2026 Audio Championship
This year, one audio competition was held in the News & Features category. The top winners from those 78 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 journalism podcast competition held this year was invited to participate in the Championship and produce a
podcast about the event.
On Sunday, May 31, the audio finalists and judges – Candy Altman, Jeff Bartlett and Scott Herman – 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 prompt: “AI – It impacts everything- from the way we live, to business, education, healthcare, transportation, jobs. Name any category and there’s an Artificial Intelligence conversation taking place. Even in news reporting. San Francisco and the Bay Area were at the forefront of the era of personal technology. And they are on the cutting edge again. Find a local story related to AI.”
The judges received the completed entries by Wednesday evening for review. The winners were announced at the awards ceremony on Thursday evening in the Gold Ballroom of the Palace Hotel in San Francisco.
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 North Carolina
at Chapel Hill
$5,000 scholarship
