The Gist

Something in the Water

How a fight about Iowan water pollution revealed the dubious machinations of agricultural corporations and a Pulitzer Prize.

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On The Gist, first we’ve got misleading statistics.

In 2016, Art Cullen wrote a series of editorials for the Storm Lake Times, a small newspaper in Iowa, uncovering the murky depths of a fight between local and state governments about water pollution. They followed the money, and discovered a fight funded by agricultural corporations, and ended up winning the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. Cullen’s new book is Storm Lake: A Chronicle of Change, Resilience, and Hope From a Heartland Newspaper.

In the Spiel, gubernatorial races.

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Podcast production by Daniel Schroeder and Pierre Bienaimé.