51. Hush

I made a new podcast. Please clear your listening schedules.

I set out to make a collage to go with each episode of Hush; I only made two. Ideas collide with reality on occasion. (Source material obtained through public records requests)

This news has been a long time coming: I’m happy to report to you that I’ve got a new podcast out now. It’s called Hush, and I made it with Bundyville producer Ryan Haas and the fine folks at Oregon Public Broadcasting. Four episodes are already out! Start listening.

This first season of Hush¹ is all about the case of Jesse Lee Johnson: a man who the state of Oregon said committed a murder back in 1998. Johnson has sworn innocence from the time he was arrested, to the time he was put on trial, to the time he was sentenced to death and for 25 years behind bars.

You’ve probably never heard about Jesse Johnson. I hadn’t either in 2018 when I had coffee with someone from Johnson’s legal team and he told me about his supposedly-innocent client. At the time I remember thinking the story of an innocent man sitting on Oregon’s death row was not something I had the capacity to report on as a freelancer. But, over the years, I couldn’t shake the idea that if it were true that Johnson was innocent, I needed to figure out a way to write about him.

Ryan and I were making Bundyville back then, so of course I told him about Johnson. He was intrigued, too. But, again, what could we do? To dig into the Johnson case would mean a ton of time, and we were too busy with the Bundy story.

In the meantime, we put out two seasons of Bundyville. I moved to Montana for a little while. Then COVID happened. I made a couple of podcasts with the BBC — Two Minutes Past Nine, then Burn Wild. I wrote a book. Ryan made a show about the death of a Portland anti-fascist called Dying for a Fight.

All the while, Johnson remained on death row. The years kept passing. From time to time I’d see Johnson’s name written on my whiteboard. I told the people from Bone Valley about him — they said, yeah, you should report that story. I told one of my journalism idols, Pamela Colloff, about Johnson and she affirmed, yeah, you should report that story. And then in the meantime, the Oregon Court of Appeals issued an extraordinary decision that Johnson should get a new trial in 2021.

In August 2023, Oregon Public Broadcasting agreed: yeah. We really need to report on the Johnson story.

So, Ryan and I got to work. If you’ve ever seen a video of piranhas eating, that’s kind of what it’s like when we start reporting. We consumed the case, binging thousands of pages of documents, blanketing the state with phone calls. Ryan and I share a similar work ethic. Some people would call it obsession; they wouldn’t be completely wrong.

The Johnson case also consumed an OPB conference room whiteboard for a few months, and the schedules of many editors and reporters who helped us with it. The legal department got involved in our fight for public records. The marketing department toiled over our logo. The sound engineers gave so much of their life to this show, and for a time, so did my husband Joe, who made the show’s haunting soundtrack.

There are big studio podcast operations out there; let me assure you that this is not one of them. One of our OPB colleagues joked that this was kind of a “farm to table podcast” and, yeah, that just about captures it perfectly. Every single person who contributed to Hush did so because they deeply gave a damn about getting to the truth: was Jesse Johnson innocent? And if he was, what did that say about Oregon? What did his imprisonment say about the justice system here, and all around the country?

On OPB’s website, you can also read “extras” that go along with each episode — we’ll be updating this every week as the podcast keeps rolling out.

As I mentioned, we’ll be making more than one season of this show. So if you’ve got a story tip, you can respond to this email. We’re on the lookout for buried truths about critical stories in the Pacific Northwest. No idea is too big or too small, so please don’t hesitate.

Also: are you interested in attending a virtual workshop on how you — yes, you! — can request public records? This is one way you can support journalism: request records, feed them to journalists (like me).

Drop me a line in the comments (or email) if that sounds compelling.

1. “First season” implies there will be more seasons, and yes, that is the plan. It will also be more likely the plan if you tell your friends, your teachers, your students, your mechanic and everyone else you know about this podcast.