New Pulitzer podcast takes listeners behind the scenes of AL.com Brookside coverage

Brookside

The town of Brookside, Alabama holds municipal court once a month. The courtroom and the parking lot are packed with people. Police must direct traffic before the 1 p.m. court session starts. (Joe Songer for AL.com).Joe Songer

A new podcast from The Pulitzer Prizes kicks off by spotlighting AL.com’s 2023 Pulitzer-winning investigation into predatory policing in Brookside, Ala.

In the inaugural episode of “Pulitzer on the Road,” listeners will hear from AL.com reporters John Archibald and Ashley Remkus about their coverage which led to four new state laws, the resignation of the Brookside police chief, and relief for Alabamians pulled over and fined hundreds and thousands of dollars. They’re joined in the episode, “Small Town Shakedown,” by Pulitzer Board Co-Chair Neil Brown, president of the Poynter Institute.

“Pulitzer on the Road is an effort to offer audiences insights into how these works are produced and what makes them prize-worthy,” Pulitzer Prize Administrator Marjorie Miller said in a release. “We want to show how journalism and the arts play important roles in democracy.”

Future episodes include conversations with authors Barbara Kingsolver and Hernan Diaz about their novels which won the prize for fiction; a discussion with Caitlan Dickerson about her coverage of the Trump Administration’s migrant separation policy; and Mstyslav Chernov about the Associated Press coverage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and siege of Mauripol.

The six-episode series will be released weekly and is produced and hosted by Pulitzer Board member Nicole Carroll, a professor at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism.

Archibald and Remkus are each two-time Pulitzer Prize winners. The AL.com team, which also included Challen Stephens and Ramsey Archibald, won the 2023 Local Reporting Prize. John Archibald also won the prize for commentary in 2018. Stephens and Remkus were part of a team that won the prize for national reporting in 2021 for reporting on police K9s. Remkus was also nominated for a national Emmy Award for her contributions to the PBS NewsHour series “Searching for Justice.” Archibald also wrote and co-hosted the podcast, “Unjustifiable,” which won a National Murrow Award for best podcast in 2021.

“Pulitzer on the Road,” can be found at Pulitzer.org and all major podcast platforms.

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