Gangrey Podcast

Eli Saslow, a Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter known for narrative explanatory pieces on food stamps, immigration, and addiction. He discusses reporting methods, finding characters and communities, building trust, and embedding with law enforcement. The conversation highlights how he frames complex social issues through intimate storytelling and on-the-ground reporting.

Earl Swift is the author of "Auto Biography: A Classic Car, An Outlaw Motorhead, and 57 Years of the American Dream." The book tells the life story of a 1957 Chevy that, at the beginning of the book, is falling apart. Swift profiles the car’s thirteenth owner, Tommy Arney, who has led an extraordinary life, one that started with a brutal childhood, proceeded into a life of crime and ended up as a somewhat successful and controversial businessman. Arney sets out on a quest to restore the car to its former glory, and Swift is there for all of it. Through that narrative, Swift manages to also tell the stories of every single person who had ever owned the car. In the process, he captures America’s strange and abiding relationship with the automobile. This is Swift’s fifth book. Since 2012, he’s been a residential fellow of the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities at the University of Virginia. Before that, he was a newspaper reporter for the Virginian-Pilot, where he was nominated five times for a Pulitzer Prize.

Seth Wickersham is a senior writer with ESPN The Magazine and ESPN.com. He joined ESPN right after graduating from the University of Missouri. While he primarily covers the NFL, he has also covered the Athens Olympics, the World Series, the NCAA tournament and the NHL and NBA playoffs. Since joining the podcast in 2014, Wickersham has gone on to write several noteworthy stories, including two stories he co-wrote with Don Van Natta Jr., "Spygate to Deflategate" and "The Wow Factor." He has a profile on John Elway in the September 7, 2016 issue of ESPN: The Magazine that is getting great reviews. When Matt Tullis talked with Wickersham, he had just started writing some wonderful longform literary journalism for ESPN. He wrote about a runner from Kenya who went to college in Alaska, but suffered his own private torment, something that changed his life forever. He wrote about legendary NFL coach Bill Walsh’s attempt to write a book that would teach everyone how to coach in the NFL. And he wrote about vets who have to put racehorses down after catastrophic injuries, a story that was anthologized in the book "Next Wave: America's New Generation of Great Literary Journalists." In this episode, we talk with Wickersham about two stories in particular. In “Awakening the Giant,” Wickersham wrote about legendary quarterback Y.A. Tittle, who suffers from dementia. He also wrote the story “Out Route,” which chronicled Atlanta Falcon’s tight end Tony Gonzalez in the final season of his hall of fame career.

Baxter Holmes recently joined ESPN as its new Los Angeles Lakers reporter for ESPN.com. Holmes previously wrote for The Boston Globe, where he covered the Boston Celtics. Before that, he was a sports reporter for the Los Angeles Times. It was his first job after graduating from the University of Oklahoma in 2009. Holmes has won a slew of awards in just a short time as a professional sports writer. He has received Associated Press Sports Editors honors for explanatory reporting, projects reporting, beat reporting and breaking news. Additionally, he received first-place honors in the Game Story and Features categories of the Professional Basketball Writers Association 2013 Best Writing Contest. A year ago, he profiled Celtics head coach Brad Stevens in a three-part series. In September, he profiled Celtics guard Marcus Smart. His last piece for the Boston Globe was a story about the time Bill Russell, KC Jones and other players from NCAA basketball champion University of San Francisco visited the inmates at Alcatraz.

Vanessa Grigoriadis writes for New York, Vanity Fair and Rolling Stone magazines, among other publications. Grigoriadis calls herself a generalist longform writer. She writes about hot topics in the world and does a lot of celebrity profiles, really good celebrity profiles that dig far beyond what a celebrity’s publicist often wants. She won a National Magazine Award in profile writing for her profile on Karl Lagerfeld. Her New York Magazine story Gawker and the Rage of the Creative Underclass was a finalist for a National Magazine Award in feature writing. She recently wrote a piece called Justin Bieber: A Case Study in Growing Up Cosseted and Feral. The story in many ways serves as a follow-up to the profile of Bieber that she wrote for Rolling Stone in 2011.

