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.
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Polk Award Winners: Jesse Coburn

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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)


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Episode 579: Kelsey McKinney

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)


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Episode 578: Lissa Soep

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)


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Episode 577: PJ Vogt

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)


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Episode 576: Lindsay Peoples

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.
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Polk Award Winners: Jesse Coburn

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