Journalist Rice calls for more storytellers at Gaines lecture
Published 6:00 am Sunday, April 20, 2025
Josie Duffy Rice (left), a journalist, writer, law school graduate and podcast host whose work has focused on prosecutors, prisons and various criminal justice issues, speaks about her work investigating the U.S. criminal justice system alongside moderator Ananda Wallace (right) on Thursday, April 17, 2025, in the Jody Richards Hall auditorium as part of WKU’s annual John B. Gaines Family Lecture Series. Duffy Rice was also the host, co-writer and co-executive producer of the Peabody-nominated podcast “Unreformed: The Story of the Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children.” GRACE MCDOWELL / DAILY NEWS
Josie Duffy Rice, a journalist, writer, law school graduate and podcast host whose work has focused on prosecutors, prisons and various criminal justice issues, speaks about her work investigating the U.S. criminal justice system on Thursday, April 17, 2025, in the Jody Richards Hall auditorium as part of WKU’s annual John B. Gaines Family Lecture Series. Duffy Rice was also the host, co-writer and co-executive producer of the Peabody-nominated podcast “Unreformed: The Story of the Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children.” GRACE MCDOWELL / DAILY NEWS
Josie Duffy Rice (left), a journalist, writer, law school graduate and podcast host whose work has focused on prosecutors, prisons and various criminal justice issues, speaks about her work investigating the U.S. criminal justice system alongside moderator Ananda Wallace (right) on Thursday, April 17, 2025, in the Jody Richards Hall auditorium as part of WKU’s annual John B. Gaines Family Lecture Series. Duffy Rice was also the host, co-writer and co-executive producer of the Peabody-nominated podcast “Unreformed: The Story of the Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children.” GRACE MCDOWELL / DAILY NEWS
Josie Duffy Rice, a journalist, writer, law school graduate and podcast host whose work has focused on prosecutors, prisons and various criminal justice issues, speaks about her work investigating the U.S. criminal justice system on Thursday, April 17, 2025, in the Jody Richards Hall auditorium as part of WKU’s annual John B. Gaines Family Lecture Series. Duffy Rice was also the host, co-writer and co-executive producer of the Peabody-nominated podcast “Unreformed: The Story of the Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children.” GRACE MCDOWELL / DAILY NEWS
Josie Duffy Rice (left), a journalist, writer, law school graduate and podcast host whose work has focused on prosecutors, prisons and various criminal justice issues, speaks about her work investigating the U.S. criminal justice system alongside moderator Ananda Wallace (right) on Thursday, April 17, 2025, in the Jody Richards Hall auditorium as part of WKU’s annual John B. Gaines Family Lecture Series. Duffy Rice was also the host, co-writer and co-executive producer of the Peabody-nominated podcast “Unreformed: The Story of the Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children.” GRACE MCDOWELL / DAILY NEWS
Journalist Josie Duffy Rice, addressing an audience primarily of Western Kentucky University journalism students, delivered a plea to them Thursday night to encourage them to take the leap into journalism as a career.
“I would be lying if I said go to journalism, you’ll have a 30-year job at one outlet. I don’t know what will happen but what I know is we need you,” said Rice, speaking Thursday evening at the John B. Gaines Family Lecture Series presented by the WKU School of Media and Communications. “We need people to do this work … people are very critical of journalism, and they will miss it when it’s gone. It’s really important that we keep it alive.”
A journalist, writer, law school graduate and podcast host, Rice’s work focuses on prisons, prosecutors and other criminal justice issues.
She was president of nonprofit news organization The Appeal and was the host, co-writer and co-executive producer of critically acclaimed podcast “Unreformed: The Story of the Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children,” which examined a state-run reform school for Black youth in Alabama with a dark history of abuse.
Thursday’s event was moderated by WKU senior Ananda Wallace and held at the Jody Richards Hall auditorium.
Rice said she knew the podcast would delve into tough subject matter, the work of interviewing vulnerable sources was “emotionally taxing” and there was a dearth of records associated with the school, but it remains crucial to bring issues to light through stories that hold institutions accountable and depict human subjects in all their complexity.
“I think that is my responsibility, the responsibility of journalists to bear witness to other peoples’ struggle and pain and sometimes their joy and tell the world about it and be able to give people a voice for their stories,” Rice said.
Rice first developed an interest in criminal justice issues and in journalism shortly after graduating from college when she began working for The Bronx Defenders, a public defender office for low-income people in The Bronx.
“I didn’t really understand the machinations of the system and I felt like there had been a failure on the part of media to translate them,” Rice said.
Saying she is a “big believer in being soft on people and hard on systems,” Rice’s approach has been reflected through the work at The Appeal, which was founded in 2018.
“So often when we saw coverage of the system, it was basically transcriptions of what the police have said and asking no further questions, they didn’t really paint a whole picture and get more context and, most importantly, it didn’t do a good job of describing who’s responsible for decisions,” Rice said. “You hear someone had been wrongfully convicted, but you didn’t hear who wrongfully convicted them and why and how…we wanted to make journalism that had a noun and an active verb and a direct object, someone did this to someone else and actually be able to paint a more full picture as an attempt at accountability.”
