narrative emphasizes the importance of the mexican rebels led by radical Ricardo Flores mccowen, Whose Movement of morgan does oppose the regime of authoritarian president porfirio diaz. Forced to flee across the border, the morgan east, a stage revolutionary across mexico from their temporary bases in the u. S. , only be pursued in turn by the u. S. Department of justice, intent on propping up the diaz regime. Her revelator and stunning account tells us how the mexican revolution, which forced more than a million mexicans to flee, remain remade the United States and resonated beyond the u. S. Mexico border. Please join us in congratulating kelly. She cant be with us tonight, but we congratulate her from afar. And now to the two j. Anthony lucas work in progress awards. These awards in the amount of 25,000 each, are given annually to aid in the complete run of significant works of nonfiction. On a topic of american political or social concern. This years judges were paul gottlieb, alya malik and paige williams, jesselyn cook wins one of the work in progress awards for the quiet q and on and the destroy auction of the American Family. She is an atlanta area journalist reporting focuses on online including weaponize conspiracy theories and other dissident information. Prior to working as an Investigative Reporter at abc, nbc news, she was a Senior Reporter on, the National Enterprise desk at huffpost and an adjunct journalism professor, the university of laverne, the citation reads the quiet damage a harrowing exploration of the harm, but the harm, the far right Conspiracy Theory movement. Q and on has wrought on u. S. Society, specifically at its most basic and intimate level, the family q and on situated within the dangerous crosscurrents of disinformation and partizan dysfunction and politics has often been dismissed by most americans as a fringe movement, but its potential wreak havoc was clearly underestimated. Her narrative reveals how seemingly ludicrous beliefs take hold. People who are easily recognizable any reader, even as they become unrecognizable to their loved ones. Her empathic portrait of real families shattered by cunanan viscerally conveys the depth of their loss and devastation, and as well as the urgency with which we must confront this phenomenon. Congratulations to, jocelyn. And our last word and the second work in progress goes to mike hicks and beau for uncivil. One towns fight over race and identity. And the new battle americas schools. Mike is the senior Investigative Reporter for nbc news. Hes worked at newspapers in ohio, north carolina, virginia, where his reporting uncovered deadly failures in the u. S. Military, abuses in the Child Welfare system, and safety lapses at major. He has been a pulitzer finalist and winner of the peabody award. The citation reads the fraught of race in americas schools is the focus of mikes immersive and urgent reporting in uncivil, in which he describes how why the suburbs have been consumed by toxic political and cultural battles that threaten to undermine the system of Public Education in this country. The School District in southlake texas seemed to offer everything that parents would want for their children. Small classes, dedicated teachers, financial resources, a track record of academic success in spirit in abundance. After a series of troubling incidents became public and a program ran to promote racial understanding was proposed, the atmosphere curdled and tore the community. He recounts these events through the perspective of students, parents, teachers and others whose lives and assumptions were up. Ultimately illuminating, a coordinated, wellfunded escalating effort by conservative extremists to preserve their power and dominance. Congrats to mike. Over. You didnt come. Its a good evening to all of you. Wow. Really really looks like a tough crowd. Lets go get drinks. Lets get out of here. So i have the good fortune of being the moderator. This discussion, i was told that i should really lean in and ask tough questions like, do you know how great you are . Do you often reflect upon your own greatness . I think well find like a kind of middle ground here. But, you know, were really excited to have you all here and to be able to host you for this discussion. So ill start with linda, who whose work ive actually known the longest of anyone here. And so youve studied Health Disparities for years. And in the book you describe how you thinking has changed over time about the root causes of the disparities. Can take us through a little bit about the evolution of your thinking and the parallel path of you working on this book. Well, first, thank you. So honored to be here and want to say that Common Ground is foundational for me about national piece of work. Well i started as an editor at essence magazine. I was Health Editor in the late eighties. I was very young and my whole goal was to if every individual person thats reading this magazine does what were telling them to do, in fact, take care of yourself. Take good care of yourself, then the whole race become healthier, and then little by little, i began to see that pushing individuals to do better and be better while is good for individuals will not change the Health Outcomes of black people in america as a whole because of structural issues that i was not examining and it took me a while. Im really, really slow. Good luck to you writing your book to out that weight. This advice im giving is not really helping solve my own goal, which is to make black people as a whole better and also some experiences that i had where i saw that the Health System that im even telling people to believe in isnt even working for people that know and love and so by the end of my journey and the book, im a completely different thinker. Mm hmm. I wonder, deborah, if i could follow with you and, you know, ive heard that that journals are a gossipy