WPSU-FM won two reporting awards for its news coverage in 2025: a national prize for covering the impacts of President Donald Trump’s travel bans and restrictions on Pennsylvania colleges and universities, and a regional award for continuing coverage of Penn State’s split from WPSU.
WPSU reporter Anne Danahy reported both winning entries. She said even though Penn State owns WPSU, she didn’t focus on personal impacts when she covered university trustees’ vote to close WPSU and then later to transfer WPSU to WHYY.
“I tried to come at the stories about WPSU's future the same way I would with other issues — finding out as much as I could about what was going on, reporting it out and then listening to what other people thought about it and what questions they had,” Danahy said.
News Director Emily Reddy said Danahy covered the issue with her usual impartiality and journalistic vigor.
“As we talked about how to cover our own institution and employer for this story, we followed our usual editorial decision making,” Reddy said. “On more than one occasion, I asked Anne, 'What would you do if this wasn't about our station?' And then we did that."
The coverage won the Press Club of Western Pennsylvania’s Golden Quill award for excellence in audio journalism in the Business/Technology/Consumer category.
The judge who awarded the prize called her submission "a bold and dogged series of reports on a difficult and prescient topic, combining new reporting with insightful and sensitive color.”
At the Golden Quill awards ceremony in Pittsburgh, the Press Club of Western Pennsylvania also awarded former WPSU radio news intern Annelise Hanson a Press Club Scholarship for $2,500. Hanson interned with WPSU in Fall 2025 and Reddy wrote Hanson a recommendation for the award based on her excellent reporting work as an intern with the station. Hanson is a journalism and political science double major at Penn State.
WPSU’s other reporting award came from the national Public Media Journalists Association in a special category for 2025 called “Federal Policy, Local Impact.” WPSU won second place for Danahy’s story “International enrollment down, including at PSU, as Trump administration ramps up restrictions.”
Danahy said working for the Office of International Programs at Penn State as one of her first jobs out of college made her more aware of how significant international student enrollment is for both the students and the universities.
“When I started to see studies on the potential drop in the number of students from other countries coming to the United States, it piqued my interest,” Danahy said. “It's the type of story that's based in numbers and policy, but is really about the ripple effects on real people.”
Reddy said Danahy’s roots in the community – she’s a State College native – and her more than 20 years of reporting on the area and on Penn State bring “detail and nuance” to her stories.
“It's an honor to be recognized for the work happening at WPSU at what is a challenging time for news outlets in general,” Danahy said. “It's especially nice to see the attention on our coverage of WPSU and its future.”