NEW YORK (NY)
New York Times

July 14, 2019

By Marc Tracy

St. Paul – On a fall day in 2015, Madeleine Baran and Samara Freemark went for a walk through the extensive skyway that threads through the buildings of downtown St. Paul.

They were new colleagues at APM Reports, a division at American Public Media where investigative reporters and radio producers had been “smushed together,” as its editor in chief, Chris Worthington, put it.

Strolling above the city, Ms. Baran and Ms. Freemark talked about ideas for their first project.

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Ms. Baran, the no-nonsense reporter who hosts the show, resisted the podcast convention of introducing herself by name at the start of each episode. (Ms. Freemark had to talk her into it.) After considering a career in social services, she joined Minnesota Public Radio in 2009 as a part-time web writer. Within a year, she…