Everybody loves awards. Winning feels good! And it’s gratifying to be recognized for your talent, hard work and achievements, especially if the judging is done by your peers.
I used to be excited about awards, especially when I or my colleagues won a national one. And I’ve been a judge in too many contests to count. But now, I’ve become an awards skeptic. There are simply too many awards, too many categories, and often those categories are broken down by market size.
Expensive entry fees tick up over time. It can cost thousands of dollars a year if a station enters their best content or projects in multiple awards programs. It’s no wonder that some larger stations have a person dedicated to submitting awards entries. That fact alone skews their chances of taking home the gold. I call this the “awards industrial complex.”
Still, winning matters. Donors, foundations and boards see tangible results of what their funding makes possible and how exceptional staff members are. For the winners, the prize is a source of pride and joy, a morale boost and an affirmation that your creative energies and determination paid off. It’s even better if it comes with a cash prize!
The awards I like best are the ones that are free to enter. They are purely about recognizing people, and not about raising revenue or making a profit (not that there’s anything wrong with that.)
Did you know that public media has an annual award for leadership in diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging? It’s given out by Public Media for All, the coalition of people of color, white allies and organizations committed to DEIB. PMFA it came together after the murder of George Floyd sparked an intense reckoning over the excessive whiteness of public media. Journalist Michelle Faust Raghavan of the PMFA organizing committee describes it as “a community movement [that provides] spaces for public media workers to exchange new ideas that better center our shared humanity.”
PMFA started honoring inspiring individuals who are leading the way on DEIB in public media four years ago. “We know there are people working hard — often behind the scenes — to influence their organizational culture to make it more inclusive and equitable,” says Raghavan. “We want to encourage more recognition of that work throughout the industry. This award takes a step in that direction.” (Note: The awards deadline is Monday, December 16. Here’s the nomination form). Go for it!
This year, PMFA asked me if Current would become the first media sponsor for the award. Given our commitment to DEIB in public media, I quickly said “Yes!” It didn’t cost us anything. As a sponsor, I agreed to write this piece encouraging applications and Current will run free advertising to promote this opportunity.
I can attest that the three people who’ve received this annual award so far are all awesome, kick-ass game changers. Hopefully the PMFA award will encourage them to stay in public media! Let me tell you more about these superstars.
The first winner in 2021 was Angela Carr, VP and chief impact officer at NinePBS in St. Louis. She oversees the station’s on-the-ground community engagement work, such as the Mental Well-Being initiative, American Graduate, Getting to Work and Drawn In, a ground-breaking animated children’s TV series and comic book project that Current covered in 2022. She also fundraises to support this work.
With a hard-core commitment to child development from infancy on, Carr produces convenings to listen to the community, educators and caregivers. “And then we bring that information back to the content team. They then create content based on the need. And then we take that content back out into the community.” Carr says her early education team is serving about 22,000 people. “95% of those are black and brown and 91% of those kids are not reading at grade level by 3rd grade. We have more work to do.”
When Carr won, PMFA focused the award on those working in public media development. “It is important that within the development space that there are black and brown people raising dollars to support black and brown people,” Carr says, “because that ensures that those dollars are spent in the most equitable way.”
The 2022 PMFA Award went to Jeanene Thompson, a corporate support associate at North Carolina Public Radio/WUNC in Chapel Hill. She’s worked in development in public media for two decades, including nearly 14 years at WFAE in Charlotte, N.C.
Thompson led the state network’s diversity committee from July 2021 to June 2022, which she called “a very pivotal year.” The committee focused on enacting “foundational things” that had been missing from WUNC’s DEIB efforts, such as conversation groups, asking DEI questions in interviews and increasing the visibility of DEIB for staff, she said.
What impact did the award have on her? “It has given me more confidence in my ability to make a difference,” she said.
Last year’s winner, J.R Rudoph of WFYI Public Media, was also one of Current’s Rising Stars for 2024. J.R is an engagement specialist at the Indianapolis station. The staffer who nominated him as a Rising Star wrote, “J.R’s efforts are helping us not only value, retain and recruit a talented diverse staff but ultimately expand beyond our traditional fan and audience base.”
In addition, J.R has been actively engaged in Greater Public’s Our Hour, a town hall gathering focused on connection and empowerment for public media professionals of color. He wrote a primer for Greater Public on how and why to form employee resource groups (ERGs), which Current also republished.
I met J.R this year at the Public Media Development and Marketing Conference in San Diego. His smile and style are unforgettable. He’s a proud troublemaker in a system that needs some shaking up, and it shows.
DEIB is core to J.R’s work and his life. Besides the ERG he helped launch at WFYI, he brings in local professionals and speakers to educate station staff and the community on cultural heritage. “I meet with the leadership executive team and review common practices in the workplace and how we can improve our space to become more inclusive.”
According to J.R, “The mission of inclusion is needed now more than ever. We must encourage our organizations to opt into more of the training opportunities and speak openly about their experiences in and around the workplace. … We must transition from Talking the Talk to Walking the Walk with actionable items.“
His message to public media leaders: “The change you are scared of is happening and will leave you behind if you don’t get on board. You get more results from trying and failing than not even doing anything at all.”
Who is making a difference on DEI in your organization? Your colleague can’t win unless you nominate them ASAP.
Michelle Raghavan suggests considering people in your workplace who are “making waves to improve the diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging in your organization or greater public media community. Don’t forget to think about the folks doing the quiet leadership that might be otherwise go unrecognized. We want to hear about them.”
These people are doing the hard work of making public media look more like the diverse America we are called to serve, making our stations better by pushing for accountability on DEI and bringing colleagues together for honest conversations. These are your people. Nominate them by December 16. They deserve it.