sort. I would have. Ill tell you about how. I know that later. Afterword and i will as an aside, i will tell you this, that Pulitzer Hall is the least discreet building on all of columbias campus. Like, literally, there is no room in this building where can Say Something that you dont want the entire building to know. And im convinced that that is intentional. But in any case, you know, the the world that you describe is very much defined. The interaction these journalists and in the context in which it happened, how essential was to their work and know how how much of a part of what they were doing. You know, was that community that you describe. So, first of all, i just wanted to say, can everyone hear me in the back . I just wanted to say again, what a huge honor it is to be here. And thank you so much. So the of journalists who are at the heart of last call were friends, became friends, and they were rivals and they were lovers. And eventually some of them fell out and as you say, i you know, i began this book thinking that i was going to write just about one of them or two of them, but then insist gently they kept presenting themselves a group. And you couldnt i almost felt that you couldnt understand. The ways in which the debates about fascism versus communism versus democracy were playing out in the 20 some thirties without having the perspective of real time arguments that were being had between people who, you know, came from much the same sort of place and then found themselves at loggerheads about these things. And so in a way, what i wanted to do was to give you the reader, the sense of what its like to actually be in the middle when people dont know how things going to end up. And your friends are the people with whom youre trying out these. Mm hmm. So, jesselyn, im wondering, you know, i have a kind of method, a logical question for you, which is that you deal with really kind of turmoil and tumult thats in you peoples lives and peoples families and im curious about how you approached your subjects. You identified your subjects and more centrally. How. You one over their confidence so that their willingness to actually talk to you about some fairly difficult things in their lives and then within their families. Oh ill just echo thank you so much for having me. Im really honored to be here and yeah, it, it was actually not as hard to find good characters for this book as i would have thought i had written about this topic for huffpost, where i was formerly a journalist written about children of and unbelievers and what thats like losing a parent to a different reality. And after that story published, i was just inundated emails and stories from other people who had been through the same thing. Maybe it was a sister, maybe it was an aunt, a friend, and these people really wanted to tell their stories. They wanted to be heard. And i think when you have someone who is convinced that Hillary Clinton is eating babies and doing all kinds of stuff like that, its hard to. Talk about that to your friend when they say, how are you doing . Its like, well, not great. You know, my mom is off the deep end. And so they wanted someone they could who understood what they were going through. And they could speak to you about it in a more intimate way. And so i my inbox for a long time was almost a diary for a lot of people. They were sending me like essays of what they were going through and when i was approached to write this book, i had a lot of potential i could reach out to to see if they wanted to tell their stories at length. And it yeah, it was it was almost a hard decision to make who to choose and in the end, i just some of the characters in my book were just people who really didnt want to hold anything back. They wanted to share detail with me and, you know, ive just been so grateful that theyve trusted me. Their stories. Mike, im curious because you and jesselyn are both touching on subject matter that deals with, you know, parts of the social fracture that were dealing with, that were all dealing with. And, you know, we can kind of talk about it in abstract language, like, you know, polarization or asymmetrical polarization, which is what my Political Science refer to it as. But you all are talking the actual human consequences of this. And so im curious about how you saw the sources of these dynamics that you write about. And people said that, you know, social media and so much how much of all social media plays and if there are other dynamics that we have to to be equally cognizant of first. Thank for this great honor. I will mention my editors at nbc news. Do some concerns about the idea that youre going give out a prize for an unfinished rough draft and how that might affect my future work. They can deal with that later. Yeah, thats an excellent question. For me. It was very important in this book to lay a foundation upfront that makes clear why what were seeing now is happening and part of the answer to that question is, you know, heading into 2020, in the years leading up to that, we were seeing a huge increase during the trump years in the number of kids reporting that they were bullied at school, racialized bullying, anti lgbtq bullying, antiimmigrant bullying and these reports were growing in that time. And, you know, to call back to lindas book, a growing understanding of this idea of weathering that this these things dont just suck for kids, it affects their ability to learn in school and has health consequences. And so schools across the country, including in suburbs that used to be majority white or exclusively white, that were in some cases designed for that purpose that have become much more diverse, were leading the charge in some some cases in creating policies to schools more welcoming and inclusive and to crack down on those things. And so by the time we get to 2020 and the aftermath of george floyd and