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“In 1944, the D-Day invasion took place during World War two. That same year PCBs were officially declared toxic. But nobody told my great grandfather. Monsanto salesmen were warned to stay clear of the chemicals. That information didn’t filter down to any of the black men working maintenance jobs at the plant. The company didn’t even provide protective gear,” said Taylor Phillips, of Anniston, Alabama.

Please find Alabama Public Radio’s entry for the PMJA Award for Best Use of Sound, titled “Monsanto, Anniston, and Taylor.” The APR news team spent ten months, with no budget, on this project.

Please click here to listen to the feature...
https://www.apr.org/news/2023-08-30/monsanto-anniston-and-taylor

2023 marked two decades since the Monsanto Chemical Company settled with residents of Anniston, Alabama. 20,000 people in this mostly African American town blamed chemicals called PCBs, produced at a local factory, for medical problems ranging from cancer to birth defects. Twenty years later, Anniston still bears the scars.

Please find Alabama Public Radio’s entry for the PMJA Award for Best Use of Sound, titled “Bad Chemistry: Monsanto, Anniston, and Taylor.” The APR team spent eight months, with no budget, producing this program.

The impact of Monsanto’s PCBs in Anniston didn’t harm one generation, but many. APR news worked with twenty-four-year-old Taylor Phillips to tell her story of how these chemicals killed members of her family in Anniston, going back to her great grandfather in 1930. This feature began as an academic paper by Phillips at Rice University. She’s now entering medical school at the University of Pennsylvania.
 
The APR news team used archival sound ranging from Louis Armstrong, to the fireside chats of FDR, to the D-Day Invasion, to the lunar landing of Apollo 11, to NPR’s All Things Considered to illustrate the passage of time during Phillips’ presentation.

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Pensacola Opera Ticket Giveaway - Die Fledermause

Real Estate donations for Alabama Public Radio.

“It smells bad. It gets in your hair, and if you don't wash your hair every day, just that odor stays in your hair for the whole week.”

Cecilia Rice
Owner, The Nut Shop 

Five tons of popcorn?

Please find attached, Alabama Public Radio’s entry for the PMJA Best Student Feature Report, “What’s popping at Bryant-Denny Stadium?”

Home college football games at the University of Alabama involve logistics. Fans have to park around campus and find their seats. The teams use buses to make their way to Bryant-Denny Stadium. And, then there’s the food for the one hundred thousand fans. Cheering burns calories and that means trips to the concession stands for stadium dogs and nachos. APR newsroom student intern Emily Ahearn reports on the family owned business that handles one crunchy item on the menu.

Please click here to listen to the feature...
https://www.apr.org/news/2025-11-13/whats-popping-at-bryant-denny-stadium

Ahearn visited The Nut Shop in Tuscaloosa, on “popping day.” The work began with the arrival of a ton of unpopped kernels on a delivery truck bound for the “popping room.” The Nut Shop arranged to supply five tons of popcorn, per season, for Crimson Tide home games. This isn’t the only example of one supplier getting a corner on the snack market at Bryant-Denny Stadium. Ahearn also interviewed Laura McLaughlin, who produced the “Bear Bryant Show,” sponsored by Golden Flake potato chips.

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“The greatest planning idea for an event was the planning that Joanne (Robinson) and I made in her living room for the Montgomery bus boycott.”

Fred Gray
Attorney to Rosa Parks and MLK

Please find enclosed Torin Daniel’s entry for the PMJA award for Best Student Feature for “…an insider’s view of the Montgomery Bus Boycott.”

Please click here to listen to the content...https://www.apr.org/news/2025-12-11/an-insiders-view-of-the-montgomery-bus-boycott

Daniel features two people on the “front lines” of the Montgomery Bus Boycott that helped make Dr. Martin Luther King, Junior an international figure. This story used never-before-heard audio with Fred Gray. The attorney for Rosa Parks and MLK recalls the planning process that went into the boycott and how King was the last of three names under consideration to lead the effort.

APR Listeners also heard from MLK’s barber Nelson Malden. He recalled the day, from the window of his barber shop, the day the boycott began.

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“I mean, this enormous tragedy of Charlie Kirk being assassinated. And you know, what did Charlie Kirk do? He made a lot of arguments. He talked upset people. He said things people disagreed with.”

Jimmy Wales
Founder, Wikipedia
           
Please find attached, Alabama Public Radio’s entry for the PMJA Award for Best Interview Program, “Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia, and what happened to Charlie Kirk.”

Please click here to listen to the program.
https://www.apr.org/news/2025-12-05/apr-notebook-jimmy-wales-wikipedia-and-what-happened-to-charlie-kirk

Wales grew up in Huntsville in the 1960’s, in the shadow of the Apollo manned moon landings. He also spent hours making corrections to his family’s hardbound World Book encyclopedia. That helped inspire Wales to create the website Wikipedia, that attracts billions of visitors every month. The online encyclopedia, which is constantly updated by volunteer editors, also has its critics including Elon Musk. Wikipedia is accused of leaning left, and for having fewer female and African American editors.

Supporters of Wikipedia include Belarus’ so-called “President in exile” Svetlana Tsikhanouskaya. She reportedly won her election in the former Soviet nation. But, incumbent Alexander Lukashenko claimed fraud, seized power, and established what’s considered the last dictatorship in Europe. Authoritarian regimes appear to dislike Wikipedia since its online editors are difficult to track down and arrest.

Wales joined me on “APR Notebook” to talk about that, and his new book “The Seven Rules of Trust,” about the philosophy behind Wikipedia. He insists that if we don’t talk to people we disagree with, the result could be violence. Wales used the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk as an example.

Alabama is known for its role in the civil rights movement, college football, and “white” barbecue sauce. But the state is also home to Pulitzer Prize winning writers and helped put astronauts on the moon. “APR Notebook” features interviews with guests ranging from six-time Grammy winning singer and songwriter Jason Isbell, and University of Alabama graduate, and two-time Emmy Award winning actor, Michael Emerson (Benjamin Linus of the TV series LOST.)

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“It smells bad. It gets in your hair, and if you don't wash your hair every day, just that odor stays in your hair for the whole week.”

Cecilia Rice

Owner, The Nut Shop 


Five tons of popcorn?

Please find attached, Alabama Public Radio’s entry for the SPJ Green Eyeshade Award for Best Light Student feature, “What’s popping at Bryant-Denny Stadium?”

Home college football games at the University of Alabama involve logistics. Fans have to park around campus and find their seats. The teams use buses to make their way to Bryant-Denny Stadium. And, then there’s the food for the one hundred thousand fans. Cheering burns calories and that means trips to the concession stands for stadium dogs and nachos. APR newsroom student intern Emily Ahearn reports on the family owned business that handles one crunchy item on the menu.



Please click here to listen to the feature...

https://www.apr.org/news/2025-11-13/whats-popping-at-bryant-denny-stadium


Ahearn visited The Nut Shop in Tuscaloosa, on “popping day.” The work began with the arrival of a ton of unpopped kernels on a delivery truck bound for the “popping room.” The Nut Shop arranged to supply five tons of popcorn, per season, for Crimson Tide home games. This isn’t the only example of one supplier getting a corner on the snack market at Bryant-Denny Stadium. Ahearn also interviewed Laura McLaughlin, who produced the “Bear Bryant Show,” sponsored by Golden Flake potato chips.



Respectfully submitted.