The Kids of Rutherford County honored with national George Polk Award

One of Nashville Public Radio’s ambitious podcast projects is being honored with one of the nation’s most prestigious journalism awards.

Meribah Knight with WPLN, Ken Armstrong of ProPublica and Daniel Guillemette of Serial Productions and The New York Times have won the George Polk Award for the four-part podcast “The Kids of Rutherford County.”

The show chronicles the approach to juvenile discipline by a judge in Rutherford County. For more than a decade, the judge ordered and oversaw a system in which hundreds of children were arrested and detained in violation of state law. Faced with widespread backlash following the reporting, the judge announced her retirement.

The awards are given by Long Island University and are marking their 75th anniversary. They commemorate George Polk, a CBS correspondent who was murdered in 1948 while covering the Greek civil war, and put a premium on investigative and enterprising journalism. Nearly 500 submissions were received this year.

“The Kids of Rutherford County” has also been named as a finalist in the podcast category for the National Magazine Awards, presented by the American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME) in association with the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. Winners will be announced on April 2. The investigation that underlies the podcast was previously honored as a finalist in the National Magazine Awards in 2022.