what would become the Critical Race Theory panic, weve years of of schools diversifying and making moves to these real issues. And so the you know the first third of my book is in that space and connecting it to the history Historical Context. What led those spaces to be way the History History of White Supremacy efforts to enforce a very specific worldview in Public Education dating back to the beginning of Public Schools in this country. And so, you know, one of the challenges as a Daily News Reporter is sometimes we get lost in the urgency of now and a lot of the coverage becomes like, oh, theyre panicking at the school board and. I think at nbc. Weve done a good job of this and other news outlets have as well. But i wanted to tell the whole picture so that its not just me. All these parents are really upset at the school board. Something must have changed and its its this big Historical Context by the time you get to people yelling at the board meeting. Mm hmm. You know, its interesting. I mean, that a kind of structural difficulty, the work that we all do, especially now that the pace of things is so fast, you know, that were on this or on that. And theres so many tumultuous things that happened, you know, so many just looking, you know, what happened in atlanta today. Like theres just a kind of ceaseless stream of it that it gets very difficult to kind of pull back and say, hey, what exactly is going on and what are the things that tie these different, interesting and issues together . I mean i mean, i will say that, you know, the more are giving you reporters time and space to step back and do deeper work. Ive been very nbc news this book is built off of nbc allowing me to do that type work to take that step back and and to look big and broad. But yeah, i mean, thats that work doesnt necessarily make as much bang for the buck in terms of clicks advertise like in terms of page views than you just got a mom yelling at a school board meeting. Right. Right. And also, i mean, i think its like a linear connection. That image of the protester with the flag, hes going to stab the africanamerica and man with that kind of spark. Anthony lucas interest in what became Common Ground. So i have a question for all of you, which is slightly unfair for the two people closest to my right because they are still in the midst of this work but i would say thus far along the road. Can you talk about have what has been the most difficult part of your project. We start with, linda. Writing really difficult. You know, so i was told that its easy. But yeah, not true. No, thats not true. Having written is really wonderful. I think. I feel like i wish i had. I when i finished, i kept thinking. I wish i had done one more thing. I wish i could have added. For me, it was reproductive justice. So my book came out june 14th and then the Dobbs Decision happened a month later and then i wish im looking at my editor where nodding to each other. But, you know what had to stop . It was already late. And then i got ask lot of questions about, you know, what does reproductive justice mean for black women and or the lack of it or the end of abortion and what happens in the poorest states to people who have lost their Reproductive Health choices. And i thought oh, i wish i had just had a more robust discussion that in my book. So i think that was the hardest part was just not like feeling so responsible for everything and then not being able to say every single that i wanted to talk about. As far as black health in america. Mm hmm. I think its always for books. Its to foregrounding background problem, which is and im looking at my agent, kathy robbins, and my editor, marie patterson, who suffered through all of this. Um, for me, i the difficulty was figuring out how to balance the geopolitical situation, the work that the journalists were actually doing and then the inner lives and the their relationships to each other and figuring out how to keep those in some kind of dynamic tension. So, again, you as the reader that you could see the dilemmas as they were working themselves out. Mm hmm. For me, i think the most difficult part has been just feeling like im doing these characters stories, justice. Im profiling five families in my book and im trying to tell their stories from the perspective of the cuban on believer or believers in the family and their loved ones and its been a difficult balance at times. Ill have characters tell me things almost like a therapist that they dont want the other person in the book to know. So its kind of just for me and not to make to print. And so theyre theyre trusting me with these very intimate details of their their lives. And i i do find myself when im just trying to reread my work through the perspective, if i can think of it through their eyes, through each person that im writing about and trying to make sure im being im being accurate, im not writing in a way that would upset either side of these families. And its been really difficult to do that. And im hopeful that theyll be happy with how it turns out. I think for me, the biggest challenge, what will hopefully be something that will us in terms of book sales. Its its so urgent and current and happening and evolving. You know, i started reporting on was a panic more panic around Critical Race Theory and diversity education and that has evolved to expand and include anti lgbtq sentiment and now very much entwined with a Christian National resurgence of. Christian nationalism in america. And thats beyond schools. And so for me, the hardest part is landing the plane. My editor is also here and were going to be working on that in you know, in the coming weeks. But figuring out where the story is not going to end, were like kind of launching off into what i think will be the next several years of turmoil in this country around school and, you know, the role of education, imparting kind