Students get national recognition for work produced at WOUB

Students working at WOUB Public Media are being honored nationally for the high-quality media they are creating and the important reporting they are doing for the region the station serves. The Ohio University students have been recognized by both the Hearst Journalism Awards Program and the Broadcast Education Association (BEA) Festival of Media Arts.

“The students at WOUB are working in a professional newsroom that serves 55 counties in three states and they take that work very seriously,” said WOUB Editor-in-Chief Atish Baidya. “The work being recognized is part of the students’ multiplatform reporting efforts. The students also produced versions of these stories for WOUB TV’s NewsWatch and our website, woub.org. We are thrilled that the work students are doing at WOUB is being recognized in this way.”

Junior News and Information Major André Norrils of Canal Winchester placed 11th in the Hearst Journalism Awards Program Audio News/Features Competition. There were 67 entries from 41 universities submitted in the competition. Norrils’ entry was a story he created for the WOUB podcast The OUtlet.

The OUtlet is a weekly student-produced, half-hour news and public affairs magazine podcast. The program focuses on campus and community news with lifestyle features.

“It’s really exciting to be recognized in this way for my work,” said Norrils. “Professor Tim Sharp reached out to me and told me to enter after he heard my piece on the podcast. It’s my first year as a journalism student and to get recognition like this is amazing. I really appreciate it.”

In the BEA competition, Senior News and Information Major Will Price of Columbus and Junior News and Information Major Lexi Lepof of Cincinnati are finalists in the Radio Hard News category, and The OUtlet podcast is a finalist in the Radio Newscast category. Price also worked on this program along with Cinematography and Film/Video Production Major Michael Wyrick of Columbus, who graduated in 2021; Junior News and Information Major Taylor Burnette of Chesapeake, Ohio; Journalism Master’s Student Theo Peck-Suzuki of Athens; News and Information Major Destiniee Jaram of Cleveland, Junior News and Information Major Dylan Theisen of Tallmadge, Ohio; and Senior News and Information Major Nick Viland of Atlanta, Georgia. There were more than 1600 entries from 300 schools. Winners will be announced on March 1.

To learn more about WOUB, visit woub.org.