We used to say, "There's an app for that." Today it's probably safe to say, “There's a podcast about that." The popularity of podcasts among a wide range of people, including young people, is one of the reasons NPR launched its Student Podcast Challenge five years ago.
In that time, over 80,000 young people across the country have submitted more than 15,000 podcasts. The window for this year's challenge opened this month, so The Conversation talked to two of the people behind the contest: NPR journalists Steve Drummond and Janet Woojeong Lee.
Last year, two Oʻahu middle schoolers were named finalists. Emma Forges and Brynna Colmenares, current eighth graders at Highlands Intermediate School in Pearl City, spotlighted the Hawaiʻi Innocence Project and former inmate Albert "Ian" Schweitzer, who was freed in January 2023 after nearly 25 years in prison.
"It's a really great example of students kind of doing their own investigative reporting on a local story. It has many elements we're looking for. One, it's a great story. Two, a really nice structure of the way they introduce different voices in their stories, not to mention that they have different voices," Lee said. "We also just get a lot of entries that are one student talking in the mic."
Forges and Colmenares were the only finalists from Hawaiʻi among a field of students from 12 other middle schools in cities like New York, Chicago and San Francisco.
"You can really tell that they put a lot of care into writing something out and putting all the different sounds together in the editing process," Lee added. "I think it's a great example of it gets students out of the classrooms to go talk to real people, to get audio."
This year's challenge is open to students across the country in grades four through 12. The deadline to submit a podcast is May 3.
Judges will choose winners in three categories: grade four, grades five through eight, and grades nine through 12. Entries must be submitted by an adult teacher, educator or mentor.
This story aired on The Conversation on Feb. 15, 2024. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. on HPR-1.
