Awards Season: Youth Radio Brings Home Edward R. Murrow, New York Festival Awards

Youth Radio is pleased to announce the latest awards for its student-led reporting.

“Emancipation: One Young Man Leaves Foster Care On His Own Terms” has been awarded a prestigious 2018 Edward R. Murrow Award for feature reporting from the Radio Television Digital News Association, which has been honoring outstanding achievements in electronic journalism since 1971.

Anaya brings listeners with him into one last court hearing as he ages out of California’s foster care system. Anaya was never adopted out of the system he was placed in as a one-year-old. Instead he looped through group homes and temporary placements, seeing nearly every facet of the foster care system first hand. Built on a foundation of deep reporting including culling through twenty years of foster care records, Anaya took listeners behind closed doors, revealing what remains out of sight from most Americans.

This piece saw a groundswell of public reaction. Youth Radio received hundreds of emails, calls, and comments from across the world offering help and support for Anaya.

Youth Radio is proud that this work has been chosen as an example of “the spirit of excellence” that the Murrow Award winners seek to honor.

This week, the series “That’s When My Childhood Ended” was also honored with both a Silver Award and a Bronze United Nations Department of Public Information Award for Best News Analysis Or Commentary as part of the New York Festival’s International Radio Program Awards for The World’s Best Radio Programs. This award “honors radio content in all lengths and formats and across all platforms from radio stations, networks and independent producers from around the globe.” The NYF awards are often referred to as the “Olympics of Radio awards.”

In this five-part series, young people report from across America, where students grapple with the effects of teen suicide, sexual harassment, racism, deportation and foster care. Valencia White, Charlie Stuip, Zola Cervantes, Sasha Armbrester and Noel Anaya uncover fault lines in public systems that are meant to serve and protect millions of young Americans every day.

Check out the links below to listen to and read all these stories, and see more of Youth Radio’s award-winning reporting on the Awards page.