2025 Audio Championship
This year, one audio competition was held in the News & Features category. The top winners from those 57 entrants qualified to participate in the Hearst National Audio
Championship in San Francisco where they competed for additional awards.
Additionally, a top winner in the inaugural journalism podcast competition held this year, finalist Sarah Ellis, was invited to participate in the Championship and produce a
podcast about the event.
On Sunday, June 1, the audio finalists and judges met for orientation, a critique of their qualifying stories and a review of the Championship assignment.
For the Championship assignment, the audio finalists were asked to produce a two-minute story about the following topic:
“Demonstrate how one of President Trump’s executive orders is having an impact on life in the San Francisco Bay Area. Choose from one of the following subject areas:
immigration, higher education, tariffs, the economy, DEI.”
The judges received the completed entries by Wednesday evening for review. The winners were announced at the awards ceremony on Thursday.
The first-through-third place winners were awarded scholarships of $10,000, $7,500, and $5,000 respectively.
The finalists earned $1,500 scholarships each.
The winners and finalists are featured below.
Winners
University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign
$10,000 scholarship
University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill
$5,000 scholarship