us versus, you know, certain political perspectives or biblical views. Mm hmm. Yeah. Mm hmm. I will just let you know im familiar with that. Look that both of you and jocelyn keep shooting at your editors. It is the i promise you, im working on it. But. But i will tell you in solidarity David Remnick was here yesterday. And so weve known for, i think, seven weeks that he was going to be here yesterday. And i was like about weeks out scrambling to make sure i had turned in everything owed the new yorker before he showed up. But it was going to be very awkward. So, david, i want to interview a promise you. Im going to send you that article, but i want to follow up, jesselyn, about. Q and and im curious, you know, at this point in your work if you have a perspective on kind of where this came from and what has allowed it to take root so strongly not only in the lives of these families, but just generally as the movement itself. Do you have a sense of that . Yeah, i think one thing ive learned in doing this reporting, i think, is that conspiracy theories are a means to an end for. All parties involved for the people who produce them and disseminate them. Often theres a monetary motivation or a political one, and for the people who consume. Maybe it gives them a sense of community or a sense of purpose, or maybe it makes them feel smart to have knowledge that their friends and family members dont. And so how it got to this kind of boiling point. It feels like were at certainly weve seen it a lot of right wing Media Outlets kind of fanning the flames. Weve seen certain political figures. But i think with the pandemic, many of us experienced and heartache and loneliness and i think for a lot of people, it was just something to hold to, something kind of consistent in a way. And what ive been finding with the families that ive talking to is that its in a way, its not even about the information itself. Its not about the actual Conspiracy Theory. Its about how it makes them feel to believe that, to spout that, to share that, and yeah, and i guess thats what i think. So deb, i wanted to follow up about the idea of objectivity, which is something that is at the center really, i should say, both of the projects that mike and jocelyn are working on are facilitated, you know, to some degree by the distrust that people have for establish media institutions and the kind of alternate realities that people can embrace once theyve dismissed, you know, any kind of voice of authority from, you know, national or local media. I wonder how that relates to how your characters. Saw the world the dire circumstance as they were under the point that we heard not very long ago that journalists in america in 2018 2019 should have a similar kind of distanced perspective on objectivity. And i wonder how you see that. So, i mean, one of the things that the history of journalism shows you is that the objectivity question is really evergreen, that in a sense, the people who the last called journalists were raised the big city newsrooms of the 1920s where objectivity, contre, pulitzer and the world were actually at the heart of what they were supposed to be as they cast themselves out into the world of europe and asia. In the 1930s, though, they find that maintaining both sides ism is impossible and in fact that that itself will do violence to. The truth . Mm hmm. And so thats become something that for them is at the core of what journalism is. Journalism is about is not a collection of facts about how the individual reporter how the journalist actually sees the world and conveying that to the reader. And so in a sense, what theyre dealing with in twenties and thirties is the collapse of the boundary between the world that theyre seeing the world that theyre reporting on and then their own inner lives and reckoning with that which is kind of, i think, the dilemma you all are both getting at as well. You know, its interesting that you you bring up pulitzer in the world because. You know, i take great to point out, you know, whenever the conversation comes up that, you know, joseph pulitzer, who had very much considered him a himself above the fray and world above the fray of the kind of lesser new york publications was drawn into a circulation war. As many people know, drawn into a circulation war with William Randolph hearst that ultimately wound up pushing the country into the spanish american war and pulitzer in the aftermath of that was enormously contrite, and his expression of trying to ensure that that never happened again was to create a Journalism School. And so we are founded upon the highest aspirations of journalism, but also founded on a very sober realization of what happens when journalism goes wrong. And so its both those things. So, linda i want to follow up, you with you. Can you say a little bit more about the concept of weathering and how it applies to the people who you are writing about in this book, weathering is a concept that was created, arlene geronimos, who has a book out about it, came out a couple of weeks ago, and its the idea that when you are an oppressed or marginalized, you spend a lot of time fighting for survival and if youre poor, if you are black in and of itself a person of color, lgbtq. But where arlene is studied at the most is with black people who have been oppressed and marginalized the longest in this country. And so what is its a physical response to all that striving, just get a fair shake. And she i asked her when i was first interviewing her, explain how that would work. So she said someone would Say Something to you, maybe just a slight insult. They move away from you in the elevator because they think youre going to mug, that you are treated badly in a restaurant or youre treated badly by police in housing or at your job. And each time that happens, your body has a physical response, so your heart rate goes up. You feel