Pulitzer Prize-winning podcast ‘Suave’ returns for a second season
For this item, I turn it over to my Poynter colleague, Amaris Castillo.
On Oct. 20, 2022, David Luis “Suave” Gonzalez found himself in a room full of journalists at Columbia University. It was a momentous day — the Pulitzer Prize awards ceremony. Gonzalez was there with award-winning journalist Maria Hinojosa, producer Maggie Freleng and others to celebrate winning a Pulitzer Prize for Audio Reporting.
In 1988, Gonzalez was found guilty of first-degree homicide in Pennsylvania. He was a juvenile and sentenced to life in prison without parole. “Suave,” the seven-part series co-hosted by Hinojosa and Freleng, focused on the criminal justice system through Gonzalez’s story. In the official announcement, Marjorie Miller — the administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes — called the podcast “a brutally honest and immersive profile of a man reentering society after serving more than 30 years in prison.”
On the day of the awards ceremony, everyone dressed their best. Gonzalez wore a black suit and a bold red tie. He said everything seemed right on the outside when Futuro Media and PRX won the Pulitzer.
“But nobody ever asked me, am I hurting? Am I sleeping? Am I eating? Am I dealing with the trauma? Am I adjusting well?” Gonzalez recalled in a recent call with Poynter. “Nobody ever asked no questions, because everybody always assumed that, ‘Oh, he’s doing great. He won the highest award in journalism.’ Well, the reality is that, even when they announced the Pulitzer, I was going through real traumatic events in my life — which was trying to adjust into a community, trying to fit in into normal life out here.”
The struggles of life after incarceration form the crux of the podcast’s new season, premiering April 7 — the same day Futuro Media launches Futuro+, a new subscription program offering new podcasts with ad-free listening, extended interviews and more. Listeners who sign up to be Futuro+ members get early access to “Suave: Season 2.”
This new seven-part season will be available to all on April 15, one episode per week, wherever people get their podcasts. It will dive into the long shadow of prison and the trauma that continues to trail Gonzalez. While in prison, he lost family members, including his own mother. He was unable to attend the funeral.
“I never dealt with the trauma of incarceration. So I come home and I’m trying to live this normal life, but I’m still locked up mentally. I’m still incarcerated,” he said. “I’m still functioning as if I’m still in prison. Can’t be in a relationship, because every relationship reminds me of my cellmates. ‘If we disagree, you got to move.’ That’s not the way it is out here.”
Like the first season, “Suave: Season 2” also covers the source/journalist relationship-turned-friendship between Gonzalez and Hinojosa. They met in 1993 at the Graterford State Correctional Institution in Pennsylvania while Hinojosa was working on a story.
Gonzalez has since written a book, “From Prison to The Pulitzer Prize,” the proceeds of which he said he’s donating to a community organization in Philadelphia that helps people deal with trauma after incarceration. Even with therapy and the help he’s received after being released from prison, Gonzalez doesn’t believe he will ever be fully a part of society because he’s lost out on so much.
“I just got to learn how to live with it, learn how to deal with it, and learn to understand that, you know, I spent 31 years in prison. I’m home now,” he said. “And being home don’t mean that I’m totally free. It just means that I’m having an opportunity to start over again and to adjust to this life.”
Gonzalez’s voice broke when I asked if there was anything else he wanted to share about the new season of “Suave.”
“To the people that’s listening: don’t judge me,” he said. “Don’t judge me, because what I’m going through, it could be your son, it could be your daughter, it could be your father.”
My thanks to Amaris Castillo, now for the rest of today’s newsletter …
Question of the day
The most bizarre part of President Donald Trump’s dizzying array of tariffs placed on countries throughout the world was the 10% “reciprocal tariff” slapped on the Heard and McDonald Islands — located near Antarctica and inhabited only by penguins and seals. As The Independent’s Katie Hawkinson noted, they are “only accessible via a two-week voyage from Perth via a boat.”
“Face the Nation” moderator Margaret Brennan asked a question of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick that might have come off as humorous, but actually was a question worth asking. She asked, “Why are the Heard and McDonald Islands, which don’t export to the United States and are quite literally inhabited by penguins … why do they face a 10% tariff? Did you use AI to generate this?”
Lutnick laughed and said, “Because the idea — what happens is, if you leave anything off the list, the countries that try to basically arbitrage America go through those countries to us. Any country — like, we had tariffs — the president put tariffs on China, right, in 2018. And then what China started doing is, they started going through other countries to America.”
It still seems like AI might have had something to do with it.
Interesting dynamic
On Sunday, Bill Ackman, the billionaire hedge fund manager who is the founder and CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management, posted a lengthy tweet about the tariffs Trump has put in place. Ackman started by writing, “The country is 100% behind the president on fixing a global system of tariffs that has disadvantaged the country. But, business is a confidence game and confidence depends on trust.”
He later writes, “But, by placing massive and disproportionate tariffs on our friends and our enemies alike and thereby launching a global economic war against the whole world at once, we are in the process of destroying confidence in our country as a trading partner, as a place to do business, and as a market to invest capital.”
Ackman then writes the president now has “an opportunity to call a 90-day time out, negotiate and resolve unfair asymmetric tariff deals.”
After a whole lot more analysis, Ackman concludes by writing, “The President has an opportunity on Monday to call a timeout and have the time to execute on fixing an unfair tariff system. Alternatively, we are heading for a self-induced, economic nuclear winter, and we should start hunkering down. May cooler heads prevail.”
Ackman sent out this post to his 1.6 million followers, but you get the sense he was writing to one person.
MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle, who is NBC News’ senior business analyst, retweeted Ackman’s tweet and wrote, “& this is where we are. Wall St investors writing pitches they hope admin officials will print out and read to POTUS in hopes of influencing his next moves. Policy lobbying via tweet.”
Lester Holt’s comments
“NBC Nightly News” anchor Lester Holt gave the keynote address at Friday night’s George Polk Awards — administered by Long Island University and honoring investigative reporting. Holt told the attendees the importance of recognizing journalists, saying, “By highlighting and honoring work of such high caliber, we are reminded that what we do matters. That our work remains relevant and impactful. And retains the power to transform lives, to expose and right injustices.”
He also said, “I have always put a great deal of weight into what viewers tell me on the street when they want to engage on something that we’ve reported on the broadcast. I listen very carefully to know if our reporting was clearly received. Because, I believe, it’s largely on us when the nuance of a particular story is missed or buried or grossly misunderstood. If we are to fulfill our role as a pillar of democracy, we have to do more than report. We have to illuminate and drive greater understanding.”
Holt, who was honored with the Poynter Medal for Lifetime Achievement in Journalism in 2018, announced in February that he would step down as anchor of the “Nightly News” sometime in the coming months. He will stay on at NBC News, including an expanded role with “Dateline.”
Holt said Friday night, “I will soon be stepping away from the broadcast and day-to-day news gathering at NBC News, in order to expand my role as anchor of Dateline. I’ll be working with a talented team that has helped set the standard for long-form journalism. In a career spanning 45 years, I have answered the bell for the big story far more times than I will ever be able to count. Earthquakes. Wars. Mass shootings, and so many more breaking events. I have traveled much of the country and much of the world. Interviewing people of great power as well as people who are powerless. The job has been an all-access pass like no other for which I am profoundly grateful.”
Best thing on TV all weekend
