“The Big Dig” Podcast from GBH News and PRX Wins A Peabody Award
“A refreshingly non-cynical look at the way civic projects get done — and result in real improvements for real citizens”
The Peabody Awards Board of Jurors has awarded The Big Dig public media podcast from GBH News in Boston and PRX in the 84th annual awards, representing “the most compelling and empowering stories released in broadcasting and streaming media during 2023.”
Of more than 1,100 entries in the prestigious awards across broadcasting, audio, entertainment, and immersion, only 34 were chosen as Peabody Award winners. The Big Dig podcast series was made by a team including host and producer Ian Coss, producer Isabel Hibbard, story editor Lacy Roberts, editorial advisor Stephanie Leydon, fact checkers Lisa Wardle, Elena Eberwein, Sam Dieringer, and Jeb Sharp, project manager Meiqian He, archivist Peter Higgins, artist Matt Welch, and executive producer Devin Maverick Robbins.
An infamous decades-long infrastructure project in Boston, Massachusetts, the massive highway tunneling effort known as “the Big Dig” was once ridiculed. But decades later, the story is now more complicated. How did the narrative around the project go so wrong? What lessons can it offer for today’s ambitious public works efforts nationwide? The Peabody Awards praise The Big Dig for “[taking] on the humdrum subject of infrastructure and [making] it riveting” and for providing “a refreshingly non-cynical look at the way civic projects get done — and result in real improvements for real citizens.”
Winners in audio this year also include productions from The New York Times and Serial Productions, The Washington Post, and the Invisible Institute with USG Audio. Winners across categories range from FX’s televison show The Bear to the HBO documentary All the Beauty and the Bloodshed.
Additionally, Reveal — an investigative public radio show and podcast distributed by PRX — was a finalist in this year’s Peabody Awards for “The COVID Tracking Project.”
In recent years, audio productions distributed by PRX including Kabul Falling from Brazen,“Mississippi Goddam: The Ballad of Billey Joe” from Reveal, Ear Hustle, Radiotopia Presents: S***hole Country, Mic Drop from the CBC, and “The Land That Has Never Been Yet” from Scene on Radio have been recognized.
About PRX
Celebrating more than 20 years as a nonprofit public media company, PRX works in partnership with leading independent creators, organizations, and stations to bring meaningful audio storytelling into millions of listeners’ lives. PRX is one of the world’s top podcast publishers, public radio distributors, and audio producers, serving as an engine of innovation for public media and podcasting to help shape a vibrant future for creative and journalistic audio. Shows across PRX’s portfolio of broadcast productions, podcast partners, and its Radiotopia podcast network have received recognition from the Peabody Awards, the Tribeca Festival, the International Documentary Association, the National Magazine Awards, and more, including in 2022 when Futuro Media and PRX won a Pulitzer Prize. Visit PRX.org.