heat come to your face and your body, you your Blood Pressure goes up and stress hormones flood your system. So that is good in sometimes. But when it happens to you over and over and over again, it creates a kind of, premature aging. And for her, it was showing up in in her work in infant mortality. And what she found out was at the time when she was studying this, it looked like preterm babies, low birth weight babies where they fault of teen girls because, there was this big, you know, conspiracy. I mean, you dont want teen girls to have babies, but it wasnt actually their babies that were dying. It was babies that were from older women who had weathered. And thats how she figured it out. And she got very much attacked because it seems she was supporting teen black teen pregnancy, but it wasnt that. It was just the reality was that it was slightly older women who were having babies born small and early. Hmm. So i have a kind of cliche experience in that, you know, i was at Laguardia Airport last summer and, you know, i was in the queue for taxis. And, you know, i thought that actually the kind of growth of apps meant that the taxi drivers wouldnt behave like this anymore. But line is going, person gets in the taxi person gets in, the taxi, person gets in the taxi and then the person who sees that im the next person, screw reaches off. Now im immune to this because ive it, but i found myself in an in articulate rage. Because i had my two year old twin sons with me and i was saying i could precisely point to the day in time at which they had first experienced explicit racism. And so which is a point, which is knowledge. I did not want to have. But you also to say, like, what do i do with this . Have my sons here. I have to metabolize this in some kind of way and move on. And so, yeah, but thats like weathering and sustaining that term, i think. So i want to say we have a little bit of time for questions from the audience, which well get to in a second. Im aware we have robert and tolu with us. I wonder if theres anything about, this conversation that resonates with you, anything that you want to weigh in with. Theres a microphone here. You know about the journey with your project or how the book has been received and so on. Tell it to me. Yeah, yeah. I think its on are are we on . Hello. Hi. Im robert. This is tolu. Tell who gave me the microphone and i think there are a few things that really resonate terms of our work. Linda and i have been on panels before. Our work concentrates on looking at the life of george floyd and how systemic racism shaped his life, including the fact that dealing with his personal and being misunderstood was such a long time on his life appeared to present itself to in him physically. You saw things like heart, early heart disease, high Blood Pressure, bad knees, bad back that not only affected the way he felt about himself, but were a part of the reasons he started to use opioids, which led to another problem. And i think sort of making those connections, i think that throughline and all of these other books and what we did is trying to make these sort of very ethereal sometimes ideas seem real and through the life of george floyd is how we did it. Also understanding and erecting ties, saying that it was important that even though till the end, i come from a newspaper background that we take a perspective and we dont try to equivocate about what we learned, how racism operates in this country. And we think in the presentation of it, facts coupled with research and narrative helped to propel the narrative to be what it was and just add to to to to say that we wrote the story of George Floyds life as an american story. We wanted it to be a story that tells us about, america tells us about a part of america that we dont always get to see and, you know, reporters dont always go to houston third ward or to the cotton fields and tobacco fields of north carolina, where George Floyds ancestor worked to. See how an American Family traversed the trauma, racism over the course of various generations. And i think a lot of what weve heard this evening intersects with what we found with George Floyds life. We went to his schools, we talked to his teachers. We saw how the battle over desegregation took place in houston and how much backlash there to the point that even as judges said that houston needed to desegregate and needed to, you know, put white teachers into black schools and bused students from from their homes into other schools there was so much of a backlash that students and parents took their kids out of school as opposed rather than having their students learn alongside black children. And so george floyd ended up going to segregated schools all of his life. Underfunded schools. And he was deprived of the opportunity to have an equal education. And we saw how that played out in his life over the course of his life. We also saw, as robert, how the Health Care System was prejudiced against people like george and how he experienced life as a plague, as a big black man. And how all of the challenges and stereotypes that were put upon him made it difficult for him to get the benefit of the doubt and for him to be able to live his truth. As someone who who would go around saying, i love you to everyone, because he saw himself as a loving, kind person, but people saw him as an anti intimidate eating force. And how difficult it was for him to move through the world and so theres a lot of resonance in what weve heard this evening that touches on what we found when we were writing George Floyds story. And its why we wanted to write his story as an american story, because it touches on so many parts of our institutions and so many different pieces of who we are as a country. But its rare that we get to see that from George Floyds perspective or from the perspective of someone like george floyd. And so we were honored