MPR youth reporters bring home medal from DC

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Four of MPR's youth reporters (from left: Antonio Gonzalez, Iman Fears, Tiara Bellaphant and Roy Spearman Jones) headed to DC last week to pick up their Casey Medal from the Journalism Center on Children and Families at the University of Maryland.

If you'll permit a little horn-tooting in this modest state of ours, MPR's youth series took the top prize in the audio category in this national journalism competition.

The kids beat the grown-ups.

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The judges wrote:

The chance to slip into the lives of young people whom the majority of listeners might never have encountered otherwise is so powerful and important. Most impressive was the honest, well-thought-out manner in which each of the six youth reporters in this series told their stories. Some of those stories were heart-breaking: Brenda's experience as an undocumented 19-year-old fearing her family could be separated; Roy Lee Spearman Jones' account of leaving home and sleeping behind trash cans because he is gay; and Antonio Gonzalez's portrait of six children grieving after their mother's sudden and mysterious death. If what we do is about helping each other understand each other, then this is as good as it gets.

We'd love for you to check out their stories.

If you'd like to tell a future story, contact series producer Toni Randolph (trandolph@mpr.org).