The series, hosted by Sukey Lewis, won a 2024 IRE Award for Best Longform Journalism in Audio.
The Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) Awards recognize the best of the best of watchdog journalism from around the world, representing the gold standard of investigative reporting. This year, the prestigious organization has selected KQED’s On Our Watch: New Folsom as the Best Longform Journalism in Audio. The series was created by the reporting and production team of Sukey Lewis, Julie Small, Victoria Mauleón, Steven Rascón and Chris Egusa, with sound designer Tarek Fouda and executive producer Jen Chien.
On Our Watch: New Folsom is an eight-episode investigation into the culture of abuse, silence, and retaliation at California State Prison, Sacramento (colloquially known as New Folsom). It was sparked by KQED’s exclusive data analysis which found that New Folsom officers were using serious force at a rate three times higher than any other prison in the state. The podcast traces the footsteps of two correctional officers who tragically died after reporting misconduct by their fellow officers. In the process, On Our Watch: New Folsom exposes systemic issues in the California prison system.
“This is a story about what it takes to speak up and speak out — we dedicate it to the whistleblowers” says Sukey Lewis, host of On Our Watch, “We’re proud and deeply honored to receive this recognition of our work.”
On Our Watch’s journalists spent more than two years sifting through case files, dissecting audio visual records, and building relationships with current and former correctional officers and incarcerated men. The collaborative team included fact checker Mark Betancourt; editorial consultants Rahsaan Thomas of Ear Hustle, Sandhya Dirks of NPR and KQED’s April Dembosky; and graduate students and faculty from UC Berkeley Journalism and Statistics programs.