Florida Public Media is honored to announce the statewide public media collaboration, “Class of COVID-19: An Education Crisis for Florida’s Vulnerable Students,” has won a national Edward R. Murrow Award.
In this statewide project, public media journalists from across the state explored the high costs of the pandemic for children and young adults who faced some of the greatest obstacles to success in school well before COVID-19 upended public education.
The national Murrow Awards honors excellence in journalism and awarded Florida Public Media the award in the large market group, in the digital category. Participating stations included WLRN (Miami), WGCU (Fort Myers), WFSU (Tallahassee), WUSF (Tampa), WMFE (Orlando) , WUCF (Orlando), WPBT (Miami), WJCT (Jacksonville), WEDU (Tampa) and WUWF (Pensacola).
The program highlighted stories across the state including:
- In Tampa, migrant education advocates are worried about nearly 300 students — children of farmworkers — who “haven’t quite surfaced anywhere” in the last year.
- In Tallahassee, Brady Wilson’s hard-won ability to speak in complex sentences devolved to two- or three-word phrases after schools closed last spring. The 18-year-old has Potocki-Shaffer syndrome, which causes developmental delays.
- In Fort Lauderdale, a Broward County Public Schools social worker knows she has to “hit the pavement … and knock on those doors” to find the nearly 800 kids who haven’t logged on or shown up for in-person schooling in months.
The project included a magazine-style narrative radio program, airing statewide, an hourlong statewide television special and a series of stories and interactive multimedia content on classofcovid.org.
Aside from the National Murrow Award, the “Class of Covid-19” has also been honored with awards from the Florida Association of Broadcast Journalists and regional Murrow Awards.
The Radio Television Digital News Association has been honoring outstanding achievements in electronic journalism with the Edward R. Murrow Awards since 1971. Award recipients demonstrate the spirit of excellence that Murrow set as a standard for the professional of broadcast and digital journalism.