Edward R. Murrow Award

Welcome to KRQE's New Mexico News Insiders.

2025 Regional Edward R. Murrow Award winner for Best Podcast.

Here's Gabrielle Burkhart and Chris McKee.

Gabby, I don't know about you.

I wish I could tell you exactly what goes on inside the bowels of my brain as the clock strikes 2:22 AM and I stare at the ceiling saying, "Time to think about word of the day," and the opening subject of which we will speak, which is the episode of Pablo Torre Finds Out that we recorded and released yesterday about Steve Ballmer, the Department of Justice, the possible criminal probe that could result in possibly, maybe prison.

If you have not watched Pablo Torre Finds Out, which is a Meadowlark Media-owned show that is licensed by The New York Times Athletic, if you're not aware of the Pulitzer Prize-winning, Edward R. Murrow Award-winning shows that we have done starting last September 3rd of 2025, then I can't help you.

However, if you'd like to know what's happening today, I have a bit of an update.

The update is that I wanna take you inside the making of a show like what was released yesterday, where Pablo and Amin and myself, we are together, whether remotely or in studio.

But the reason I'm very excited is because this right now, I'm just learning right now, uh, the achievement that Meadowlark Media has made that I believe to be, uh, bigger and better than even winning a Pulitzer Prize, okay?

Edward R. Murrow Award?

I- no, bigger than that.

Oh.

Uh, I, I, uh, I like to laugh about the idea that that reporting won an Edward R. Murrow Award and a Pulitzer, but not a Sports Emmy.

I like, uh, I like to, uh, laugh about the idea-

I, I was just-

Beca- and in the name of people who are in sports don't know how to make content.

No. [laughs] I think they do a lot of good work.

I even heard they're up for a couple Edward R. Murrow Awards.

Yeah.

And I hope that they fucking get them.

you know, what has happened, because for so much of the time, you are gathering information, you're putting information on the air, you're trying to figure things out, and you don't have an emotional attachment to it, and that came days later, and that was tough, especially for those of us in the area who, when we got home, began to learn of the people that we knew that were directly impacted by this.

Well, this newscast that you produced and Doug anchored won Edward R. Murrow Award for Best Newscast.

And it really does, to my mind, stand up there with so many other broadcasts in history as being sort of a crystallization of a terrible moment that was effectively communicated to the audience.

Absolutely.

fixture on National Network News and on every corner of the world.

Two Emmys, the Peabody Award, the Murrow Award.

He's on our radio stage right now, our AT&T line, with his new book, Souvenirs for an Absurd Life.

Welcome.

When I'm thinking about how to deal with this next topic, there was some confusion in my brain.

Because I'm so intimately involved with the Steve Ballmer Aspiration story, because there could be audience fatigue, because there could be the possibility that you all are thinking, "Is he gonna take a victory lap because he has a Pulitzer Prize or an Edward R. Murrow Award?" Or because he got it right and they got it right, and Pablo and Amin and all of the myriad staff members who worked on the Aspiration episodes have gotten it right, does that mean that I should, even more than we have, be public about doing our work? The reason I'm not taking a victory lap, and I don't agree to take a victory lap, and the reason why when I'm sitting with Dan and doing Dan's show, and Dan Lebatard talks about and gets aggregated for something that he didn't exactly say on our show on Tuesday, talking about how nobody in mainstream media was paying much attention to what we were doing at Pablatory Finds Out.

That's not where my head is, actually.

When I have a job to do, I do the show today with the same anxiety, with the same responsibility, when there were one person, my mom, watching the show day one.