by the opportunity to able to tell his story of a practical question for you, which is that in i had a really good friend, great friends interested in the same books, hung out in the same crowd. And then we lived together for a summer. So did you two get along together better . Better before you did the book together or after you did the book together . I think we should both answer this question. Its like the newly, newly liberated games of. So ive known robert about 15 years. Weve kind of moved around journalism circles together and we worked at the post together, but we actually had never really worked on any Major Projects together over the course of that. So this was the first time we had an opportunity to do that and. You know, we were writing during the pandemic and because of our tough deadline we kind of needed to be in different places for most of the reporting. And so maybe that had something to do with it. We didnt live together. We werent physically together for most of the but we spent a lot of time on with a lot of time on text change and on phone calls. And we found that we got closer as we were writing the story. You know, we have unique experience being black men in journalism, being able to tell this story. Its incredibly unique experience. And we we knew that we brought something to the table that was rare and i think we were able to connect on a deeper level because of that. And i think that helped to smooth over some of the few times where we had disagreements where easily i was right. But we were able to work through work through those few disagreements and for the most part was really an honor to be able to go through this journey together and talk some of these issues. We spent a lot of time just talking and really talking about things that, you know, we dont often get a chance to talk about on a very deep, honest level in newsrooms where. You know, sometimes were the only one who has that experience or or who has that context. And so it was refreshing to be able to talk through some of these that we ended up writing about. And we found it very enjoyable, even though writing, as linda said, is very difficult, its much nicer to have written. But it was helpful to be able to have someone to go through the journey alongside us some vaguely the couple that says communication key. So we time for a few questions from panel. Anyone who has seen ive done before knows what comes next. I will say this it doesnt apply to you. It applies to the person next to you. A question is an interrogative sentence generally noted by the inflection. At the end of it, as contrasted a statement which offers information a question requests information. We would like questions and we will. Moreover, we would like questions that phrased as succinctly as possible so we can get to as many of them as possible. With that disclaimer, theres a microphone here. Yeah, theres a microphone where abby is. Hi, everyone. Congratulations to all of you. I am a fan of all of your work. My name is wright. I work here. Shout out to my boss, jelani. To a two part question, but its going to be brief everyone. Please share a protip something youve learned about your craft that would be helpful to someone else trying to write a book right now, like a hack or a tip and jocelyn, after all your research this sounds like a joke question. I kind of wonder after all the stories that youve heard who is q. Two parter thank you. Is q in this room thats the end of my book . Well, there theres a strong belief that. Q is a number of people, but primarily a man who was living in the philippines who was running. Eight unit h in for a while and actually had child pornography on that site. So a little bit of an irony there for someone running an anti organization, but i guess its the jurys still on that one. We dont know for certain. And my protip. I think waking up early is a good one. I have a ten month old son, so that has been kind of part of my routine lately. Getting up at the crack of dawn and feeding him and then sitting down to write has been actually really helpful in getting this book. I think my protip is taking breaks and what that was really i get up really early to maybe not as early as you and then write and write and think and report and then take a break and then go back to it. And then im everybody in my life knows im not an evening person so by 630 im completely done so you could be talking me about i dont care talk to me again tomorrow morning and so im disciplined about taking care of myself. I mean, i feel like people who wrote a book, who have written a book should go ahead first. I will happily go. So minus sexually historian point which is i try to figure out how i can know as much as i can about the world so that i can close my eyes and just imagine that. And that makes a huge to me. Like what perfume were they wearing, you know . And then i kind of try to figure it out. I guess my tip would be for journalists at daily News Organization to want to write a book. I mean for me, you know, having a job where i was allowed to just become obsessive. And so but that thing that you, you know, when youre on a good story, i guess and you know that its more than just a11 off and youre going to pivot to the next thing be, you know or argue with your know your bosses to keep going because there might be more. And thats kind of how this i mean, this book was like a news article or a singular news article that we published in 2021 that we were like, well, there might there might be more here. And i kind of it like create a project off of it that should mention that i coreported with nbc news correspondent Antonia Hilton who is like, you know, her name is not on the book, but she has, you know, contributed quite a bit and wouldnt be possible without our partnership but. We did that project and then and then we kept going and weve kept going and kept going. Looking