Fifth Annual Local News Awards Recognizes Excellence in Journalism, National Service
Report for America honored reporters in ten categories along with four specialty awards as part of its 2025 corps member graduation
May 29, 2025 – Report for America recognized exceptional reporting from its corps members over the past year through its Local News Awards and celebrated the 98 corps members who are graduating from the national service program.
This year’s Local News Awards winners were selected from more than 200 pieces of reporting from 102 Report for America corps members. Reporting spanned homelessness, mental health, climate change, racial equity, rural shifts, environmental justice, and political extremism, in communities from Albany to Appalachia, Concord to Cedar Rapids, and Birmingham to San Francisco. Through their work, these journalists brought coverage and context to underreported issues and communities.
During a special virtual ceremony on May 28, 2025, 27 reporters were recognized for their reporting across ten categories, including investigative, community building, solutions-based, and multimedia reporting.
“Our Local News Awards and corps member Graduation are such strong indicators that the future of local news and newsrooms is bright, despite the headwinds. The caliber, commitment, and collaboration these emerging reporters and their host newsrooms bring to their communities should give us all hope,” said Jason Blakeney, director of corps and newsroom excellence at Report for America. “On behalf of the entire Report for America community–staff, partners, donors, and alumni–I congratulate this year’s winners and celebrate the past and future contributions of our graduates.”
In addition, four specialty categories recognized the work beyond corps member reporting that makes Report for America unique and vital in the local news ecosystem. As part of its robust reporter training, development and support, a Mentor of the Year was recognized, as was a Service Project of the Year, where corps members work with journalism students. Finally, Report for America’s Local News Sustainability team recognized two Newsrooms of the Year for their success in creating and growing community-centered and diversified fundraising. Find the full list of winners below.
The evening was also a celebration of the 98 corps members graduating from the Report for America national service program, half of whom have been hired into permanent positions by their host newsrooms. Since fielding its first reporter class in 2018, Report for America has matched more than 750 journalists with local newspapers, public radio stations, digital platforms, and television outlets across the country.
Local News Awards
News
1st – Laura Harbert Allen, 100 Days in Appalachia
Big Tech Comes to Tucker County, WV
2nd – Phillip Powell, Arkansas Times
Breaking wind: Proposal would split Arkansas in two for wind energy regulations
3rd – Aubrey Wright, Indiana Public Media
Med schools inspired Indiana’s anti-DEI bill. Doctors, students say they value diversity
Enterprise/Investigative (1 story)
1st – David Horowitz, Bowling Green Daily News
‘Nowhere to go’: Recent Ky law squeezes, destabilizes the unhoused
2nd – Rachel Crumpler, North Carolina Health News
Did prison have to ‘be a death sentence’ for man with mental illness?
3rd – Lucas Dufalla, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and Phillip Powell, Arkansas Times
Delta duck hunting offers conservation solutions, but the ducks are disappearing
Enterprise/Investigative (up to 3 stories)
1st – Michaela Towfighi, Concord Monitor
Despite governor’s order, hundreds of properties seized for unpaid taxes during pandemic
2nd – Jesse Bedayn, Associated Press
Trump administration throws hundreds of affordable housing projects into limbo after contract cuts
3rd – Daniel Walters, InvestigateWest
Recordings reveal Oregon port contractor praising Hitler, using slurs — now officials face a quandary
Features
1st – Michaela Towfighi, Concord Monitor
Texas veteran joined his sister in NH, hoping to find housing. He died while homeless less than a year later
2nd – Olivia Cohen, The Cedar Rapids Gazette
‘Like a cancer’: Scientists feel grief amid Iowa’s changing climate landscape
3rd – Lucas Dufalla, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
As Delta towns lose population, unique culture and history disappear
Community Building
1st – Alaina Bookman, al.com
Birmingham hospital program offers hope amid homicide crisis: How it works
2nd – Adam Goldstein, The New Bedford Light
What’s next for Old Bedford Village’s Morse Cutting Tools site?
3rd – Delaney Dryfoos, The Lens
Solutions-based Journalism
1st – Bennet Goldstein, Wisconsin Watch
An ecosystem engineer’s vision: mock beaver dams to restore Wisconsin wetlands
2nd – Lucille Lannigan, The Albany Herald
Cooperatives empower black farmers amid historic discrimination, land loss struggles
3rd – Anna Pope, KOSU
Oklahoma wind turbines don’t last forever, but now they can find second life in Woodward
Photo story
1st – Pablo Unzueta, El Tecolote
These handwritten notes reveal human cost of S.F.’s aggressive homeless sweeps
2nd – Emily Kenny, Spectrum Networks (New York)
Sewage sludge ‘poisoned’ drinking wells in Steuben County, neighbors say
3rd – Gerard Albert III, Blue Ridge Public Radio
Shovel by shovel, N.C. towns dig out from Helene mud and debris
Multimedia
1st – David Escobar, NCPR
Meet the Jamaicans who harvest the Champlain Valley’s apples
2nd – Macy Lipkin, KUER
Intermountain Indian School’s restored murals show its cultural sharing lives on
3rd – DorMiya Vance, WABE
Black women in power: Perspectives from metro Atlanta mayors on the 2024 presidential election
Podcast/Audio shorter than 5 minutes
1st – Amy Diaz, WFDD
Student mental health is a top priority for Western NC educators after Helene
2nd – Theo Peck-Suzuki, WOUB
As HAPCAP prepares to buy Sunset Motel, the family that owns it reflects on their life in Athens
3rd – Graycen Wheeler, KOSU
Thousands flock to Pauls Valley for Okie Noodling Tournament
Podcast/Audio longer than 5 minutes
1st – Mike Livingston, Interlochen Public Radio
Saving David
2nd – Amy Diaz, WFDD
What happens when a student makes a threat at school?
3rd – Julie Luchetta, Boise State Public Radio
White picket fences and pipe bombs: How David Lynch’s Boise childhood inspired uncanny filmmaking
Special Awards
Corps Member Mentor of the Year
Susan Turner-Lowe
Service Project of the Year
Ilan Ireland and Torsheta Jackson, Mississippi Free Press
Local News Sustainability Award – Nonprofit Newsroom
Blue Ridge Public Radio (Asheville, North Carolina)
Local News Sustainability Award – For-Profit Newsroom
Telegraph Herald (Dubuque, Iowa)
About Report for America
Report for America is a national service program that places talented emerging journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered topics and communities across the United States and its territories. By creating a new, sustainable model for journalism, Report for America provides people with the information they need to improve their communities, hold powerful institutions accountable, and restore trust in the media. Report for America launched in 2017 as an initiative of The GroundTruth Project, an award-winning nonprofit journalism organization dedicated to rebuilding journalism from the ground up.