Troy Cockrum, an English teacher in Indianapolis, who “flipped” his classroom in 2011 and redecorated his room accordingly. StateImpact recently won awards for telling his story and others that draw a line between the capitol and the classroom.
The StateImpact Indiana education reporting team has added two more awards to its mantel.
At the Public Radio News Directors Inc. conference in Houston on Friday, June 29, StateImpact reporter Kyle Stokes was announced as the winner of two first-place prizes for in-depth feature reporting.
He won first place in WFIU’s division for Continuing Coverage of Franklin Township busing. The judging panel described the series of stories as “well-rounded, in-depth coverage of a topic most people take for granted or pay little attention to.”
Also taking first place, in the News Feature category, was “How YouTube Is Changing The Classroom.” One judge wrote, “I was not interested in the subject matter until I heard the piece,” but that “it kept me all the way through.”
In April, Kyle’s coverage of flipped classrooms also garnered the WFIU-WTIU Newsroom one of its dozen Indiana SPJ Awards for reporting in 2011.
WFIU-WTIU News Bureau Chief Sara Wittmeyer said of the accolades, “Our newsroom doesn’t set out on stories to win awards, but it is a nice reaffirmation of the work we do every day. Kyle’s coverage of Franklin Township busing and flipped classrooms are two examples of what the StateImpact project does well: follow an important issue and report on how it’s affecting people.”
StateImpact Indiana is part of a local-national collaboration involving WFIU, Indiana Public Broadcasting Stations, and NPR that documents the effects of state education policy on the lives of Hoosiers.
