“When you're starting out, you feel a sort of invincibility and there is an arrogance that comes with with real youth and inexperience…The more really dangerous situations I have been in, the more cognizant I am of the fact that life is very precious and that death is not something to be trifled with.” — CNN’s Clarissa Ward

Clarissa Ward’s reporting from global hotspots – Afghanistan, Syria, and Yemen among many others – has won her two duPont-Columbia silver batons. She joined duPont Awards Director, Lisa R. Cohen for a very personal conversation about covering crises, COVID related reporting challenges, and career tips for young journalists.

“When we were in the back of a van crossing Hungary to Vienna, the driver was drunk and all the smugglers had AK-47s... and I remember my cousin looking at me like, I hope you're not filming. But I was secretly holding the camera.”

Exodus’ subject Hassan Akkad on filming himself, and Director James Bluemel on collecting these important stories.

"I had the Portuguese television station on one side, and my mother on another phone crying and begging me not to leave the house. And I had to tell her 'Mom, this is my life.'"

"'If we know we could die, why do we keep doing it?' I didn't have an answer for it myself so I looked to other people to try to answer it."

“It was sort of curiosity trumping fear. I think, for me, curiosity trumps fear a lot of the time.”

“We all understand just how easily history is forgotten. And this history is being actively destroyed.” 

–Podcast Host Connie Walker

“Stolen: Surviving St. Michael’s” is a 2023 duPont-winning series that uncovers the horrific abuse many young indigenous children–including the reporter’s own family–faced at a Canadian residential school.

Host and investigative journalist Connie Walker talks about the ethics of making public long buried stories of sexual abuse, highlighting indigenous voices and her own personal stake in this impactful podcast.

“They had told the story of how Tamika died, but not how she lived.”

—Podcast Producer Erika Alexander

“Finding Tamika” is the 2023 duPont-winning Audible series about Tamika Huston, a Black woman who went missing in 2004. The media paid scant attention, and she became a rallying cry for missing Black women and girls. But who was she outside of this tragedy? 

Podcast producer Erika Alexander tells us why finding the real Tamika behind the crime statistic is so important, and how journalists need to do a better job of telling these stories. 

“There were literally holes in the newspaper...that related to what happened during the Tulsa Race Massacre. That just stuck with me. I remember thinking, I have to go look into this and see if that is reality.”

--- WNYC host and reporter KalaLea, “Blindspot: Tulsa Burning”

WNYC’s KalaLea talks about how her 2022 duPont Award-winning podcast series immerses listeners in the past, while threading the impact of generational trauma through to the present.

"When I first went down to South Carolina, I thought I knew what to expect. But I wasn’t prepared for it. Not at all."

“You can't divide the self into good parts and bad parts, good guys and bad guys... That's fiction."

"How is it that smart, discerning people fall into a belief system like this and get lost in it? And how do they get out?"