Skip to main content
The 2023 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in Audio Reporting

Finalist: Kate Wells, Sarah Hulett, Lindsey Smith, Laura Weber-Davis and Paulette Parker of Michigan Radio

For a visceral documentary recorded behind the closed doors of an abortion clinic, allowing listeners to hear conversations between practitioners and patients, and the controversial procedure itself.

Nominated Work

Biography

Kate Wells is a Peabody Award-winning journalist currently covering public health and the COVID-19 pandemic. She is also the co-host of the Michigan Radio and NPR podcast Believed. The series was widely ranked among the best of the year, drawing millions of downloads and numerous awards. She and co-host Lindsey Smith received the prestigious Livingston Award for Young Journalists.

Sarah Hulett is Michigan Radio’s Director of Enterprise & Longform, helping reporters to do their best work.

She’s also worked as senior editor, newscast editor, and spent five years as the station’s Detroit reporter, contributing to several reporting projects that won state and national awards.

Before coming to Michigan Radio, Sarah spent five years as state Capitol correspondent for Michigan Public Radio. She’s a graduate of Michigan State University.

Lindsey Smith helps lead the station's Enterprise Team. She previously served as Michigan Radio’s Morning News Editor, Investigative Reporter and West Michigan Reporter.

Lindsey’s work has been repeatedly recognized by the Michigan Association of Broadcasters and Michigan Associated Press. She co-wrote and co-hosted the 2018 Peabody award winning podcast, Believed, about how former gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar got away with sexual abuse for decades.

Her 2015 documentary about the Flint water crisis, Not Safe to Drink, won the station a national Edward R. Murrow Award, an Alfred I. duPont – Columbia University Award, and a Third Coast/Richard H. Driehaus Award. The Detroit chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists named her “Young Journalist of the Year” in 2014 and “Journalist of the Year” in 2018.

She’s a graduate of Eastern Michigan University and Specs Howard School of Media Arts.

Laura Weber-Davis is Executive Producer of Stateside. She came to Michigan Radio from WDET in Detroit, where she was senior producer on the current events program, Detroit Today.

She began her career in public radio as a Michigan Radio intern before taking a job as a Capitol-beat reporter for the Michigan Public Radio Network.

Laura was born and raised in Ann Arbor, and has had a lifelong love affair with Detroit and Michigan more broadly. She is a graduate of Michigan State University (Go Green!) and she received a Master’s degree in Journalism from the University of Southern California.

Laura is an audiophile with a public radio habit, a dusty-record music head with a crate-digger’s heart, a toddler wrangler, a beach goer, a Jane Austen lover, a horseback rider, a dog walker, and an active listener who loves to hear and tell a good story.

Whatever she is doing at this very moment, she’d rather be listening to show tunes.

Paulette Parker is a digital media reporter and producer for Michigan Radio. She started as a newsroom intern at the station in 2014 and has taken on various roles in that time, including filling in as an on-air host.

Before working at Michigan Radio, she was the news editor of The Washtenaw Voice at Washtenaw Community College. She has an associate degree in journalism from WCC.

When she isn’t producing content for Michigan Radio listeners, she enjoys writing and spending time with her two young daughters.

Winners

Prize Winner in Audio Reporting in 2023:

Staff of Gimlet Media, notably Connie Walker

Whose investigation into her father’s troubled past revealed a larger story of abuse of hundreds of Indigenous children at an Indian residential school in Canada, including other members of Walker’s extended family, a personal search for answers expertly blended with rigorous investigative reporting. Audio Reporting

Finalists

Nominated as finalists in Audio Reporting in 2023:

Jenn Abelson, Nicole Dungca, Reena Flores, Sabby Robinson and Linah Mohammad of The Washington Post

For “Broken Doors,” a powerful examination of the human toll of no-knock warrants across the country, using the voices of police, judges and the victims of the surprise raids, reporting that led to policy changes and, in one case, to prosecutors dropping a death penalty request.

The Jury

Antonia Hylton(Chair)

Correspondent, NBC News

Deborah Amos

Senior Vice President, National Public Radio

Andrew Bowers

Chief Creative Officer/Co-Founder, Spooler Media, Santa Barbara, Calif.

Renita Jablonski

Director, Audio, The Washington Post

Sitara Nieves

Vice President, Teaching & Organizational Strategy, Poynter Institute

Hanna Rosin

Editorial Director, Audio, New York magazine

Christina M. Tapper

Executive Producer, Spotify, Los Angeles, Calif.

Winners in Audio Reporting

See All Audio Reporting

2023 Prize Winners

Commentary

Kyle Whitmire of AL.com, Birmingham

For measured and persuasive columns that document how Alabama's Confederate heritage still colors the present with racism and exclusion, told through tours of its first capital, its mansions and monuments–and through the history that has been omitted.
Investigative Reporting

Staff of The Wall Street Journal

For sharp accountability reporting on financial conflicts of interest among officials at 50 federal agencies, revealing those who bought and sold stocks they regulated and other ethical violations by individuals charged with safeguarding the public’s interest.
See All 2023 Winners