It's been a busy spring for New England Public Radio's newsroom, which picked up two PRNDI Awards this month from Public Radio News Directors Inc., These wins come on the heels of reporter Karen Brown's 2019 Webby Award for best podcast mini-series for The Great God of Depression which was awarded in May.
At this year's PRNDI Awards, NEPR's arts and culture reporter Jill Kaufman won first place in the arts feature category for “Painting Trayvon Martin as Campus Confronts Racism," which explored a performance project of artist Imo Imeh, a professor at Westfield State University. In February of 2018, Imeh spent four days painting a six-foot tall portrait of Trayvon Martin the black teen whose murder in 2012 polarized the country and ignited a debate on racial profiling and civil rights. The seventeen-hour performance/painting took place at Westfield State, where almost two dozen racist signs and messages were reported around campus that fall.
Commentator Jamil Ragland also won for his commentary, "The Cost of Being Around White People: Is It Worth It?" which was produced in May 2018 by NEPR's Tema Silk. Ragland's commentary is a reflection on a paper one of his students asked him to review. In it she made a statement about being black in America. In light of the rash of racial incidents that were being reported at the time, Ragland felt her observations were especially apt. Ragland teaches writing at a community college in Hartford, Connecticut.
"It's our job as a news outlet to talk directly about issues of race and racism in our region," said NEPR's news director Sam Hudzik. "That's what we tried to do by airing these thoughtful stories -- a commentary from Jamil Ragland and a feature from Jill Kaufman. I'm grateful we had a chance to share them with NEPR's audience."
PRNDI is an independent organization of public radio news directors. The awards were announced June 16 at the organization's annual meeting in Washington D.C.. The field was crowded as always, with NEPR competing against public radio stations across the country with similarly-sized newsrooms of 4-7 full-time employees.
In May, NEPR reporter Karen Brown, along with Pagan Kennedy and the team at PRX's Radiotopia, was honored with a Webby Award from the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences (IADAS) in the best podcast mini-series category for The Great God of Depression. The five-part podcast tells the true story of a literary genius, a brain scientist, and their shared quest to understand the secrets of madness and creativity. Established in 1996 during the Web’s infancy, The New York Times now calls the Webby Awards "the internet's highest honor."
“This podcast series was audio storytelling at its best," said Hudzik. "Karen and Pagan did a brilliant job guiding us through William Styron’s life, and tackling such an important issue — stigma and mental health.”
New England Public Radio's newsroom covers stories from all corners of the station's broadcast area and is part of the New England News Consortium, a regional news collaborative that includes eight public media stations in New England.
