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WUNC Youth Reporters Dig Into Voter Engagement, Musical Connections And Finding LGBTQ Role Models

The 2018 cohort of youth reporters pose outside of WUNC's downtown Durham studios with lead mentors Kamaya Truitt-Martin and Allison Swaim.
Jay Price
/
WUNC
The 2018 cohort of youth reporters pose outside of WUNC's downtown Durham studios with lead mentors Kamaya Truitt-Martin and Allison Swaim.

Each summer, teens from diverse backgrounds pitch, report and produce radio stories for the WUNC Youth Reporting Institute

Frank Stasio speaks with WUNC Youth Radio Institute reporters about this year’s stories.

This year, youth reporters explored topics including youth voter engagement after the Parkland shootings, what it means to find an LGBTQ role model and how music connects different generations of North Carolinians.

Host Frank Stasio speaks about this year’s stories with WUNC Youth Radio Institute mentor Emmanuel Tobe, a rising sophomore at Elon University, and three members of this year’s cohort: Anthony Howard, a rising senior at Wakefield High School in Raleigh, Rajeev Dutta, a rising freshman at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Ambrosia DeConto, a rising senior at Durham School of the Arts.

WUNC Youth Radio Institute hosts a listening party tonight, Tuesday, Aug. 14 at 7 p.m. at Motorco in Durham.   

Copyright 2018 North Carolina Public Radio

Laura Pellicer is a producer with The State of Things (hyperlink), a show that explores North Carolina through conversation. Laura was born and raised in Montreal, Quebec, a city she considers arrestingly beautiful, if not a little dysfunctional. She worked as a researcher for CBC Montreal and also contributed to their programming as an investigative journalist, social media reporter, and special projects planner. Her work has been nominated for two Canadian RTDNA Awards. Laura loves looking into how cities work, pursuing stories about indigenous rights, and finding fresh voices to share with listeners. Laura is enamored with her new home in North Carolina—notably the lush forests, and the waves where she plans on moonlighting as a mediocre surfer.
Longtime NPR correspondent Frank Stasio was named permanent host of The State of Things in June 2006. A native of Buffalo, Frank has been in radio since the age of 19. He began his public radio career at WOI in Ames, Iowa, where he was a magazine show anchor and the station's News Director.