Podcast features from Ava Johnson ’27, Koki Ogawa ’26, and Kendrah Su ’26 earned honorable mentions in NPR’s 2025 College Podcast Challenge.
The contest received “roughly 200 entries from students in 31 states and the District of Columbia,” according to the NPR announcement. The honorable mentions were praised for their compelling stories.
Johnson is a politics major, with minors in journalism and African American studies. In her podcast entry “Finding Family,” she spoke with Black students and staff at Princeton about relationship-building and racial dynamics in the wake of the 2023 Supreme Court decision overturning affirmative action.
Ogawa is a sociology major pursuing minors in journalism and gender and sexuality studies. For her story, “Thrown Away: Waiting Outside New Jersey’s Largest ICE Detention Facility,” Ogawa reported from Delaney Hall Detention Facility in Newark, where she interviewed members of immigration advocacy groups and visitors waiting to see their loved ones.
Su is a psychology major who is minoring in journalism. Her podcast piece “Khmer Recountings,” profiled her mother, who grew up in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge before coming to the United States as a teenager.
All three students submitted projects from their journalism course, “Audiojournalism: The Fundamentals of Podcasting,” taught by journalist and audio producer JoAnn Deluna, a visiting lecturer in the Humanities Council and Ferris Professor in the Program in Journalism in Fall 2025. Students in the course learned the basics of audio journalism – from generating story ideas and writing podcast scripts to scoring, pitching, and marketing.
