Peabody Award given to Hussman School M.A. alumna Nikole Hannah-Jones

UPDATE: Check out Nikole Hannah-Jones' Start Here / Never Stop Podcast episode with Dean Susan King from May 20, 2016.

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UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media 2003 Park Fellow master's graduate Nikole Hannah-Jones won a 2016 Peabody Award for her collection of "This American Life" episodes on school segregation called "The Case for School Desegregation Today."  The collection includes "Three Miles" and a two-part series called "The Problem We All Live With."

Hannah-Jones has worked as an investigative reporter for The New York Times since 2015, and covers civil rights and racial injustice. Prior to The New York Times, she worked with ProPublica from 2011 to 2015, chronicling the way official policy created and maintained segregation in schools and housing.

"Three Miles" describes what happened when a group of public school students in the Bronx went to visit an elite private school just three miles away, and how it affected those students years after the experience. In "The Problem We All Live With," Hannah-Jones asserts the importance of school integration as the key to the achievement gap in education. The series' title is based off of Norman Rockwell's painting of Ruby Bridges, the first black child to attend an all-white elementary school in the South.

In addition to her Peabody Award, Hannah-Jones also received a 2016 George Polk Award for her work on the episodes in 2015. The George Foster Peabody Awards were founded in 1940 and recognize exellence in electronic media. The University of Georgia Grady Hussman School of Journalism and Media sponsors the awards each year.