at my editors. But the story. Wasnt a one off and we saw something bigger and we kept pushing. And ive, you know, specializing in that. And thats whats me the rope i guess to. And to piece this all together a bigger contextual way way, i am andrea bernstein. Im a big fan of everybody on this, much. My question is for mike. Jeff, can you please and this is an issue that ive also really grappled with. How are you deciding to end your book in a story just will not end. Up . I can we talk in about one month . We can discuss that really i think yeah the storys not ending but i think we can see where its going. And so i think its okay by the time this book comes in a year, fingers crossed. And lord willing, you know, i think that we will be watching ron desantis and donald trump battling each other to determine who is the greatest School Culture warrior, whos going to be implementing the most regressive policies against transgender children in, Public Schools. And so we know that just we can see that its coming. And so i think i think. Not trying to predict the future with the but to try to land it in a way that gives you a sense of, you know, how this has shaped and changed the lives of real people who are in my book at the core of this talking about like the real impact of these big political. And so hopefully itll itll resonate whatever is. Yeah ive been just trying to follow the stories of my characters here in this book. The families and it has been tempting to try to end this book. A positive note obviously this problem is going to go on for a long, long time and theres not much positive to say about it now. But im trying to end it in a really honest way. It its not with a nice little bow at the end. Its not rainbows and smiles. Its one of the character who i begin the book with. We kind of have a full circle moment and it just feels like a good place to put the rest of it. Hi, im karen marcus. Im a professor, the English Department here at columbia and am curious what all of you see as the advantages and limitations the book form is typically because were at a Journalism School where things are usually shorter, you know, typical form of journalism is short and in every sense of the word, short term, short form, i, i mean, i think i hit on this earlier, you know, with a daily news article. You cant tell the whole story. You just cant told the big picture, Historical Context. You can do you can do that in some longer features. The other thing thats interesting for me is this is a book that was derived, a podcast initially and so its audio to print. And i mean. Its been a challenge actually to go from. We were just discussing this one with one of the judges earlier, the idea that like with an audio story, you dont have to describe the tone in the room because you just hear it on the tape. And so finding ways of doing that in print and writing is is to me much harder. So you have to challenge. I think ill just say the positive actually of the book form. Thats my native form. But theres an elasticity about what a book can be and theres a pleasure in that too. So i remember thinking, how am i going to end this book . And i decided to end it with a moment when the surviving journalist of this is has a creative is coming. And he really is a reluctant subject. He does not want to talk about his friends. He think no, no one can possibly understand it what they have all seen gone through and then i realized, well, i was just cutting out 40 years of their lives to jump right that moment. And that is something you can just do in a book because because of that sort of accordion like nature. So i write really long Magazine Articles and what i was finding before i mean before i started writing the book was were calling or emailing and saying, do you mind if i xerox your Magazine Article on maternal and infant mortality or hiv aids or whatever it was, and. Oh, and also, do you mind if i xerox of them and put them together . Because and then im thinking, wait, if people are desperately feeling bad, is this copyright issue . I was like, no, no, no, you can do as much as you want. Then i realized people, want this more comprehensive going using history, using, you know, sort of like whats happening in the present, what happened in the past, whos to blame . How did this happen in and of, you know, in a big, broad and deep way . And i thought, oh, thats what i need to do. Im the one who should be doing this, because people there is a demand for it, especially early for me and from medical and people in health and health care, i would say i was really excited to write a book because as a journalist, when i would write articles, i would always turn in my first draft to my editors and they would just say, cut in half. This is way too long. And so i was excited to have a really long form project and up kind of running into the same issue chapters were supposed to be 5000 words ended up being 8000. So ive still been having to shave down a lot of my writing because i just get so excited when i get into some of these topics that i can go so deep. But i have really loved that you can really get into complexities of your characters of the people, of the Little Details about them. Its been so nice to be able to have the space and the freedom to do that. I was just talking with some editors earlier today about the the challenge of writing for News Organizations. Sometimes that going through the standards and legal process, sometimes the writing has to be so technical, so careful, perfectly attributed, and it kind of takes the the flair out of it. So while i was working at nbc and trying to write this book, i was kind of getting pulled in different directions. My editors, my book editor, kevin, would always tell me to kind of loosen up a little more personality in your writing. And then at nbc, it was, you know, be a little more cautious with how you say that. So its