In the wake of the presidential election, the dynamics at the Tennessee State Capitol captured in the “Supermajority” podcast have taken on new meaning. “I don’t know where I belong,” says Melissa Alexander, “and I think a lot of America, maybe, feels the same way.”
Meribah Knight, Senior Reporter/Producer of Special Projects
Meribah Knight is a senior reporter and producer at Nashville Public Radio. She’s the host and creator of the Peabody Award-winning podcast, The Promise as well as Serial’s recent podcast The Kids of Rutherford County.
Her reporting on race and inequality in public schools prompted a wholesale shift in enrollment and attitudes toward school choice in one Nashville neighborhood. And her reporting on the juvenile justice system in Rutherford County, Tenn., led to the retirement of its juvenile judge and new oversight of its juvenile detention center.
Knight has received numerous national awards for her reporting, including the George Foster Peabody Award and the George Polk Award. Knight was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, the Goldsmith Award, and twice a finalist for a National Magazine Award. Knight received her master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University.
Trump supporters in Tennessee ‘tickled’ over decisive victory
Jerry Reynolds had been feeling under the weather. The flu, maybe COVID. He wasn’t quite sure. But when Donald Trump won, it was just what his body needed. “It was kind of like a shot of medicine in the arm,” he said.
Emotional first-time voters — one age 18, the other 65 — cast ballots in Hermitage
Arian Mireles, 18, bounced out of the Hermitage Library with a smile on his face after voting for the first time. “I am really hoping I can make a change in America,” he said. The Lipscomb University student initially struggled to decide who would get his first vote. “I had to talk to my parents […]
Podcast bonus: 11 children are arrested and Murfreesboro’s new police chief asks ‘What did I step into?’
Less than two weeks after he started, while he was still furnishing his office and learning people’s names, officers from his department arrested 11 Black school children for not stepping in to stop a fight.
Podcast Bonus: Treated ‘like I’m a dog,’ says one man jailed as a child by Rutherford County
Quinterrius Frazier was 15 years old when he was arrested for aggravated robbery and held in the Rutherford County Juvenile Detention Center. When staff said he was being disruptive — flashing gang signs and rapping, they claimed — he was placed in solitary confinement.
The Kids of Rutherford County: A reporter’s essay
The three years I spent working on “The Kids of Rutherford County” podcast taught me one thing: Tennessee’s punitive policies aren’t leaving children in the legal system better off.
Hear the trailer: ‘The Kids of Rutherford County,’ a new podcast series from Serial, ProPublica and WPLN News
In partnership with Serial Productions and The New York Times, “The Kids of Rutherford County” is a four-part narrative series reported and hosted by WPLN’s Meribah Knight.
‘Nibble at the edges’: One Republican lawmaker contemplates his role as special session kicks off
When Republican state Sen. Richard Briggs, R-Knoxville, first read Gov. Bill Lee’s extreme risk protection order he thought: This seems reasonable.
Rutherford County is back in court over juvenile arrests, now fighting insurer to cover its payouts
Rutherford County is suing its insurance provider for refusing to cover its settlement in a large class action lawsuit over its unlawful policies for arresting and detaining children.
Rutherford County detention center that illegally jailed kids will now answer to an oversight board
A juvenile detention center in Rutherford County, Tennessee, that for years illegally jailed children will now be overseen by a five-member board rather than the county’s juvenile court judge, a change designed to bring greater accountability to a long-troubled system.
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