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New England Public Radio Wins Three First-Place PRNDI Awards

NEPR's Carrie Healy (right) on site with Lynda Mapes at the Witness Tree in the Harvard Forest, Petersham, Mass.
Douglas MacDonald
NEPR's Carrie Healy (right) on site with Lynda Mapes at the Witness Tree in the Harvard Forest, Petersham, Mass.

New England Public Radio's newsroom picked up three first-place PRNDI Awards this week from Public Radio News Directors Inc., an independent organization of public radio news directors. The awards were announced June 23 at the organization's annual meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

New England Public Radio's awards spanned a broad number of categories: Best Commentary, Best Interview and Best Soft Feature. 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.

"We're honored to be recognized by other public radio journalists, but mostly we're just honored to be able to share these stories with our listeners, said Sam Hudzik, NEPR news director. "I'm proud to be associated with these talented reporters, hosts and commentators."

We're honored to be recognized by other public radio journalists, but mostly we're just honored to be able to share these stories with our listeners.

The Best Commentary award was given to Gary Campbell, a 2017 graduate of Springfield High School for Science and Technology. Campbell completed the piece as a student in New England Public Radio's Media Lab program, which teaches local youth audio journalism and production.

"Gary is a wonderful young man who deserves to be recognized for his hard work," said Carlos McBride, NEPR Media Lab director. "I know it wasn't easy for him to take on some of the issues he experienced with his family. The vulnerability he allowed himself to embrace while working on his commentary is very present in the final piece. It underscores the importance of young people having a platform to tell their own story as an outlet to consider a way in which to heal and negotiate the adverse situations they are challenged with daily."

Best Commentary
A Son Reckons With His Father's Hunger To Escape Poverty
Written by: Gary Campbell
A graduate of New England Public Radio's Media Lab program wrote this piece about his father, who no longer lives at home with him.

Best Interview
Embedded In Harvard Forest For One Year, To Study One Tree
Reported by: Carrie Healy
Author Lynda Mapes spent a year in the Harvard Forest in Petersham, Massachusetts, chronicling a single tree. This red oak stands in one of the oldest and most intensively studied research landscapes in North America.

Best Soft Feature
Millennial Magnum PIs: Recent College Grads Become Private Investigators
Reported by: Karen Brown
Entering the job market out of college can be fraught - and require some creative gumption. Consider Andrew: a friendly, lanky recent graduate of Elms College. Andrew is a private eye - well, officially, "private investigator," but who can resist a little noir embellishment?

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.

Vanessa has overseen marketing and events at NEPR, now NEPM, since 2008. She is also the co-producer of Valley Voices Story Slam and host of the Valley Voices podcast and radio show. Before she moved back to western Massachusetts to work at her hometown public radio station, Vanessa spent time working in the fashion industry in New York City, and in non-profits and public media in Boston. She lives with her family in Gill, MA.