David Giffels is a former newspaper reporter who wrote the book “The Hard Way on Purpose: Essays and Dispatches from the Rust Belt.” Giffels, who grew up and has lived his entire life in Akron, Ohio, writes about the city’s despair and destruction as the rubber industry moved out, as well as Akron’s resurgence. He writes about bowling, rock n roll, thrift stores and sports in a smart and funny way. Giffels was once a reporter and columnist at the Akron Beacon Journal. While at the Beacon Journal, he worked alongside Chuck Klosterman and Michael Weinreb. Now Giffels is an assistant professor of English at the University of Akron. He’s also the author of “All the Way Home,” which won the Ohioana Book Award. His writing has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, the Beacon Journal, Grantland, and many other publications.

This entire episode is devoted to the life, stories and music of Michael Brick. Brick wrote for the New York Times, the Houston Chronicle, the Dallas Morning News, Harper’s Magazine. He also wrote the book “Saving the School.” Brick passed away in February from colon cancer. He leaves behind a wife a wife and children. In Brick’s final days, his friends and fellow reporters scrambled to put together a book that contains so many of his amazing stories. That book, “Everyone Leaves Behind a Name,” was published by The Sager Group and is now available. All book proceeds go to Brick’s family. In this episode, I’m going to talk with some of men who put that book together. On the show we’ve got Ben Montgomery, a senior writer at the Tampa Bay Times, Michael Kruse, a senior staff writer for Politico, Wright Thompson, a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine, Thomas Lake, who covers politics for CNN Ditital, and Tony Rehagen, a freelance writer living in Atlanta.

Mike Sager is a bestselling author and award-winning reporter who has been called the beat poet of American journalism. He currently works as a writer at large for Esquire Magazine, and is also the editor and publisher of The Sager Group, a consortium of multimedia artists and writers. Sager recently co-edited the book, "Next Wave: America’s New Generation of Great Literary Journalists." He’s also released a collection of his own magazine stories called "The Someone You’re Not," as well as a novel titled "High Tolerance." Sager began his journalism career in the Washington Post newsroom, working for Bob Woodward. He went on to write for dozens of high profile magazines, including GQ, Playboy, Rolling Stone, Vibe, Spy and Interview, among many others. In 2010, he won a National Magazine Award for profile writing for his story on former NFL quarterback Todd Marinovich.

Kaylen Ralph and Joanna Demkiewicz are the founders of The Riveter Magazine, which just put out its fourth issue. They are both graduates of the University of Missouri journalism school. The Riveter publishes longform work by female reporters only. The idea for the magazine stemmed from the fact that, in 2012, while Ralph and Demkiewicz were students, the National Magazine Awards put out its list of nominees, and there wasn't a single female nominated in the reporting, feature writing, profile writing, essays and criticism or columns and commentary categories. Ralph and Demkiewicz recently collaborated on the book, “Newswomen: Twenty-Five Years of Front-Page Journalism,” which was edited by Joyce Hoffman and published by The Sager Group. Ralph and Demkiewicz interviewed all of the women included in the book and write “as told to” pieces on how those women got their start in journalism. A similar book is in the works for female magazine writers, as Ralph and Demkiewicz continue to work with Mike Sager to showcase the top female writers and reporters in the country.

Kelley Benham French of the Tampa Bay Times wrote the three-part series “Never let go.” The story focuses on the birth of Juniper French, the daughter of Kelley and husband Tom French (as in Pulitzer Prize-winning Tom French). Juniper was born at 23 weeks, six days and weighed just one pound, four ounces at birth. While written in the first-person, this story is not your typical piece of memoir. Benham reported the hell out of this story, starting with more than 7,000 pages of medical records and continuing on with extensive interviews with ever doctor, nurse and social worker involved in her daughter’s life. French is now a professor of practice at the Indiana University Media School. She recently worked as the editor on Lane DeGregory's piece, "The Long Fall of Phoebe Jonchuck."