been nice to have a little more freedom with the book. And you get the last question of the night. Oh, boy, im honored. Okay. So sadly, probably a very complex question but so in identifying my name is Cindy Bollinger by the way so in identifying solutions or Novel Solutions at a foundational level, im wondering there any Common Threads identifiable both in the reporting purporting that might emerge . So weve got all these problems identified. Are there in your might you have encountered any Novel Solutions that be present a commonality among your investigations. I have whats going to sound like a flippant answer, but it really isnt one of them is drink more old right thats what the reporters in my book would say. But then they would also Say Something else, which is the war for Public Opinion is lost and it matters to keep on fighting for that and that even when you think its slipping away, it turns around quite quickly in unpredictable fashion. I think part my reporting was seeing what people were doing wrong and, looking at it, saying, oh, this solution and is not the right one and four in black Health Outcomes it was all black people are poor if we just lift that both, itll end. That wasnt true and then it was. If theres just everyone has access to health care, then black Health Outcomes will improve. And that wasnt true. And that didnt work and it hadnt work. But people were, you know people who made decisions paid, gave money, gave funding, where using that those false. So what i tried to do was there are actually Simpler Solutions to some of these problems and some of them are people centric, some of them arent even that expensive. They are used in much poorer countries than ours to great success. The other thing that i love talking about solutions and one of them was encourage medical students because many medical were politicized in high school and in undergraduate college. And so now theyre much political than previous, much more interested in social justice and being different kinds of doctors. So i found that really exciting and was something i really tried to lift up. And as ive going, you know, to talk about the book in medical schools, its been thrilling to see how happy they are to have the book, to talk about the issues and to be able to even push back against own faculty and and administration. I mean, the problem the problems at the center of our books is like the the fracturing. Thats the main problem in our country today. So the solution i dont know. I think the solution is extremely simple, but unlikely. You know, the more people communicate real people with their neighbors, then the less that they believe, you know, scary political mailers that show up at their house. Theyll theyll be more likely make informed decisions about whats actually in their schools. But i dont think by my book, i dont know that presents a solution. It it it reveals problem and its its connected to much bigger issues than these local communities. So its hard to say what the fix is. Yeah, i agree you i dont have the solution to keep it on. I would say that spoiler. I think its its tough in journalism. You were talking about this earlier, mike, but just trying get past the noise, get past the of the day. You know theres been a lot of reporting about conspiracy theories about, you know, the people who believe they must be crazy or they must be horrible or mentally ill. And i think kind of taking the time to really look at like what are the unmet human needs here . Why why do conspiracy theories appeal to this person . What what are they fulfilling for them . What is the reason that theyre latching on these so strongly and kind of looking at a more societal level . Some of the the that have made people vulnerable. This, you know, sometimes they are just and sometimes they are just wanting to be sensational. But sometimes theres something much deeper going on. And thats what i found. And really getting to know the people ive been reporting on for book. And so are normal way of reporting when we are trying to meet deadlines and are trying to keep up with the news cycle, doesnt give us the flexibility to really dive into what is going on here and why is this spreading as rapidly as it is. And so i think just maybe slowing down and to better understand the root of the problem, not a solution, but at least a step in the right direction. I will propose one solution, not a panelist, but i think as a final word here in 2016, 2017, i four completely separate had been engaging with and interacting a number of International Conflict resolution specialists and these were people who in rwanda in south africa apartheid in north and Northern Ireland in the midst of the troubles and kind of an array of places where there had been you know serious societal fracture and conflict and what came up in midst of distinct conversations was their discomfort with how many of the dynamics that they saw in these places that were emerging in the United States. And so, like anyone else, the first impulse was to ask then what we do and after person said, it begins with the willingness talk and they said, this sounds very oversimplified, but we have managed conversations between families and people who have killed their family members, people who have done all manner of horrible things and maybe found ways to, facilitate dialog, which didnt mean that there was total forgiveness, but it meant that there was starting place. And so in regard as people who craft narratives as, people who give voice, people who may not other have otherwise have a voice that very many people can hear. And as journalists, writers, as people who communicate in one way, shape or form, a work could never been more important than it is at this moment. So thank you. Congratulations to all of you. Thank as many of you know, david boaz, ive been here a long time. I want to remind you that well be taking