SYRACUSE, N.Y. (NCC News) — Newhouse students broke a school record by winning 28 honors and seven first place awards. NCC News stories won first place in Multimedia Storytelling and second place in the Television Hard News category at the Broadcast Education Association’s Festival of the Media Arts. These stories were amongst 2,285 submissions from 300 schools for the 2025 awards.
Chipped Away by John Perik, Lilli Iannella, Finn Lincoln and Julieanne Gilchrest won the first place award in multimedia storytelling. The story uncovered the effects of lead poisoning on local families in Syracuse. The reporters were a part of the Newhouse Spotlight Team, who spent four months looking into how lead affected Syracuse children last year. They found that lead in Syracuse homes disproportionately affected low income families. The team also discovered that of the children who received lead testing, Black children were almost twice as likely to have elevated blood lead levels, according to data from the Onondaga County Health Department.
The second-place award in Television Hard News was brought home by NCC News reporter, Chilekasi Adele for his story about the special election that replaced George Santos in New York District 3. Adele looked into previous stories reported on Santos by the local newspaper who questioned Santos’ finances months before his 2022 election. Adele followed the special election and spoke to constituents about their feelings on the situation. He graduated from Newhouse last spring and is a reporter at a CBS news station in Pittsburgh.
Each of the winners will be recognized at the annual Broadcast Education Association Conference in Las Vegas on April 6. The event will be filled with more than 200 sessions, 1,000 attendees, and 300 speakers.
You can find both NCC News stories on the award winning page.